Information I'd love to know

I have always wanted to know. One on one, can a tractor beam overpower thrusters?

penny wrote:I have always wanted to know. One on one, can a tractor beam overpower thrusters?

Unknown - I can see arguments either way. And I wouldn't be surprised if it varied; with a warship's tractors able to overcome the thrusters on small craft or maybe even up to smaller warships, but the emergency thrusters on large warships being too powerful for another warship's tractors to overcome. but we also don't know how applying more tractors to the same target (beyond the number needed to "zone" it) affects the total force they can impart.

OBS does have cutter, captured by the tractor beam of a boat bay able to rotate on its gyros to align. So a minimum that tractor beam didn't prevent other movement - though rotation isn't acceleration and the boat bay tractor beam likely doesn't need a lot of power as it's just pulling small craft the last little bit into their docking collar in the bay -- they'd already be within the ship's compensator field by the point it'd activate -- so even if the ship is accelerating that wouldn't impact docking.

Though speaking of acceleration we do know that tractor beams are used to tow decoys outside of the wedge -- where they'd be outside the compensator. And we know from HotQ that even when held fully "zoned" by the tractor(s) towed objects are subject to acceleration (one of the Masadan LACs had a pressure tank break loose under it and smash its way aft).
So we know a warship's main tractors can counteract several hundred gees of acceleration.

Emergency thrusters seem to top out around the 150 gees that's the most that crews can take - so in a tug of war between a tractor than can pull at 400+ gees against a thruster than can push at ~150 -- you might expect the win to go to the tractor.

However we don't know how tractors are affected by mass. Anf force is mass x acceleration. We've seen emergency thrusters accelerate entire battlecruisers (800,000+ tons) to 150 gees while the towed decoys that were pulled at about 415 gees were just 50 tons each. Those BC thrusters needed to impart over 5,000 times the force that the tractors did on the decoys; despite them accelerating the decoys almost 3 times quicker.

Depending on how tractor work (which we're not told in detail) that raw force might overcome them. Of if they stack then maybe a warship does carry enough tractors, of sufficient power, to hold a similar sized warship against it's emergency thrusters -- we just don't know.

That said, even trying to get away might do really bad things to the targeted ship. We know the other Masadan LAC that came to a bad end was because 1 tractor failed and the other 2 weren't able to full zone it. It "simply snapped in half"; presumably from the uneven application of all that force. So if you fired thrusters at an unexpected angle you might partially escape the "zone" of the tractors on you; and the resulting uneven application of force on your hull might bend or break things!

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:I have always wanted to know. One on one, can a tractor beam overpower thrusters?

Unknown - I can see arguments either way. And I wouldn't be surprised if it varied; with a warship's tractors able to overcome the thrusters on small craft or maybe even up to smaller warships, but the emergency thrusters on large warships being too powerful for another warship's tractors to overcome. but we also don't know how applying more tractors to the same target (beyond the number needed to "zone" it) affects the total force they can impart.

OBS does have cutter, captured by the tractor beam of a boat bay able to rotate on its gyros to align. So a minimum that tractor beam didn't prevent other movement - though rotation isn't acceleration and the boat bay tractor beam likely doesn't need a lot of power as it's just pulling small craft the last little bit into their docking collar in the bay -- they'd already be within the ship's compensator field by the point it'd activate -- so even if the ship is accelerating that wouldn't impact docking.

Though speaking of acceleration we do know that tractor beams are used to tow decoys outside of the wedge -- where they'd be outside the compensator. And we know from HotQ that even when held fully "zoned" by the tractor(s) towed objects are subject to acceleration (one of the Masadan LACs had a pressure tank break loose under it and smash its way aft).
So we know a warship's main tractors can counteract several hundred gees of acceleration.

Emergency thrusters seem to top out around the 150 gees that's the most that crews can take - so in a tug of war between a tractor than can pull at 400+ gees against a thruster than can push at ~150 -- you might expect the win to go to the tractor.

However we don't know how tractors are affected by mass. Anf force is mass x acceleration. We've seen emergency thrusters accelerate entire battlecruisers (800,000+ tons) to 150 gees while the towed decoys that were pulled at about 415 gees were just 50 tons each. Those BC thrusters needed to impart over 5,000 times the force that the tractors did on the decoys; despite them accelerating the decoys almost 3 times quicker.

Depending on how tractor work (which we're not told in detail) that raw force might overcome them. Of if they stack then maybe a warship does carry enough tractors, of sufficient power, to hold a similar sized warship against it's emergency thrusters -- we just don't know.

That said, even trying to get away might do really bad things to the targeted ship. We know the other Masadan LAC that came to a bad end was because 1 tractor failed and the other 2 weren't able to full zone it. It "simply snapped in half"; presumably from the uneven application of all that force. So if you fired thrusters at an unexpected angle you might partially escape the "zone" of the tractors on you; and the resulting uneven application of force on your hull might bend or break things!

