quote:
Originally posted by Possum:
INTERESTING, Felan!
I messed with the tractor/repulsers once way back in the pre-release demo, and they didn't seem to do ANYTHING, so I never touched them again.
What are the limits? I know in Starfire you could only move a ship around with tractors/repulsers if it was smaller than your ship...
I don't think there were any size limits or such. If you can target it (ships and even starbases) you can move it if you hit it. If one were to change the target options of it to include fighters and satellites then perhaps it would work on those as well, not sure though.
I seem to remember that when I attacked planets my tractors/repulsors fired, but the planet thankfully didn't move.
I think the damage listed in the tractor beam is how far it will pull. If 2 then it will pull 2 squares and 4 will pull 4 squares. Inversely so with repulsor.
But a tractor beam will only pull the ship toward yours, which means they will stop in the same hex as you. I wasn't able to select or target anything in that hex but I've recently figured out that you can flip through your list of ships with the controls in the upper right corner so I will probably try to select my ship and target the enemy at a truely point-blank range and see what happens.
That actually brings up another potentially interesting strategy of using suicide ships loaded with tractors to pull in a bunch of enemies and then self-destructing the ship with all the enemy in the same square I imagine it could be quite damaging.
If my statement of the damage to push strength of repulsors is accurate then it would also be useful to install a repulsor 3 along with a repulsor 4 (or if you can actually target enemy ships in your square) 2 repulsor 4's as you could then push for a total distance of 7 or 8 squares, respectively. The enemy will likely have a movement of just enough to get back in range of your tractors for a repeat.
If I remember right they are also affected by the mounts (I didn't know about them in my first game) so starbases could get some tractors of frightening range and repulsors would get terrible pushing weapons (power of 16) which could be used to give your ships a boost or keep the enemy away from your planet.
[This message has been edited by Felan (edited 13 March 2001).]