Federation Commander

This came up in our game this week: can ship "A" drop its tractor from ship "B," and then ship "C" tractor ship "B" in the same impulse? It was an attempted tag-team anchor

I'd think it would be fine; it would come under the 'Me, too' rules.

Needs to be discused by Mike West and myself. The thing is that the rulebook says tractors attack in Other Functions and release in Other Functions but there is no rule saying if one of them is first or both are simultaneous. I THINK we intended it to be flexible in the "me too" spirit of simplified rules but I may have to go back to archive files where that decision was made (or then again maybe nobody thought about it).

My initial inclination is that it is fine. Basically, you get a 'tractor auction' type event, but one side immediately forfeits. It would act like one was activated and one was release at the same time, but it would 'really' be a special case tractor auction.

Note that any anti-tractor energy the other ship has up is still in effect. (If any.)

And that last point by Mike West is an important one. Ship B's negative tractor energy still applies.

I could see a team of players with a ship with a lot of energy defeating an opponent's tractor and trying to hand off the tractored ship to another ship without that much energy, but Mike's point precludes that sort of thing from happening.

I've always assumed it was fine, both things happen at the same time, and both have to beat negative tractor.

It was even a game winning move in one of the online tourney games against Patrick.

Enemy ship speeding away from drones. A small ship of mine was able to catch it and put on a tractor, but he had the power to control moving, just slower. But it meant my bigger ship could catch up and 'swap' tractors, at which point we both had the same movement power and came to a stop - allowing drones to catch up and get the kill. If the smaller ship hadn't tractored it first then the bigger ship couldn't have caught it either, it needed the extra weight to slow it down first.

This was a case of one Gorn ship "handing off" to another Gorn ship. The tractored ship chose not to oppose the initial tractor attempt, so there was no negative tractor in play. I suppose the second attempt would result in a new auction.

Let's go through an example. We have three ships: A, B, and C.

We start with ship A tractoring ship B. A tractor auction can start, or ship B can forfeit and let ship A establish a strength 1 tractor. Note that even if ship B doesn't contest ship A's tractor when established, ship B can always start a tractor auction in any Other Functions Phase and try to break the tractor. (Or during Energy Allocation, of course.)

Now, we have ship C come along and decide it wants to tractor ship B. Ship C declares a 1 point tractor. At this point ship A can either contest it (initiating a tractor auction with ship C) to maintain its tractor link, or it can forfeit and let ship C keep its new tractor link. (The latter is the scenario that Space Cowboy has described.) Note that ship B can always start a tractor auction with whomever currently has the tractor.

Also note that in any tractor auctions, you have to apply more power than your opponent to win the auction. If both stop at the same power level, then neither tractor is established. (Effectively, both lose.) Negative tractor works the same, but since it isn't actually trying to establish its own tractor, a tie is good enough.

Hmm. Maybe I ought to write a tractor article for CL.

Sounds like an attractive proposition...