Tractor Beam (Tie Defender title)

When a maneuver dial is revealed within your front arc at range 2 or less, if you are not stressed, you may take a stress to either give a stress to the revealing ship, or to turn a revealed white maneuver red.

Tractor Beam. Cannon. When you make an attack against an enemy ship in your front arc, if the target is at Range 2 or 3, you may reroll one defensive die. If it is at Range 1, you may reroll up to two defensive dice.

The idea is that it gives you a passive upgrade. It'd be great for those multi-cannon ships, while still useful more generally. It's not a secondary weapon itself.

As for the effect, combat tractor beams on strike craft are generally used to make enemy ships easier to hit, which in this case means you reroll one or two defensive dice, depending on range and other circumstances.

I was aiming more to force the opponent to take a red maneuver on a stressed ship, leting the tractr beam give you direct control over the opposing ship's maneuvers.

A. Why would a tractor beam a ship specific upgrade when lots of ships have them?

B. I think it would make sense if a ship that was tractored could only select green maneuvers from it's dial. This drastically limits a ships ability to maneuver, which is what a starfighter tractor beam is supposed to do.

I was aiming more to force the opponent to take a red maneuver on a stressed ship, leting the tractr beam give you direct control over the opposing ship's maneuvers.

Interesting concept, but . . . well, that's a freakishly easy way to take a high-point ship out of the fight. If you're anywhere even near the board edge, all it takes is one shot. After that, you control where the ship goes, as long as you keep assigning it white maneuvers. Plus, the flavor is a bit weird. Tractor beams are supposed to be available to a wide variety of ships, and they're supposed to pull the other ship toward you, not let you slingshot it around however you want.

I would do something more along the lines of:

Tractor Beam

3 dice, Range 1-2

Attack: Attack 1 ship.

If this attack hits, the defender receives one tractor token and, if it is not stressed, receives one stress token. Then, cancel all dice results.

3 points (?), Cannon slot

Tractor Token Reference Card

Some effects may cause a ship to receive a tractor token. A ship with a tractor token follows special rules for these phases:

• Planning Phase: The owner does not assign a maneuver dial to this ship.
• Activation Phase: The ship performs a white 0 [] maneuver. After executing this maneuver, remove all tractor tokens from the ship. It may perform actions as normal.
• Combat Phase: The ship may attack as normal.

Locks a ship down, but doesn't do damage. Still helps the Defender, with its white K-Turn.

Strike craft tractor beams don't have the power to fling ships around. To do that you'd need a sub-capital ship at the least (a Huge ship, essentially).

Even the Large ships wouldn't really be able to do much more than make the other ship move a bit more sluggishly. From what I understand about the TIE and X-Wing games, that's pretty much how they worked. You use the tractor beam to reduce the ability of the target to evade your fire, most often from slower-moving torpedoes and such.

If you give a tractor beam the ability to change the target's maneuvers, then you should have it change the attacker's maneuvers as well. The relative masses of the two ships are just too similar for anything else.

As for letting you force a red-while-stressed to give you control over the target's dial, that's super OP.

Tractor Beam (cannon or system upgrade, not sure what would work better)

Action:

A target ship in your arc is -2 agility to minimum of 0 till the end of the End phase.

There it's easier to hit and doesn't use any more tokens or steal the thunder from Ions or flatchets.

4 or 5 points?

Tractor Beam (cannon or system upgrade, not sure what would work better)

Action:

A target ship in your arc is -2 agility to minimum of 0 till the end of the End phase.

There it's easier to hit and doesn't use any more tokens or steal the thunder from Ions or flatchets.

4 or 5 points?

I don't really want a tractor beam, but if we got one this would make the most sense I think.

Tractor Beam

5-6points

Cannon Range 1

Attack Value 3

If this attack hits, the defender recieves 1 damage and a Tractor Token. Then Cancel all Dice results

Tractor Token Reference Card

The following steps have to be conducted if:

- a small ship has 2 Tractor Tokens

- a big ship has 3 Tractor Tokens

Planning Phase: The Ship is assigned a manouver dial as normal

Activation Phase: The revealed manouver keeps its bearing but the speed is reduced to 1 even if its not on that ships dial.

After executing this maneuver remove all Tractor Tokens. Boost and Barrel Roll actions are prohibited this turn

Combat Phase: The ship may attack as normal

I would make it a mod.

At the beginning of the activation phase (same timing as cloak incidentally), if you are not stressed you may receive a stress token to give a ship inside your firing arc and at range 1-2 a stress token.

Or maybe instead of stress, the target performs a 0 maneuver of the same color as the maneuver on the dial that the ago would have made.

