A Tractor Beam replacement where the cargo does not move like the tail of a rabid mad cow.
Required equipment: Tractor Beam (who would have guessed?)
X3 v2.5 recommended (smoother result) but not required.
The target is always the current target of your ship.
You can however order another ship to tow this target.
Every object you can target from your ship can be towed.
Catch an UFO, create a zoo of space flies...
Don't like the position of the Goner Temple? Change it...
A Jumpdrive can be used when towing ships or asteroids. Yes, the cargo will jump with your ship.
Every sector costs Energy Cells, even if you used a jump gate. (not recommended with a 4km asteroid in tow)
If your tow ship does not have enough EC a log book message will tell you how much it would have needed.
The smaller your tug is compared to the cargo, the higher the cost in EC.
Any ship with laser or turret capability and a tractor beam on board qualifies.
I never saw the reasoning behind only letting military ships tow stuff.
Your car breaks down. Do you call a tow truck or a battle tank?
Firing any laser disengages the Tractor Beam.
Executing the menu command again disengages the Tractor Beam.
If the tow ship is in the same sector as the towee it will fly to this target and leash it. That is all the navigation this script will do.
After the cargo is on the hook you may issue any nav command you want.
The alignment of the cargo is exactly the same as the tow ship. You can move and rotate a station as accurately as you can move or rotate a ship.
The freight is towed with 1km distance to the ship.
The tow ship is completely safe from the cargo. The rest of the sector is not.
Last edited by Gazz on Thu, 29. May 08, 20:00, edited 11 times in total.
My complete script download page. . . . . . I AM THE LAW!
There is no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
I'm trying to use this to tow my ore mines but I keep getting betty on the horn saying "malfunction" when i turn it on or when i try to jump (assuming i didn't get the message turning it on).
Malfunction means the TB was disengaged without your explicit order (command menu).
If it breaks according to the rules outlined in the first post, that's normal. For part of your explanation that holds true but the rest is too vague to tell anything.
My complete script download page. . . . . . I AM THE LAW!
There is no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
Ok, if i give it to my osprey and tell him to tow a mine, it says malfunction...no matter what, if i get him close, or far, whatever. With me I install it, or run it in commands, sometimes it says malfunction, but usually not...then I try to connect to something, no problem, but I thought you said you could jump with this new TB? When i try to jump (either the standard way or with jump to position) I end up in the new sector and it says malfunction and the mine stays where it was.
build it myself wrote:ok, so is there a way to get my silicon mine from antigoni's memorial to presidents end?
There is no easy way to do that, even with scripts.
Stations do not change sectors.
Scripts can't even create mines with varying asteroid yields so your best workaround would be to create an asteroid in the target sector and manually build a mine. Then destroy the old mine.
My complete script download page. . . . . . I AM THE LAW!
There is no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
build it myself wrote:ok, so is there a way to get my silicon mine from antigoni's memorial to presidents end?
There is no easy way to do that, even with scripts.
Stations do not change sectors.
Scripts can't even create mines with varying asteroid yields so your best workaround would be to create an asteroid in the target sector and manually build a mine. Then destroy the old mine.
still feels like cheating...thanks though.
oh, and btw, I saw the packup asteroids script, but the mine is already there...
In fact, I think I will enable jumping with towed asteroids with this script.
Asteroids are extremely simple objects and a mock jump is very easy to do.
Most likely this kinda overload is going to fry the jumpdrive but it would be a way to use the asteroids from Khaak and Xenon sectors without having to constantly clear them...
My complete script download page. . . . . . I AM THE LAW!
There is no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
Gazz wrote:In fact, I think I will enable jumping with towed asteroids with this script.
Would a penalty of three or four times the energy normally required to jump, be something to consider, so the player can not jump something this big for nothing.
Terre wrote:Would a penalty of three or four times the energy normally required to jump, be something to consider, so the player can not jump something this big for nothing.
Nah, I wouldn't consider that.
The energy consumption will be 20x of normal and that's very generous already.
The biggest ships have about 0.25 km^3 of volume while an asteroid is 37 km^3 of more or less solid rock...
That's a factor of 1:150, not just 1:20. =)
My complete script download page. . . . . . I AM THE LAW!
There is no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
But I think the "towing-jumpdrive" (it sounds good as a trademark) it's a bit... Excessive... The risk is to ruin the experience of towing, using the above expression, "the" M7...
Is there a version that doesn't include this feature?
Now ships and asteroids can be towed through hyperspace.
This costs some (in some cases a lot =) EC but I decided against an EC cost for towing in sector.
Also added in 1.0: Players are no longer forced to order a towing ship to jump! =P
My complete script download page. . . . . . I AM THE LAW!
There is no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
Script detects if the user overwrites a library with an old version.
Version 1.05 released.
Works with X3 versions before 2.5 now although 2.5 gives a smother towing result.
My complete script download page. . . . . . I AM THE LAW!
There is no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
Bugfix.
After jumping with an asteroid it got bugged and would cause a crash when building a mine.
If you have such a bugged asteroid: jump it again with this version.
That will fix it up.
My complete script download page. . . . . . I AM THE LAW!
There is no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
i can't get this one to move asteroids between sectors =S
i let my Orca execute the tractor beam command on the ore mine, the ore mine can be tugged, then tell it to jump and fly to Pos (so i don't stay too long at the gate), but after i jump, i get the malfunction message, and my mine is still left at the start sector. 10000 energy cells should be enough to get an ore mine from Ore Belt to Family Zein (240 ECsx20 = 4800 ECs).
can anyone give me any advice on this?
thanks
edit: as stated in the creator's post, it tugs ships and asteroids, and a mine counts as a station.
May your life be long and useful. Like a roll of toilet paper.
I can't seem to get this to work, I've fitted the tractor at the front and back of a caimain, I've checked the tractor works normally when fired (which it does), I've tried small ships and asteroids, I keep getting either "no aim" or "malfunction", really close or a couple of km make no difference. I'm carrying several thousand EC too - I'm doing this whilst being in the ship as I wanted to move some things about...
Thanks
I didn't know the game would recognize the difference...
still feels like cheating...thanks though.
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