I've played Colony Wars, CW: Vengence, and CW 3: Red Sun.

I like the idea of the tow cable but also a EMP Missile tube could be made that a player could use to fire an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) Missile at another craft to knock out the electronics package on the target ship.

And for that matter, there could also be an EMP CounterMeasures package that would help dissipate the EMP blast or could drop Flares and Chaff to foil the incoming missile into detontating early?

[SDF] Black 1
CO, SDF

Any one here ever played 'Colony Wars' on the PS ?
I seem to remember it had a tow / capture line so in a dogfight you could grab your enemy to prevent them boosting away then recover the ship once you had blown the crap out of it.

Minimus

I like the way you think, KAos. How would the towing system work?

That's a good thought... kill player, keep ship. I don't believe I've seen it before, but it is the correct idea. Good!

For towing system: how about a large ship which looks somewhat like a docking bay from the s9 station with a cockpit on top and engines on the back. You need to fly this ship so that the target ship is inside the "docking bay", at which time clamps extend and hold the target ship in place. You then fly your "towing ship" back to a base and fly into a larger docking bay than we currently have.

It has been discussed before at length, but no reason not to reprise it now.

i remember posting to this thread... was it that inflammatory?

never mind the above post, i was in error.
about the ion gun thingy: it sounds highly improbable that you kill a pilot with a puny gun. i mean, if the cockpit has holes (you need that to shoot through, no way you can penetrate cockpit shielding with an ion gun) the pilot is dead anyway.
why not have it shoot some virus software that initiates the escape pod launching subroutines?

i was thinking for the tow system could like be a trator beam, just a simple particle line and you could drag ships to stations and stuff.

When your towing your boost is off and you move bout 3/4 of normal speed including turning

I like this idea. It solves the "disabled but no one finds you" and "We want disableable ships!" things.

you could have like a trator beam weapon in the large port, and only then you could tow people.

This would make people work together to pirate ships image like 3 valks and a prom attackin you then dragging your ship bakc and selling it..... cool!

KAos_nyrb, unless it is your ship that is being towd away and sold... anyway I get the idea, it would be cool.

[hmmm, konqueror coused a double post.. bad konqueror!]

So... like a fiber line between ships, kind of like those Roman naval devices that allowed soldiers to cross? I like it!

Actually, what I'd like is if it would disable weapons and boost. I'd love to drag a Valk kicking and screaming into port behind my Prom.

wouldn't it be cool if there was an ion cannon or something, that you could use when your oppenent was very low on health it would disable the craft and kill the player BUT the ship would remain and you could tow it back to a station then sell the components on it!

Would be hard to do, but cool

*bump*

[Edit: redundant]

towing could be done if they make equipment ports and energy generators. A tractor beam (TB) could fit to an equipment port but take up all usable energy so you could not turbo or warp while towing the ship.

"...so you could not turbo or warp while towing the ship."
Not warp! Great!
That solves alot of coding issues with this idea and it keeps people from pirating you for your ship in sectors with no station.

How about this: If you get blown away your ship becomes a huge "towable cargo" called "Damaged Marauder" or "Severely damaged Valkyre"?
You can tow it back to base and fix it for 10.000c or you can just sell it for 4.000c in scrap metal.

This will potentially create alot of debris when there is a war, but that can be solved with them breaking up into peices and going away after only a couple of minutes if they are not attached to a towing "rope".
Ever played "astroids"?
The ship-size scrap breaks in two (less worth, easier to tow), then those break into two (alot less worth, no impact on ship speed or manuverability), and finally those break up (total of 8 peices) that are worth nothing and become dust if attached to a tow-line.

Also the wreakage should be targetable and destroyable.
"OH NO you filthy pirate, you are NOT selling my ship for scrap!"
*Blow away old ship currently being towed*

Also, towing should draw not only all energy from the ship but also disable something else, like radar or something, so that the tower would be insane to work alone.
Then you can knock out the supporting ship and the tower would have to disengage the "rope", causing the ship to disintergrate as described above.

One more idea: Attatching a towline to a non-disabled ship would cause damage to the towing line (eventually yanking the cable out?) and the would-be tower needs repairs to get it working 100% again or a new towing module.

A damaged towing module would still fire, not as fast and will impact handling more. "Tractor beam calibration error from attemting to tow a moving object"

The more a towed ship "outranks" you in power (heavy engines vs. medium engines) the more damage.

Another one: Attaching a towline to a roid would bring you withing 1mm from the roid, merging your radar signature with it!
(Moving in this state would be impossible, ofcourse.

Sounds nice, but when does a ship just blows up, or becomes a ¨damaged¨ ship? Couse if you blow a ship up, the splash will also affect the ¨towable cargo¨ right?

So: ships could only become ¨severly damaged¨ if they last HP that coused the ship to be ¨destroyed¨ was done by an energy weapon :)

I'm thinking maybe when the ship has <10hp left it's "destroyed" (the player is teleported home) but dosn't blow up.
(like in the thread-starting post)
Then it would require skill to take it out (disable) without blowing it up.