Tractor Beam. Modification. 2 points. TIE Defender only.

Adds the Tractor beam icon to your action bar.

Tractor beam reference card:

Select any small base ship in your forward arc at range 1-2. The targeted ship must perform a barrel roll or boost using the one straight template in a direction of your choosing.

This action may be performed on vessels even if they do not have the boost our barrel roll icon.

The idea here is to good the defender something to differentiate it as an elite fighter worth taking vs the buffed TIE Advanced. It's a modification so that the defender can take it's book canon armament of missiles, tractor beam and ion cannon all at once.

I think this'd be pretty dammed cool. Flying around, moving your friendly ships out of danger, screwing up enemy manoeuvres, forcing them to crash, or putting them into friendly firing arcs. It'd make the defender the be phantom in terms of hated ships, but maybe that's what it ought to be.

I was aiming more to force the opponent to take a red maneuver on a stressed ship, leting the tractr beam give you direct control over the opposing ship's maneuvers.

Interesting concept, but . . . well, that's a freakishly easy way to take a high-point ship out of the fight. If you're anywhere even near the board edge, all it takes is one shot. After that, you control where the ship goes, as long as you keep assigning it white maneuvers. Plus, the flavor is a bit weird. Tractor beams are supposed to be available to a wide variety of ships, and they're supposed to pull the other ship toward you, not let you slingshot it around however you want.

I would do something more along the lines of:

Tractor Beam

3 dice, Range 1-2

Attack: Attack 1 ship.

If this attack hits, the defender receives one tractor token and, if it is not stressed, receives one stress token. Then, cancel all dice results.

3 points (?), Cannon slot

Tractor Token Reference Card

Some effects may cause a ship to receive a tractor token. A ship with a tractor token follows special rules for these phases:

• Planning Phase: The owner does not assign a maneuver dial to this ship.
• Activation Phase: The ship performs a white 0 [] maneuver. After executing this maneuver, remove all tractor tokens from the ship. It may perform actions as normal.
• Combat Phase: The ship may attack as normal.

Locks a ship down, but doesn't do damage. Still helps the Defender, with its white K-Turn.

These rules are pretty much what I have for tractor beams in the X-Wing RPG I'm developing, with the slight restrictions of being Range 1 only, and requiring a Cannon slot to fit one to a ship. My rules are below:

Tractor Beam – 3 Dice Attack, Range 1. If the defender is hit by this attack, cancel all dice results and the defender receives a stress token and does not place a maneuver dial next turn.

I like how explicit your rules are as they seem to have taken into account any issues that might arise in terms of clarity.

Tractor Beam (cannon or system upgrade, not sure what would work better)

Action:

A target ship in your arc is -2 agility to minimum of 0 till the end of the End phase.

There it's easier to hit and doesn't use any more tokens or steal the thunder from Ions or flatchets.

4 or 5 points?

This is the most like what I'd think it should do.

Some sort of penalty to the target ship's agility although I think -2 is pretty significant. Compare to Expose which gives the ship using it +1 Attack (slightly more valuable that -1 on the target's agility but probably less than -2) but ONLY for that ship and the ship also suffers -1 agility to use it; this for the cost of 4 points. Outmaneuver is 3 points and -1 agility for the firing ship and it requires you to be outside the target's arc.

At 5 points just having the target be at -1 agility (although stacking could be a possibility) would be pretty strong assuming the squad has more than one ship to shoot at the target.

I like a lot of the ideas already in this thread so I would be happy with any of them, but just trying to think outside the box here are 2 ideas.

Tractor Beam

Modification 4pts

Tie Defender Only

When attacking a ship at Range 1-2, if the attack hits you may assign one Tractor Token to the defending ship.

OR an alternate ability, same cost.

At the start of the combat phase, you may spend a red target lock token to assign the targeted ship a Tractor Token.

Tractor Token Reference Card

• Planning Phase: A ship with a Tractor Token may only select 1 or 2 speed maneuvers and may only select straight or bank maneuvers when setting its dial.
• Activation Phase: Ships with a Tractor Token may not perform Boost, Barrel Roll, or Decloak actions. All Tractor Tokens are removed at the end of the activation phase.
• Combat Phase: Ships with a Tractor Token may not spend focus or evade tokens. Ships with Tractor Tokens may attack as normal.

Tractor Beam. Cannon. When you make an attack against an enemy ship in your front arc, if the target is at Range 2 or 3, you may reroll one defensive die. If it is at Range 1, you may reroll up to two defensive dice.

The idea is that it gives you a passive upgrade. It'd be great for those multi-cannon ships, while still useful more generally. It's not a secondary weapon itself.