Lots of detail. Thanks. I have had so many odd scenarios in my head for so long. I suppose the Star Trek universe is responsible for those scenarios. Like when the Borg locked on to the Enterprise keeping her from accelerating.

Anyway, I imagine in my head, a scenario made possible in some way, of a ship being tractored inside the transit lane keeping it from departing.

I also wonder if an LD can be tractored and kept from moving. Of course the weapons must be inert and the destruct mechanism must be disabled. But an LD is a big ship, as you said, size might affect a tractor beam's effectiveness. Perhaps an SD's tractors can immobilize it.

Hmmm... a tractor beam vs a spider drive.

These are simply scenarios found in my head.

Jonathan_S wrote:Depending on how tractor work (which we're not told in detail) [...]

Since I first encountered tractors in Star Trek, I keep trying to figure out why the emitters aren't pulled apart.

Quick question. When a ship is badly damaged and it is towed back home, am I correct that it cannot be towed through hyper? I recall the Peeps attempting it and having problems, but can't recall the details. If it has to go the long way around, couldn't that take months? If it is salvageable, I can understand that, but if it is not, then why waste all of the time and resources it takes to drag her back? IINM, textev has stated on at least a few occasions that ships being towed back are probably headed to the breakers. Fearless is one such case. Was it because nobody but the yard dogs could be sure, or was it out of respect, for the officers, the crew and the ship herself?

One more question. Why are shipyard workers sometimes referred to as yard dogs in the HV. I am only familiar with stevedore.

penny wrote:Quick question. When a ship is badly damaged and it is towed back home, am I correct that it cannot be towed through hyper? I recall the Peeps attempting it and having problems, but can't recall the details. If it has to go the long way around, couldn't that take months? If it is salvageable, I can understand that, but if it is not, then why waste all of the time and resources it takes to drag her back? IINM, textev has stated on at least a few occasions that ships being towed back are probably headed to the breakers. Fearless is one such case. Was it because nobody but the yard dogs could be sure, or was it out of respect, for the officers, the crew and the ship herself?

One more question. Why are shipyard workers sometimes referred to as yard dogs in the HV. I am only familiar with stevedore.

A stevedore loads and unloads freight, whereas a yard dog works on ship construction and repair. I do not know the origin, but expect it is from the UK.

Now that I have it straight that a ship can enter hyperspace under wedge, it might be possible to tow such a ship very slowly, provided gravity waves can be avoided. The biggest limitation will be the compensator: when towing the LACs in HotQ there was damage if the LAc was outside the towing ships compensator field; so no acceleration that the ship under tow cannot handle. Because of that it will be simpler to have a repair ship work on it, until it could move under its own power.

You might want to return any ship, even if uneconomic to return to service, so the enemy cannot examine the abandoned wreckage. One of the most useful finds in the WW2 Pacific theater was a Zero that had gone down in the Aleutian Islands; examination pinpointed all of its strengths and weaknesses (the USAAF got it into flying shape).

penny wrote:Quick question. When a ship is badly damaged and it is towed back home, am I correct that it cannot be towed through hyper? I recall the Peeps attempting it and having problems, but can't recall the details. If it has to go the long way around, couldn't that take months? If it is salvageable, I can understand that, but if it is not, then why waste all of the time and resources it takes to drag her back? IINM, textev has stated on at least a few occasions that ships being towed back are probably headed to the breakers. Fearless is one such case. Was it because nobody but the yard dogs could be sure, or was it out of respect, for the officers, the crew and the ship herself?

One more question. Why are shipyard workers sometimes referred to as yard dogs in the HV. I am only familiar with stevedore.

Did you mean "cannot be towed through a grav wave?"

Because it can take months between systems even going through hyper. Without wormholes it'd take the fastest courier ship over 80 days to make the one-way run 667 LY run from Haven to Sol. A freighter would take more like 190 days.

I ask because if you really meant towed home without utilizing any hyperspace it'd likely take decades to centuries to get it home.


As for the Peeps having issues with their criples two instances you might be thinking of both involve grav waves. First was the pre-war convoy ambush in a grav wave - where it was noted that any ship losing a sail would be unable to maneuver and would have to be carefully towed out of the grav wave by one of its companions. The other would be one of the battles (I forget which) in a system within a grav wave where it was noted that crippling an Alpha ring would prevent the ship from fleeing because it couldn't safely enter hyper (because with a damaged alpha ring it couldn't form the pair of sails needed to survive entry directly into a grav wave)

If you had a ship without functional sails I can think of a few options - which one is best depends on circumstances.

1) If the system isn't in a grav wave you could plot a route that avoided any grav waves and tow her home through hyper that way. (Or if her beta nodes were functional she could move herself home on such a routing).
Depending on how far out of your way you had to go to avoid grav waves that could add weeks to the voyage -- or it's possible there weren't any waves in the way and the 'rift only' route was already the fastest one.

2) If the system is in a grav wave, but right at the edge you might be able to fly far enough into deep space to get beyond it; then take option 1 above. (But you're extremely unlikely to be this lucky in your astroography)

3) The ship could attempt to repair its alpha rings (if the problem was, say, damaged control runs rather than damaged nodes) to allow it to fly itself home.

