Bigger Ship in Tractoring?

[chazrobbins]

I couldn't find this in the rule book or the CRUL. How do you tell which is the bigger ship when one ship is tractoring the other?

[junior]

The only time that the relative sizes of the ships matter, iirc, is when determining whether the towing ship needs to pay more for the cost. If that's the case, then it's based off of the movement costs iirc. As the CRUL clarifies -

(5D6b) If the towed ship is twice the movement cost of
the towing ship (or more), reduce the baseline speed by
two. The baseline speed may not be reduced below a
baseline speed of zero (2B1b).

So a frigate (1/4 movement cost, usually) towing a dreadnought (1-1/2 movement cost) would have its baseline speed reduced by two tiers (from baseline speed 24 to baseline speed 8, for instance) because the dreadnought's movement cost is twice or more that of the frigate.



The determination of who is towing whom is, of course, based off of the amount of energy spent by each ship to generate its baseline movement. So if the frigate were moving at speed 24 (6 points of power), the dreadnought would be required to have a baseline speed of 0 because even a baseline speed of 8 (12 points of power) would be more than the frigate could spend on movement.