As for the effect, combat tractor beams on strike craft are generally used to make enemy ships easier to hit, which in this case means you reroll one or two defensive dice, depending on range and other circumstances.

Thats actually pretty good. And this represents exactly what the tractor beams on fighters were made for: to decrease the ability to evade shots.

But I would not use the cannon slot for it. I'd use a title.

And I'd change it that way that you must be outside of the defenders arc. Because you need to approach from behind to use your tractor beam.

If interested: Here a thread I opened some time ago concerning tractor beam. It went more in direction of "pulling each other"

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/134800-tractor-beam-suggestion-please-ffg-we-want-it-at-all-costs/

A. Why would a tractor beam a ship specific upgrade when lots of ships have them?

Lots of ships have them yes, but not lots of Snubfighter sized ships. Of those the TIE Defender and maybe TIE Avenger would be the only ones. Of course some of the large ships are supposed to have them too (basically all of the Bounty Hunter ones, so IG2000s Firesprays, the Hound's Tooth, I think even in some of the EU books the Falcon has one and Lambdas do) but right now based on the "meta" the TIE Defender needs some love not Falcons, or Large Based Scum Ships

A. Why would a tractor beam a ship specific upgrade when lots of ships have them?

Lots of ships have them yes, but not lots of Snubfighter sized ships. Of those the TIE Defender and maybe TIE Avenger would be the only ones. Of course some of the large ships are supposed to have them too (basically all of the Bounty Hunter ones, so IG2000s Firesprays, the Hound's Tooth, I think even in some of the EU books the Falcon has one and Lambdas do) but right now based on the "meta" the TIE Defender needs some love not Falcons, or Large Based Scum Ships

ahem *missile boat* ahem

When Han is closing in on the lone TIE sentry ship before encountering the Death Star, was he trying to blast the TIE from the cockpit controls, or was he trying to snag it in a tractor beam?

A. Why would a tractor beam a ship specific upgrade when lots of ships have them?

Lots of ships have them yes, but not lots of Snubfighter sized ships. Of those the TIE Defender and maybe TIE Avenger would be the only ones. Of course some of the large ships are supposed to have them too (basically all of the Bounty Hunter ones, so IG2000s Firesprays, the Hound's Tooth, I think even in some of the EU books the Falcon has one and Lambdas do) but right now based on the "meta" the TIE Defender needs some love not Falcons, or Large Based Scum Ships

ahem *missile boat* ahem

When Han is closing in on the lone TIE sentry ship before encountering the Death Star, was he trying to blast the TIE from the cockpit controls, or was he trying to snag it in a tractor beam?

Pretty Sure he was trying to blast it. (Han Shoots First after all) I don't believe it is ever mentioned in anything related to the movies I am pretty sure I just remember reading it in the EU (Maybe in the Thrawn Trilogy somewhere, or the Jedi Academy Trilogy)

Gonna say it. There is no reason to have the tractor beam in X-wing. It a dogfighting game.

Why would you spend turn after turn tractor beaming another ship to stack tokens on it to mess with their maneuvering instead of just shooting the ship to destoy it?

Another concept above has wording that says when attacking, you my reroll defense die(based on range). Skip the part about rolling attack dice not defense dice when attacking, but can I assume you mean the tractor beam in this case is forcing(because when would you not with the "you MAY reroll") your opponent to reroll up to 2 of his defense dice while you get to reroll(in theory with TL, EPT, etc..) up to all of your attack dice?

There are Ion effects in the game that drastically alter a ship's maneuvering and cause a damage to boot. There's also Stress which I would think most people would be more apt to believe as a tractor beam's effect as the target struggles to break away.

Don't mean to be a Debbie Downer on this but what's proposed here is done better with what's in the game already. House rule and homemade it all you want but until boarding actions between ships happens, there's no point in tractor beaming in the current game that I can see.

Tractor beam (system)

Action: You may target one ship in your arc range 1-2 to recieve 1 stress and one ion. You may not make any attacks this round.

Maybe. It's closer. Maybe just two stess and no ion.

In the games the tractor beam really sucked a lot of your ship's power to use, especially the longer it was on.

So here's my idea.

Tractor Beam - (cannon maybe?)

Cost - ??

Target Lock: Discard target lock and Attack a ship at range 1-3 with 3 attack dice. If it hits, cancel all dice and assign a tractor beam token and reduce your ship's attack and agilty values by 1 to a minimum of 0 until the token is removed. You may spend an action to remove the token.

For the ship with the token, treat all moves as 2 less ( to a minimum of 1). You may spend an action to try removing the token by rolling a hit.