Tether module

[Dalkorn]

Suggestion:
A ship to ship tethering module, allowing for the towing of damaged/stranded or submissive ships to a nearby starport.

Uses:
Bounty Hunting - This could be a useful tool for bounty hunters, where rather than always having to destroy the target they could submit and be towed back to a nearby station. The Bounty Hunter would still recieve their payment (maybe even a higher payout for bringing said target back alive), the criminal would still have to pay off their bounty (plus an extra fee to avoid exploiting) but wouldn't have to pay the full insurance costs of a replacement ship. This would add extra depth to the bounty hunting carear and help add more player interactions.

Rescue - Players could aid damaged ships, or ships that have run out of fuel. Wing members could tow back crippled comrades after a battle rather than watching them self destruct.

Salvage - Derelict ships could be tethered back for salvage/reverse engineering if non human, larger ships requiring multiple ships to tow them.

Pirating - Pirates could now attempt to steal the ship, bring the drives offline and tow the ship back for salvage at an anarchy system. The target player could choose to submit if they are losing the fight and pay a smaller insurance premium.

Missions - Bringing back a crippled cap ship for repair (would require a wing to tow back). Maybe smaller missions to rescue workers in a crippled mining craft or passangers on a transport ship. Would add another carear path to the galaxy.

Ideas:

1. Target ship must agree to tether (unless it's a derelict/non piloted) to avoid griefing by tethering a dragging a ship to a random location/into a star.
2. Docking towed ship could be done by either a station tractor beam or having the station take over the towed ships systems (like the docking computer would) and would be initiated when the lead ship requests docking.
3. Towed ships would pay a docking fee for the automated docking (criminals and damaged ships).

Aswell as adding more depth to bounty hunting and pirating, it would add rescue and salvage paths for people to play and would help with greater player interactions and extra mission types available.

 

[Ericksson]

This is a cracking idea, would lend itself to proper RP'ing as well. Absolutely brilliant and would add a whole level of depth to BH.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Rep button is not working, but I love your idea, and I only see one flaw: towing a cap ship. Absolutely impossible unless you have 15 Lakons and a week of spare time.

Oh, there goes the rep button, +1.

 

[Dalkorn]

Thanks You are probably correct about the cap ship towing, I maybe got carried away with thinking of how it could be used.

The mission types could be quite varied, for instance including the rescue ones mentioned above, you could also have time sensitive missions where a ship is caught in a stars gravity well with engine failure and you have X amount of time to get to them and pull them away (heatsinks helpful here). Even smaller things such as tethering some of those large pieces of debris you see in a USS back to the station, that would add a whole new salvage carear path with being able to bring back derelict ships aswell.

I think it could add alot to the game, whilest not changing the core ideas of the main game it would flesh out what is already there. Anything that adds more depth and motivates player to player interaction (and role play) is good in my book.

 

[SpartanBeef]

Good ideas, except for the whole rescuing thing. With the 1.2 update adding reboot functionality ships can always limp home, even with a destroyed fsd/comms/thrusters. The only time you'd need to rescue someone is if they ran out of fuel, which most people only do once or twice before they learn. I struggle to see how this would actually be used. Maybe for specific missions and salvage, but those aren't in the game yet, so you'd have to wait for them to be implemented.