You want a tractor beam?

It's one of THE defining characteristics of the ship, of course it kriffing well should have had a tractor beam.

Hell, so should the Defender and probably Slave I (and that would have been a vastly better title than what we got).

Wait, tractor beam? This thing is that ship from GALAGA?

So if i let it capturemy x-wing, and the i shoot it, does that mean i can now fight with two linked xwings?

Maybe a Tractor Beam cannon upgrade will come out in the future.

Anyone actually see the dual-cannon slots being useful? If it was "buy two cannons get the cheapest free" then fair enough, but would you really pay the full price of an extra cannon just to have a choice of what to attack with? Maybe to stress people with the first attack, then damage them with the second, but not for the full cost of a cannon.

Wow, I really like the idea of a tractor beam. It could have worked and be an extremely interesting mechanic!

Tractor Beam

(Action)

Force an enemy ship within range 1 to perform a green/white maneuver from its dial that would cause it to overlap your ship. That ship skips its turn during the Activation Phase.

Basically lower-PS ships would do an extra maneuver, higher-PS ships would lose their maneuver.

edit: phrasing

Anyone actually see the dual-cannon slots being useful?

No.

I see them being expensive and redundant.

Didn't Fel use his tractor beam to steer his missiles or something like that??

Didn't Fel use his tractor beam to steer his missiles or something like that??

In the Defender? Probably. There's also Corran's use of it to slingshot around a space station in Isard's Revenge.

Being able to directly affect enemy maneuvers is basically uncharted design space, there's SO many interesting things they could do with it that I have to consider the lack of a tractor beam on the Aggressor to be a direct failure rather than any of the more-forgivable choices.

Wow, I really like the idea of a tractor beam. It could have worked and be an extremely interesting mechanic!

Tractor Beam

(Action)

Force an enemy ship within range 1 to perform a green/white maneuver from its dial that would cause it to overlap your ship. That ship skips its turn during the Activation Phase.

Basically lower-PS ships would do an extra maneuver, higher-PS ships would lose their maneuver.

edit: phrasing

Really hard to do in real life. There would be tons of places where you could not overlap. And would that really feel like a tractor beam and what's the point anyway? That sort of bumping hardly sounds fun. Maybe that's just me...

Ion weapons already have most of the effect of a beam weapon should have - making beam weapons redundant. If we think back on the classic TIE Fighter game, Ion weapons completely froze ships dead and beam weapons restricted movement. In X-wing Miniatures Ion covers the effect of beams without being totally overpowered.

Didn't Fel use his tractor beam to steer his missiles or something like that??

In the Defender? Probably. There's also Corran's use of it to slingshot around a space station in Isard's Revenge.

Being able to directly affect enemy maneuvers is basically uncharted design space, there's SO many interesting things they could do with it that I have to consider the lack of a tractor beam on the Aggressor to be a direct failure rather than any of the less-forgivable choices.

Sorry if I sound too negative but once again I find it redundant when we already have a (balanced) form of it (Ion). Selecting your opponents direction is extremely powerful and easily leads to sending a ship of map. Ion already does that - but it takes both skill and luck to pull of.

Wow, I really like the idea of a tractor beam. It could have worked and be an extremely interesting mechanic!

Tractor Beam

(Action)

Force an enemy ship within range 1 to perform a green/white maneuver from its dial that would cause it to overlap your ship. That ship skips its turn during the Activation Phase.

Basically lower-PS ships would do an extra maneuver, higher-PS ships would lose their maneuver.

edit: phrasing

Really hard to do in real life. There would be tons of places where you could not overlap. And would that really feel like a tractor beam and what's the point anyway? That sort of bumping hardly sounds fun. Maybe that's just me...

Ion weapons already have most of the effect of a beam weapon should have - making beam weapons redundant. If we think back on the classic TIE Fighter game, Ion weapons completely froze ships dead and beam weapons restricted movement. In X-wing Miniatures Ion covers the effect of beams without being totally overpowered.

Didn't Fel use his tractor beam to steer his missiles or something like that??

In the Defender? Probably. There's also Corran's use of it to slingshot around a space station in Isard's Revenge.

Being able to directly affect enemy maneuvers is basically uncharted design space, there's SO many interesting things they could do with it that I have to consider the lack of a tractor beam on the Aggressor to be a direct failure rather than any of the less-forgivable choices.

Sorry if I sound too negative but once again I find it redundant when we already have a (balanced) form of it (Ion). Selecting your opponents direction is extremely powerful and easily leads to sending a ship of map. Ion already does that - but it takes both skill and luck to pull of.

It's actually unnecessary to change the maneuver template itself. There's a few ways, I'm kind of partial to this one:

"At the start of the activation phase, if you have a target lock on an enemy ship within [range], you may spend it to increase that ship's maneuver difficulty by a step."

Could theoretically also word it to double-stress reds but that may be excessive.

Tractor beams are a well established part of starwars they really should have a place in the game.

Wow, I really like the idea of a tractor beam. It could have worked and be an extremely interesting mechanic!

Tractor Beam

(Action)

Force an enemy ship within range 1 to perform a green/white maneuver from its dial that would cause it to overlap your ship. That ship skips its turn during the Activation Phase.

Basically lower-PS ships would do an extra maneuver, higher-PS ships would lose their maneuver.

edit: phrasing

Really hard to do in real life. There would be tons of places where you could not overlap. And would that really feel like a tractor beam and what's the point anyway? That sort of bumping hardly sounds fun. Maybe that's just me...

Ion weapons already have most of the effect of a beam weapon should have - making beam weapons redundant. If we think back on the classic TIE Fighter game, Ion weapons completely froze ships dead and beam weapons restricted movement. In X-wing Miniatures Ion covers the effect of beams without being totally overpowered.

