So, can you explain the physics of how a tractor beam works in a small ship or are you just going off what the movies show?

My point is, this upgrade is a device to add a level of game play to a game. Having it so it stops a ship dead for it's next turn is crazy broken AF. You could literally keep a ship on an asteroid whilst your turreted ships kill it dead, without any recourse. Sound like a fun game idea to you? I don't think so either.

4 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

Pretty sure it only explodes once.

Or are you saying a projectile has to explode to do damage in the first place?

If the first one isn't an explosion why does it do the same sort of damage as a concussion missile?

On 2/18/2018 at 8:46 PM, Cloaker said:

"(in science fiction) a hypothetical beam of energy that can be used to move objects such as space ships or hold them stationary."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractor_beam

Should be able to assign a zero manuever next turn, or rear 1 straight / banks maneuvers if the ship is in your arc. I'm just saying.

This game is based on the X-wing PC game series, as well as on other Star Wars games (Galaxies, Starfighter, Rogue Squadron series, etc) and sources.
Because of that, this game feels compelled to import mechanics that were present in its sources to have them represented here, so that we can see our ships do something similar as they used to do in the lore.

The problem with that is that you cannot just directly translate the effects of those mechanics to this game and be done with it. @Archangelspiv says exactly why:

6 hours ago, Archangelspiv said:

You could literally keep a ship on an asteroid whilst your turreted ships kill it dead, without any recourse. Sound like a fun game idea to you? I don't think so either.

This game is about 4 things:

1. Selecting maneuvers
2. Performing actions after moving
3. Attacking other ships

If you remove any of those three legs , the game feels unbalanced, boring, or just not fun.
Precisely, some mechanics in those games affected the mobility, navigation or attacks of the target ships. So how can you import those mechanics without ruining this game?

I will list here what the mechanics used to do in those games, and how a literal translation of them could have been in this game:

Ions

• Original Effects : When an ion bolt hit shields, it just weakened the shield as normal lasers usually do. But when they hit hull, they instantly disabled some of the internal components on the ship, without actually damaging the hull. With enough components disabled, the ship would just lie dead in space.
• Literal Translation : "Attack one ship. If this attack hits, for each hit or crit result not cancelled by shield tokens the defender must discard an upgrade card. If he cannot discard any upgrade card, the defender no longer gets assigned dials, or gets active during the activation or combat phases."
• Problems : This mechanic is very unbalanced. And more so during the first waves of this game where Rebels had lots of shields and Empire barely had ships with shields.
  In any case, you win in this game by destroying ships, not by disabling them. In those games, there were scenarios where you had to capture ships without destroying them. That would only work here in cinematic missions. But again, it wouldn't be much fun that a player gets its high hull, low shield ships totally unplayable because of ion weapons discarding all its critical upgrades.

Tractor beam

• Original Effects : A starfighter could equip a tractor beam that, when used, would slowly deplete its stored energy to project a straight line forward. Any other ship that crossed that line would immediately lose all maneuverability, and limit itself to fly at its current speed and direction until it left the tractor beam "line".
• Literal Translation : A Dual Card with
  Tractor Beam Active "During the Activation phase, when an enemy ship overlaps your Bullseye arc at range 1-3 (either before moving or during movement), it completes the rest of its movement performing a 2 speed white straight maneuver. It cannot perform boosts or barrel rolls, or roll evade dice. At the end of the Combat phase you must flip this card over."
  Tractor Beam Recharging "At the end of the Combat phase you may flip this card over."
• Problems : This allows you to still attack with your normal weapons in the same round, and you don't need to perform an attack and hit to get it to work. Just make the other ship cross your beam.
  This has lots of problems because you remove so many options from the other player that it breaks the game. The other player doesn't get to perform their move, they won't be probably able to attack unless they have a turret, and makes them a sitting duck for your attacks because they cannot evade at all. No boost or barrel roll will make the player basically do nothing. This mechanic made sense in the original games were the player had to face tens and tens of enemy TIE Defenders all converging on him, so it was a superweapon meant to allow the player to survive those odds.

Jamming beam

• Original Effects : A starfighter could equip a jamming beam that, when used, would slowly deplete its stored energy to project a straight line forward. Any other ship that crossed that line would immediately lose all ability to fire its weapon systems.
• Literal Translation : A Dual Card with
  Jamming Beam Active : "When a ship activates during the combat phase, if it is inside your Bullseye arc at range 1-3, immediately assign a weapons disabled token to that ship. At the end of the Combat phase you must flip this card over."
  Jamming Beam Recharging . "At the end of the Combat phase you may flip this card over."
• Problems : Way too strong. Just face an enemy and that enemy cannot attack this round. And this works during alternate rounds, so you can coordinate two ships to alternatively prevent half of the opponent's squad from attacking. This even works (and used to work in the original games) against bigger ships like corvettes. The squad equipping Jamming beams would totally massacre the opponent without being shot back. Soon everyone would equip jamming beams and nobody would be able to attack anyone for a good part of the match. Boring.

