My preference would be something like:

"If you have a tractor beam token, you are unable to perform actions on your action bar.
You gain Action: Remove all tractor beam tokens from your ship."

This would be powerful (since it sets up a second ship to attack an unfocused opponent), but still allows for things like PTL to get some utility. It would work as a fix to the Defender and Syck - especially the Defender as denying the enemy a focus and taking a focus yourself is similar to having two versus one focus, one on one, which helps the Defender's terrible action economy.

When I saw the pursuit scenario in the Raider, I was afraid that reducing the speed of the manoeuvre could be the rules. This does match up to the depictions in the Tie Fighter PC game quite well, but I don't think it would be terribly powerful, even if it forces your move to be speed 1 ("trapping you in place", sort of).

My preference would be something like:

"If you have a tractor beam token, you are unable to perform actions on your action bar.

You gain Action: Remove all tractor beam tokens from your ship."

This would be powerful (since it sets up a second ship to attack an unfocused opponent), but still allows for things like PTL to get some utility. It would work as a fix to the Defender and Syck - especially the Defender as denying the enemy a focus and taking a focus yourself is similar to having two versus one focus, one on one, which helps the Defender's terrible action economy.

When I saw the pursuit scenario in the Raider, I was afraid that reducing the speed of the manoeuvre could be the rules. This does match up to the depictions in the Tie Fighter PC game quite well, but I don't think it would be terribly powerful, even if it forces your move to be speed 1 ("trapping you in place", sort of).

The tractor beam token is almost guaranteed to only last one turn. If tokens are not automatically removed, FFG would include more in the box. 2 tokens, 2 tractor beam cards. Tokens cannot remain for more than a turn.

Y-wings came with three ion tokens and B-wings came with 5 ion tokens! Since Mist Hunter only comes with 2 tractor tokens they will automatically get removed before the next combat phase. I could be wrong of course but it seems almost certain.

That's plausible, so "skip your action phase and remove all tractor beam tokens" - that's essentially the same thing, but a little more powerful.

Still, restoring some of the action economy to the Defender seems like a thing, and the Syck's always seemed like it's role is a one-of control cannon in a midrange scum list, but there hasn't been a cannon with enough of a point behind it - making a ship focusless definitely seems like something a Syck would be useful for.

I'd much rather have that than "Ion cannon lite" positional cannon.

Just a few of my ideas:

- No manuever faster than 2. Only straights and banks.

- Reduces agility by one

- All hard turns and K-Turns become red manuevers

- Copy the maneuver of the tractoring ship

- Make a straight manouver the same speed as the tractoring ship

- Every manuever becomes red

In every case the token is cleared at the beginning of the next turn.

- Every manuever becomes red

That would setup an impossible condition for a ship that has stress.

"If a ship already has a stress token assigned to it and it reveals a red maneuver during the Activation phase, the opposing player chooses any non-red maneuver on that ship’s dial for the ship to execute."

There is no legal move that their opponent could pick since everything is red.

That would setup an impossible condition for a ship that has stress.

There is no legal move that their opponent could pick since everything is red.

Unless the tractor rules cover that contingency.

I don't think that the tractor beam will prevent actions. Stress already does that, so creating another mechanic that also prevents actions is redundant. Ditto for locking the ship into a specific move the following round. Doing so would duplicate the ion effect.

Given that, thematically, tractor beams restrict movement, I'm with those who think that it will lower agility or increase the difficulty of maneuvers. While I don't see it making all maneuvers red, making whites into reds and greens into whites is a possibility.

I don't think that the tractor beam will prevent actions. Stress already does that, so creating another mechanic that also prevents actions is redundant. Ditto for locking the ship into a specific move the following round. Doing so would duplicate the ion effect.

Given that, thematically, tractor beams restrict movement, I'm with those who think that it will lower agility or increase the difficulty of maneuvers. While I don't see it making all maneuvers red, making whites into reds and greens into whites is a possibility.

I think that the beauty of that is that the tractor beam by itself is only annoying, the tractor beam with a way to put stress on a target is day-ruining.

Just a few of my ideas:

- No manuever faster than 2. Only straights and banks.

I was thinking of this one but with a twist.

When you have a tractor beam token assigned to you, at the start of the planning phase, your oppenent sets the dial of the affected ship but may only choose from your ship's legal speed 1 or 2 straights and banks. Then continue with the planning phase setting remaining dials as normal. Ships with tractor beam tokens may not perform boost or barrel roll actions. At the beginnig of the combat phase, remove all tractor tokens.

It just seems that if you are giving up damaging a ship during the previous combat phase, you ought to be able to put that guy where you can pound on him the next round.

I don't think that the tractor beam will prevent actions. Stress already does that, so creating another mechanic that also prevents actions is redundant. Ditto for locking the ship into a specific move the following round. Doing so would duplicate the ion effect.

Given that, thematically, tractor beams restrict movement, I'm with those who think that it will lower agility or increase the difficulty of maneuvers. While I don't see it making all maneuvers red, making whites into reds and greens into whites is a possibility.

