IIRC tractor beams may be dropped at any point in the sequence of play. Which gave me an idea for an Evil Trick (blame Kang for this one, diabolical Klingon that he is ).
Tractor your Stinger during the Other Functions phase of the impulse. Accelerate to Speed 24+1. On sub-pulse 1, you move and take the Stinger with you. On Sub-pulse 2, ditto, but right after moving the ship, the tractor is dropped. It is not death dragged, because it has not moved three hexes while tractored. The Stinger then moves (since shuttles move AFTER SHIPS) and then the Stinger moves again on sub-pulse 4. Result? For one impulse, your Stinger has moved at twice normal speed. Which may be enough to jump the Stinger's Gap.
"Captain" Terry O'Carroll, fourteen papers published including six best of issue
"Man, Terry, you are like a loophole seeking missle!" - Mike West
terryoc wrote:IIRC tractor beams may be dropped at any point in the sequence of play.
No. Tractors may only be dropped during the Other Functions Phase (1E2e), Energy Allocation, or when the tractor box is disabled. This is explicitly called out in (5D5).
In regards to Kang's tactic with saving stingers, is it legal to establish a tractor and then immediately drop it in the same phase? I don't think it's prohibited, but it probably wasn't thought of by the designer.
"Captain" Terry O'Carroll, fourteen papers published including six best of issue
"Man, Terry, you are like a loophole seeking missle!" - Mike West
terryoc wrote:In regards to Kang's tactic with saving stingers, is it legal to establish a tractor and then immediately drop it in the same phase? I don't think it's prohibited, but it probably wasn't thought of by the designer.
No, I am pretty sure it wasn't thought of. That said, I would not disallow it.
And that said, I don't think it applies to Kang's tactic. The point of the tactic is that the auction is a tie, so no one ends up with an active tractor.
I remember we've had this asked before ('cos it was me!), and Mike gave the same answer then. It was in regard to tractor fights over a ship, that time.
Okay guys...help me get this right. This is a campaign question. I want to tractor a near dead ship on my starboard and a near dead ship on my port. I can do that, correct?
They are two of my surviving 'hulks'; all enemy vessels (over a thousand fighters) that survived scurried back to their base and returning carriers as they were out of ammo. (Their carriers were returning from a raid on one of my base stations, and no, it did not survive, and yes, they proceeded to raid my planet.) Two of my ships blew, two were in bad shape with fires sweeping the hanger decks. My ship would have been crippled if they had just one more squadron to throw at me.
And as I understand the rule, I have to plot speed 24 to be able to go speed 8 while towing the two ships (the ships have no significant power). Right?
HoD K'el
IMV Black Dagger
-----------------
Life is not victory;
Death is not defeat!
Hod, see rule (5D6b), third paragraph: "No ship can tractor more than one ship at the same time and must release one tractor link... to tractor another ship" So no.
Unfortunately, the fact that the ships are hulks is irrelevant. In FC, a ship is either alive or dead. If it's dead, you can't tractor it (it's removed from the map). If it's a campaign, the campaign moderator may have some special rule to cover this situation, but under vanilla FC rules you can only tow one of those ships.[/b]
"Captain" Terry O'Carroll, fourteen papers published including six best of issue
"Man, Terry, you are like a loophole seeking missle!" - Mike West
Hod K'el wrote:Okay guys...help me get this right. This is a campaign question. I want to tractor a near dead ship on my starboard and a near dead ship on my port. I can do that, correct?
By the rules, no you can't do that. You may only tow one of them. The way you would have to do this is evacuate the crew on one and self-destruct it, then tow the other one away.
That said, you said this is a "campaign question". As such, I suggest that you create a campaign rule that allows immobile ships to be removed from the battlefield. This won't violate the spirit of the game rule, but allow you the flexibility you need for campaign purposes. I suggest making the requirement that the towed ship must be "deactivated". This means that it generates no power at all (and thus cannot use its other systems). This means you are no longer towing a "ship" as such, but a ship-shaped inert object.
So, realistically, it is going to cost more to repair than to build a new carrier, which means I should beam the last command group in the auxiliary control and the last damage control team to my ship and blow the last aux and frame from range five, then 'rinse and repeat' and not tractor either ship...mainly due to cost; or just leave them for a salvage ship tow them in. We are very close to an asteroid field...I could just give them a little push...
HoD K'el
IMV Black Dagger
-----------------
Life is not victory;
Death is not defeat!
If i have a tractor applied to a ship and i want to start evasive maneuvers, do i have to drop the tractor in the other functions phase and wait until next impulse defensive fire phase to announce EM or does my announcement of EM automatically shut off the tractor beam? If there were any impacted seeking weapons that were tractored and thus released by my EM they would use the same procedure (5D4c) as if the tractor was destroyed by a hit and run raid or not powered in energy allocation, correct? Which would also be the case if i cloaked out too, right?
). 