I think it's a fundamentally different mechanic than Ion, at least the way I proposed it. And you're right, it has to be different from Ion.

In my mind this is a mechanic to force your opponent to do something (check), lets you be creative in how you force him (check), provides an advantage from said forcing (check). Basically making him bump skips his action, since that's the only way the ability activates. And there's plenty of opportunity to activate the ability on range 1 ships, unless they're facing away, which I find ok.

Imagine combo-ing with APL, you use tractor beam to nudge his trajectory closer to your small automatic lasers. I find this thematic.

Beam weapons in general ought to be a thing. In addition to tractor beam as I posted above, here's a copypaste:

"Spend a TL during activation" could actually be the general mechanic for beam weapons, with jamming beam like so:

"At the end of the activation phase, if you have a target lock on an enemy ship within [range], you may spend it to remove a blue target lock token from that ship."

Jamming beam would be the low-cost upgrade(2-3), tractor beam mid-cost(4-5), and some sort of damage-beam at high-cost(6, maaaybe 7). Are there starship-scale concussion-beam weapons? I know the LAAT/i has some sort of mini-Death Star beams.

Regardless of fluff, an effect like this could work for the high-cost beam (might be better doing more damage minus the action-loss since that overlaps tractor to some extent. could do it with dice like proxy mine):

"At the start of the activation phase, if you have a target lock on an enemy ship within [range], you may spend it to cause that ship to suffer 1 damage and skip its Perform Action step."

Note that the card text can be shortened by a Beam Weapon reference card, so the upgrade cards would just have a header and the effect, and range could have its own box like secondary weapons (though if they have their own header they wouldn't technically count as secondaries).

So far the only ships with this slot would be the Aggressor, Defender, and maybe Firespray (this /should/ have been the Slave I title). Only one of those ships can mount FCS, and at this stage the Aggressor would need a title to replace a cannon slot, so you'd trade consistent beams for linked abilities.

Vessery would be excellent.

Unfortunately it's too late for anything like this to be implemented neatly.

Maybe there is a Tractor beam upgrade coming and it take up 2 cannon slots to equip?

Tractor beam would have to only work on a ship with no shields and at least 1 damage card... in other words the ship must be damaged sufficiently for the tractor beam to take hold. Basically it should let you lock down your ship to lock down their ship. like in chess, you trade when you are ahead.

I've never really had any interest in tractor beams in this game. Being able to control an opponents ship to that extent seems wrong to me. Maybe something like

"ACTION: You may target lock an enemy ship within your firing arc. That ship may not perform boost or barrel roll actions this turn."

Meh, I don't know. I've seen lots of ideas but they are all either a) overpowered b) underwhelming c) balanced but not worth the points. I feel like most people who want it in the game want it for fluff reasons, not gameplay. I don't feel like there is design space for it, as we already have the Jam Action and Ion Cannons.

How about adds a stress token and turns all green maneuvers white? It kinda seems OP but well, it's a bloody space magic beam for holding something in relative place.

Didn't Fel use his tractor beam to steer his missiles or something like that??

In the Defender? Probably. There's also Corran's use of it to slingshot around a space station in Isard's Revenge.

Being able to directly affect enemy maneuvers is basically uncharted design space, there's SO many interesting things they could do with it that I have to consider the lack of a tractor beam on the Aggressor to be a direct failure rather than any of the less-forgivable choices.

In one of the thrawn books, Luke breaks a tractor beam by firing his proton torpedoes while captured.

Maybe there is a Tractor beam upgrade coming and it take up 2 cannon slots to equip?

Perhaps, or the two cannon slots on the IG-2000 give FFG some wiggle room to possibly come out with a tractor beam type weapon in a later release.

Now I don't see a reason to run two cannons, besides maybe a Mangler and an Ion cannon.

Much like people wanting boarding actions in this game, I have to wonder what possible use a pilot could find for a tractor beam during a dogfight. Seems to me not getting blown up would take precedence over locking one of several enemy ships into place. Tractor beams on Huge ships for scenario play could be interesting, but for standard play I don't see the realism.

Maybe a Tractor Beam cannon upgrade will come out in the future.

Anyone actually see the dual-cannon slots being useful? If it was "buy two cannons get the cheapest free" then fair enough, but would you really pay the full price of an extra cannon just to have a choice of what to attack with? Maybe to stress people with the first attack, then damage them with the second, but not for the full cost of a cannon.

Much like people wanting boarding actions in this game, I have to wonder what possible use a pilot could find for a tractor beam during a dogfight. Seems to me not getting blown up would take precedence over locking one of several enemy ships into place. Tractor beams on Huge ships for scenario play could be interesting, but for standard play I don't see the realism.

You clearly haven't played the X-Wing PC games then, where the Tractor Beam Weapons were installed on TIE Defenders and TIE Avengers...

Maybe a Tractor Beam cannon upgrade will come out in the future.

Anyone actually see the dual-cannon slots being useful? If it was "buy two cannons get the cheapest free" then fair enough, but would you really pay the full price of an extra cannon just to have a choice of what to attack with? Maybe to stress people with the first attack, then damage them with the second, but not for the full cost of a cannon.

On whichever IG-88 has the 'Gunner with Cannons' ability, if you only have a HLC, and make an attack at range 1 that misses, you can't take advantage of his ability unless there's another viable target at range 2-3. But that's about the only situation, currently, where both would be useful. It may be a case of future proofing, or one of the yet to be revealed cards(there's still an EPT unspoiled I believe?) may allow it to come into play.