Of course, with the way the timing of the rules work, stress doesn't prevent actions, it actually restricts movement (since you can't make a red move, and ideally you'd like to make a green one, to clear stress and get your action that turn).

Also, reducing agility would have the same game effect as denying focus - your control cannon would be "marking" a target to make it easier for that ship (or your other ships) to kill it.

Of course, this is just speculation. You're quite right about the movement though - it wouldn't make sense if this was something like "add two ion tokens, then cancel all die results", or an effect of the same basic end result.

Edit: No focus makes Zuckuss' ability look a lot stronger to me too...

Hopefully it is something useful for the Tie-Defender

I imagined something like, a ship with a tractor beam token on it has the dial set to a green maneuver by the opponent. But that might be a bit much. What if it forced the ship to make a green maneuver towards the ship giving out the tokens?

Actually the idea of making all maneuvers red ones is an interesting idea there, RL

I think its going to lower agility and maybe restrict movement. We really already have a weapon that restricts movement in the Ion Cannon. I think it will be an overall debuff to the target.

A ship with at least one tractor beam token assigned to it follows special rules during these phases...

Seeing how FFG has declared war on large ships with turret and Engine Upgrade that have been dominating the meta lately (with Deathrain, conner nets, twin laser turrets, etc), I think the Tractor Beam token will go in the same direction.

So far, they have dealt with the unfairly good dials these ships have with the ionizing and action preventing of ion bombs and conner nets, droppable under them before they even activate by lower PS pilots. They have dealt with their nature of low agility/high mitigation with the twin laser turrets, advanced homing missiles, and plasma torpedos. Now it comes the turn for their turret+arc-dodger repositional abilities that Engine Upgrade/Barrel Roll + their large base give them.

As such, the tractor beam token should prevent them from boosting, barrel rolling or whatever new future action that allows for ship repositioning by performing an action, while still allowing Focus, Target Lock, Evade or other actions that don't.

Perhaps, also to go on with the lore and accounting that to land a tractor beam token the enemy ship needs to hit an attack and it deals no damage at all, it might increase the difficulty of all maneuvers that aren't straight from green to white, from white to red, and from red to disallowed.

Alternatively, and going on with what Han Solo mentions when they are tractored into the Death Star in the Episode IV novel, it could be that all maneuvers that aren't straight are still allowed, but in case of performing them, the ship could suffer damage. Let's say 1 red dice for greens, 2 red dice for whites and 3 red dice for reds.

"...when you have a tractor beam token: you can only make green maneuvers - after the green maneuver, clear the token..."

Ion already provides the game with a movement impairment option, and it does so better than 'reduce speed by 1' or something similar.

Stress already gives the game an option to prevent actions, so that option is already done as well.

Tractor beam needs to be sufficiently different from those 2 effects to give it a unique identity as well as not being strictly better or worse than one of those options.

What that would be, no idea, still thinking...

Ion already provides the game with a movement impairment option, and it does so better than 'reduce speed by 1' or something similar.

Stress already gives the game an option to prevent actions, so that option is already done as well.

Tractor beam needs to be sufficiently different from those 2 effects to give it a unique identity as well as not being strictly better or worse than one of those options.

What that would be, no idea, still thinking...

Connornet combines existing debuffs in a single token. So it's not out of the question that tractorbeam makes some combination of movement impairment and action-denial.

But we shall see... I hope FFG wil put up an article soon

Ion already provides the game with a movement impairment option, and it does so better than 'reduce speed by 1' or something similar.

It also costs more than the Tractor Beam. So...

Could just be that if you manage to stack 2 tokens on a ship you can move it directly towards the attacker or something.

Since tractor beam can both pull, hold and push ships as i recall my guess:

"When a ship with tractor beam token reveals its dial owner of the token may increase or decrease its speed by 1".

That way we have movement inpairment and we avoid the problem with "i know im gonna be decreased".

I just wonder what they are trying to achieve with tractor beams. There are plenty of counters against all archetypes In the game now, I can't think of any specific one that needs more counters.

I can imagine this will be aimed at Flankers and arc dodgers, but aren't there're already enough counters to those?we even just got conner nets and a new turret, new mines and bombs and whatnot...all that Flankers don't want to see.

We shall see.

Okay so limiting to green maneuvers is too close to stress for me to believe that. We already have a cannon that does that.

Changing a move is too similar to ion and we already have a cannon that does that.

My vote goes to action denial, as that seems to be a thing this wave.

A scary one could be that the ship doesn't assign any dial, performs a straight move of the same speed than the last maneuver in its dial, and skips its perform action step.

With asteroids and board egdes close, a fast ship could really get itself into trouble, maybe conditioning the player to what maneuvers to do in case his ship is tractored this round. It would be a way of control by fear.

No barrel roll or boost makes a lot of sense if it comes with some sort of maneuver restriction as well.