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Ok, so it can't be done. It'd be cool if it could, but it can't. Roger that.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, January 11, 2023 - 04:45 pm: Edit

There is a lot of Energy that is only found out when the player uses something or after the game is over and you look at his Energy Allocation Form. You are focusing on tractors, but did he allocate five points of power to reload his Five phaser-1s, or not? You will know when he fires them again, but if he only fires three (players can hold phasers for future turns). At the end of a turn you may be wondering what he did with a point of power, and find out by looking at his EAF that he allocated for transporters for two turns but never used them (allocated that point of power on each of the two turns). Heck, he may have alocated five points of energy for a high energy turn and did not use it, or six points for erratic maneuvers and never executed them. The turn simply did not go the way he expected. So you could be looking at the situation and going nuts because you know he had energy that he has not used (he does not have to tell you that he decided not to use the HET or EM or had more phasers armed that he did not fire. And there is more. So look at this EAF and talk about the battle. Maybe he charged his phaser capacitors fully and you destroyed his phasers before he fired them.

By Jeff Guthridge (Jeff_Guthridge) on Wednesday, January 11, 2023 - 11:06 pm: Edit

G7.35 does not expressly forbid what Jack wishes to do, however it outlines WHY it is pointless.

Negative Tractor is reactionary to a tractor link being established. The strength of your negative tractor is only detected by the act of resisting.

Once applied, Negative tractor energy persists for the rest of the turn, and will protect your ship from future tractoring attempts (including from friendly units). This can be cancelled if desired, but once cancelled, its gone.

G7.421 states the method in which tractor auctions work. A link is established first. The tractoring ship announces how many points of effective tractor they have. The tractored ship then announces if it has enough negative tractor to rebuff it. Rinse and repeat until one side or the other loses the auction.

The rules specifically say that allocated tractor power CAN be proactively assigned as negative, but it can also be assigned when needed to rebuff a tractor attempt so there is no real reason to. Reserve power (G7.351 p4) works a little differently in that it must be assigned as positive or negative when committed.

D17.0 outlines what is detectable and under what conditions; while active tractor links, the number of tractor beam spaces on the ship, and which beam emmitter is holding a particular target is discoverable no mention of negative tractor assigned and not used is listed.

G7.354 stats that 'negative' tractor is a system built into the hull of the ship and does not require any specific box on the SSD to be used. Drawing parallels, the amount of power stored in the phaser capacitor is not known even at TacIntel level M, as negative tractor is a hull based system, it should be at least as hard to detect until demonstrated.

By Kenneth Humpherys (Pmthecat) on Thursday, January 12, 2023 - 12:16 pm: Edit

You can always announce "I have Negative Tractor on," but this is basically you getting on the sub-space radio and saying it.
Other players won't know if that is true until they test it or the end of the scenario when EAF's are shared.

By Timothy Linden (Timlinden) on Thursday, January 12, 2023 - 03:50 pm: Edit

I have won many a 1pt tractor auction as the Orion simply because they could not tell if the 18 odd power not accounted for was in tractor or not. Having the opponent have that uncertainty was very valuable.

For ships not dripping in power, I agree with earlier statements that if you could fully declare "X negative tractor active" you are really just giving free information away that much more likely helps the opponent than the potential threat doing so may give.

Tim