4) A repair ship could be dispatched to fix/replace the damaged nodes and allow the ship to fly itself home.

5) At least for a smaller ship you might be able to dispatch some kind of recovery ship to scoop it up and bring it home as cargo.

6) If the situation and enemy don't allow you time for any of the above you attempt to get the crew off scuttle the ship before the enemy can compel you to surrender it mostly intact.

In our world, there are ships that can carry other ships; so I once wondered about a cargo ship so big that it could only use gravity plates and not a compensator. As long as it was not be too massive to be allowed to use a wormhole, even if it shut down the wormhole for several minutes, then it could load up all but the most massive warship (stabilized with gravity plates and tractor beams) and carry it home.

tlb wrote:In our world, there are ships that can carry other ships; so I once wondered about a cargo ship so big that it could only use gravity plates and not a compensator. As long as it was not be too massive to be allowed to use a wormhole, even if it shut down the wormhole for several minutes, then it could load up all but the most massive warship (stabilized with gravity plates and tractor beams) and carry it home.

TFTSNBN suggested the same type of ship on the very first page of the 'Did the MBS corner the market on trade' thread.

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:Quick question. When a ship is badly damaged and it is towed back home, am I correct that it cannot be towed through hyper? I recall the Peeps attempting it and having problems, but can't recall the details. If it has to go the long way around, couldn't that take months? If it is salvageable, I can understand that, but if it is not, then why waste all of the time and resources it takes to drag her back? IINM, textev has stated on at least a few occasions that ships being towed back are probably headed to the breakers. Fearless is one such case. Was it because nobody but the yard dogs could be sure, or was it out of respect, for the officers, the crew and the ship herself?

One more question. Why are shipyard workers sometimes referred to as yard dogs in the HV. I am only familiar with stevedore.

Did you mean "cannot be towed through a grav wave?"

Because it can take months between systems even going through hyper. Without wormholes it'd take the fastest courier ship over 80 days to make the one-way run 667 LY run from Haven to Sol. A freighter would take more like 190 days.

I ask because if you really meant towed home without utilizing any hyperspace it'd likely take decades to centuries to get it home.


As for the Peeps having issues with their criples two instances you might be thinking of both involve grav waves. First was the pre-war convoy ambush in a grav wave - where it was noted that any ship losing a sail would be unable to maneuver and would have to be carefully towed out of the grav wave by one of its companions. The other would be one of the battles (I forget which) in a system within a grav wave where it was noted that crippling an Alpha ring would prevent the ship from fleeing because it couldn't safely enter hyper (because with a damaged alpha ring it couldn't form the pair of sails needed to survive entry directly into a grav wave)

If you had a ship without functional sails I can think of a few options - which one is best depends on circumstances.

1) If the system isn't in a grav wave you could plot a route that avoided any grav waves and tow her home through hyper that way. (Or if her beta nodes were functional she could move herself home on such a routing).
Depending on how far out of your way you had to go to avoid grav waves that could add weeks to the voyage -- or it's possible there weren't any waves in the way and the 'rift only' route was already the fastest one.

2) If the system is in a grav wave, but right at the edge you might be able to fly far enough into deep space to get beyond it; then take option 1 above. (But you're extremely unlikely to be this lucky in your astroography)

3) The ship could attempt to repair its alpha rings (if the problem was, say, damaged control runs rather than damaged nodes) to allow it to fly itself home.

4) A repair ship could be dispatched to fix/replace the damaged nodes and allow the ship to fly itself home.

5) At least for a smaller ship you might be able to dispatch some kind of recovery ship to scoop it up and bring it home as cargo.

6) If the situation and enemy don't allow you time for any of the above you attempt to get the crew off scuttle the ship before the enemy can compel you to surrender it mostly intact.

No, I really did mean 'if it cannot be towed through hyper.' I simply wasn't aware it'd take so long!

Reason being, I thought repair ships are as limited in what they can do as doctors contemplating Regen. If the heart is dead, the engine (nodes, rings) then I thought she is totaled and headed for the breakers. But towing an SD? How many ships can simultaneously tow a warship? Only one, lest wedge fratricide? Yet we never hear of a ship being scuttled, have we?

But you touched on something I was going to ask. Without a sail I didn't think a ship could enter hyper. So, what can one do with an SD that cannot be repaired by a repair ship?

A ship can lose sails while in hyper and survive? How is that? A ship on the seas losing its sails in treacherous waves is toast.


An aside: Jonathan, I've been needing to thank you for all of the additional information you include in many of your posts. Dunno how you feel Bout it, but it was one of your posts that made the lightbulb come on in my head in the ? thread. It was your posts that led to me realizing that the two theories had been solved. Good conversation fuels discovery. Kudos 2 U!


PS

Trying to repair the engine of an SD, even if she was back home in the yard dogs hands I thought would be as difficult as Theemile's tag line says RFC said ...

RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."