Federation Commander

This is a combination issue that deals with both asteroids and tractor beams.

1. Is the following situation valid?

A ship enters an area of medium-sized asteroids. As the ship passes adjacent to an asteroid, it activates a 1-energy point tractor beam to latch onto the asteroid. The ship then ceases moving, but is not "stopped" and retains its allocated baseline speed. Later in the turn, it could turn off the tractor beam and continue moving at its original baseline speed.

2. The rule update for (6B4e) states that 8 energy points are needed to move a medium-sized asteroid one hex during a turn. Is this energy that is used in the tractor beam, or is it energy used in movement? Or can it be either?

Sorry about this. I got to thinking about one ship pursuing another and how the ship in the lead might try to use this tactic to stop its movement temporarily, but retain the ability to continue moving later in a turn.

I apologize for not responding to this earlier.

I have indeed kicked the overall issue up to Steve. I will say that, while the exact resolution is yet to be determined, I am fairly sure that it is not intended for ships to be able to tractor asteroids in order to temporarily stop while maintaining speed. My guess is that tractoring asteroids is more akin to tractoring a base (5D3b) than another ship.

However, I can answer the second question. The power used to move the asteroid is movement energy. It only requires a single point of energy to tractor the asteroid, but it takes movement energy to move the asteroid.

The only reason you would have more than one point of power in the tractor itself is because you have had a tractor auction and won.

(BTW, the rule is (6B5e). (6B4e) is for large asteroids.)

Thanks, Mike!

So, if I understand this now, if a ship tractors an asteroid as described earlier, and the ship continues to attempt to move, the tractor would "break" as it would with tractoring a base.

Okay. Understood. But I also asked about where the energy comes from for the tractor beam. That's why I asked if it was energy for movement or special extra energy channeled through the tractor emitter. If it is energy for movement, would the ship player be able to simply announce that the energy he had allocated for movement is now being used to try and move the asteroid? Even if it did move the asteroid a hex, he still could turn off the tractor later in the Turn and proceed on his merry way at his baseline speed.