Decoy beam

• Original Effects : In the originals a ship that equipped this could activate it, and while it was active, it became invisible to the sensors of other ships (but not to visual detection, of course). All homing warheads would stop homing at this ship as long as the Decoy beam was active. As with the other beams, it had to be recharged. But unlike the other beams, it didn't project any line or had to target any ship. It affected all other ships in the vicinity. So it was a bit weird that its name included the word "Beam" at all.
• Literal Translation : A Dual Card with
  Decoy Beam Active : "Discard all red target lock tokens. Whenever you are assigned a red target lock token, immediately discard it. At the end of the Combat phase, flip this card over."
  Decoy Beam Recharging : "At the end of the Combat phase you may flip this card over"
• Problems : This is like the love child of Black One with Countermeasures , on steroids. This would potentially make a ship immune to [Attack: Target Lock] attacks every other round. It feels too much like a hard counter to ordnance. Even when I think this could exist in this game with this text, I don't think the developers are interested on introducing ultradefensive upgrades that make games longer.

I think the developers try to bring as many aspects from the lore as they can to this game, but they need to adapt them, often totally changing them, taking in consideration that the focus of this game is quite different from those games, and also ensuring that this game remains balanced and fun.

9 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

If the first one isn't an explosion why does it do the same sort of damage as a concussion missile?

Because Accuracy and Damage are the same thing in X-Wing?

Also, it does the same sort of damage as a Heavy Laser or a Single Turbolaser.

53 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

Because Accuracy and Damage are the same thing in X-Wing?

Also, it does the same sort of damage as a Heavy Laser or a Single Turbolaser.

Which is a lot for a non-exploding missile.

Accuracy and damage don't have to be the same thing. That's exactly the point. If it was 4 attack dice, one damage and condition then cancel all dice, then it owuld be low damage and the condition, but still high accuracy.

You have no idea if it's a lot of damage or not. You just think it is. 4 dice is a real standard number though, we've been throwing it from day 1 - just get an X-Wing in R1 of the target. Also physical impact can be a very effective form of damage, especially given the harpoon is supposed to stick in the target. But, now we're arguing about nonsense there, so no point in it. SW is not real life physics, which works both ways (Because everybody should be using giant mass drivers and BVR missiles, but that's not entertaining).

More relevant, I think the idea is to front-load the actual damage part of the missile. They could, for instance have flipped it, it deals one little hull damage on a hit then later explodes for more random damage. But, this would make the missile less consistent on the back end, make you involve busting out probably attack dice for something which is not technically an attack, etc. However, since you want to inflict that big damage faster to make the game shorter and hit your goal, the missile is much more appealing and useful as something which can hit as hard as any given attack right away, and also lingers for that splash damage potential later.

I do. COmparison.

It's about the same damage as a concussion missile, and better than a Plasma Torpedo. It's about the same damage as a heavy laser cannon.

That's a lot of damage, considering that those are some of the most damaging weapons in the game, absent pilot abilities.

Compare an Ion Pulse Missile, which does a small amount of damage. The smallest possible, in fact, without doing none at all. Or a Scrambler Missile, which actually DOES do none at all.

Ah, but that's all a matter of perspective though, isn't it?

You see 4 dice and think of "potent" secondary weapons. I see 4 dice, and just as much think of as a pretty normal number of dice for almost any offensive focused ship to roll, in the right ranges.

Harpoon Missile goal is still to inflict damage, just also do some of it later. In this case, I don't think you want to beat around the bush too much about inflicting damage. Rando-damage is why bombs were pretty bad for a long time. Just deal damage like normal and get the trigger in for the conditional damage later. Ion and Jamming weapons primary intent is to get your ion or jam effect on there and the Jamming weapons aren't very popular because they do deal no damage (and Jamming Beam has a bit of a range limitation).

Also hey, as a follow up, it makes perfect sense they're similar to Concussion missiles. In space anyway, a concussion missile would be pretty weak, because there's no medium to compress into a shockwave. Well funny enough, the legends description of a Conc Missile is that it has an armor piercing tip - it penetrates the hull then directs it's blast inside.

In a universe with artificial gravity and repulsor technology, Concussion Missiles could very easily work similar to concussion weapons in atmosphere. One of my favorite ideas for a missile was one that hit and forced a BR on every target within R1.