What about tractor beams?

chagnampra

chagnampra
[REQUEST] A 'tractor beam', please! (for mining)

This has no doubt been mentioned before, but having some sort of device which could gather asteroid fragments quicker would be excellent. The cargo scoop mini game is fine, but can be a little hit or miss (literally), taking too much time; and, inevitably, this leads to being interrupted by someone eager to rob or kill me. 😣

I guess it would be the equivalent of buying an automated docking computer, helping to alleviate some of the repetition in gameplay. Naturally, this feature should cost an appropriate amount of credits, not readily available until a player has saved up enough by using the standard cargo scoop mini game method.

Just a thought... 😉
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
I doubt tractor beams fit in with game lore. However, a piloted drone recovery device might be interesting, especially for a bigger ship. It would expect that it would take up a reasonably sized module slot.
 

chagnampra

chagnampra
Yeah, that sounds better. A drone system would be useful and makes sense, after doing a lot of the mining / collection donkey work for a period of time. I'd certainly save up for one of it was expensive!
 

Panzer

Panzer
I'd go with swarms of retrieval drones. Working in terms of class/rating a bit like refineries. Low-class drone bays would accommodate one at best, the A1 bay maybe going as far as three, but for really large ships, the swarm could number several times that, At this point though, more than 10 is utterly useless given how that's the maximum number of fragments that one rock can yield, regardless how big it may be.

To work, they'd need to have their base-ship's cargo scoop open and the ship itself stationary or moving slowly. The drones themselves would make their way to the closest/oldest fragments within a certain radius, latch on and unhurriedly (fragment decay should stop when a drone's on it) make for the base ship. As opposed to normal scooping though - it shouldn't matter at what angle the drone arrives, as long as the speed requirement is met. That's because the baseship should also have the option to scoop fragments up donkey-style, at least to have something moderately useful to do instead of idly waiting for the drones.

Each drone would also need to function as an ammo piece, reasonably expensive at that, BUT unlike missiles, the bay should be fully-stocked on purchase. Drones could be lost by either being shot down by on-site opposition, rammed to death through carelessness or left behind should the base-ship leave without recovering them all.
 

Joie

Joie
Tractor Beams

Hi guys!

I would be Happy when we can get Tractor Beams to collect Cargo and the Miners out there will be Happy too :D

I think of it for the Toolslot, bind it to secondary Fire like Scanners.
Range will increase with better Class and Rating

What dou you think about it?.
 

Grayman

G
Yeah, no tractor beams AFAIK but there has been mention of a Cargo Tug Limpet Controller similar in operation to the hatch breaker in that you keep a limpet in your hold, send it out, it gathers and deposits cargo or fragments for you and you can happily mine away.
Let me find the DDF if I can...
Ah yes:
"Drones - commanders may equip and employ drones to collect solid resources in the same way that they can collect floating canisters (this is an alternative method of collection for vessels without an operational cargo scoop"
Hope that helps a bit.
Myriad features yet to come!
 

Sodacan

S
[REQUEST] Tractor beam & Mining overhaul

Anyone who has tried mining will tell you that the time (and credits) invested isn't worth the reward. Mining is very time intensive and dangerous with little reward. Considering you have to chase down every little it of rock you chip off an asteroid and that most of the miscreants in the system tend to hang around resource sites (happy hunting). Chasing down rocks and the precision flying is cool, but only if you have a joystick or gamepad (I tried this with a keyboard and it is a nightmare).
Rather than chasing bits down we should have a utility module tractor beam that draws rocks into the cargo scoop or even a mining laser with a tractor beam incorporated.

You could have a dedicated mining ship but i think the ability to put mining kit on any ship makes it more accessable to new players too.

Before you say tractor beams will break the laws of physics and is too far into the future even for Elite... It's already been done!...

Search internet for ANU tractor beam ( forum setting wont let me post a hyperlink):mad:

..ok they only managed to move particles, but they do say it should be scaleable and science will have had a few hundred years of head scratching to perfect this.

The yield may need looking at too. If you are looking for the rarer resources, you can find yourself chipping off rocks and chasing them down, scooping them up over 30 times (*faint*) just for one ton of the refined resource; a lot of rocks have these dropping unrefined at under 3%. The time/opportunity cost of this is not reflected in comodities markets too. You'd think that gold would sell per ton for the same cost as a small ship for the effort you need to put in :p

Mining in it's current form is so unrewarding that next to nobody is doing it. Why spend an hour chipping bits off a rock for around (typically) 3000 credits when you can do a light trade run in less than 5 minutes for more?
Opportunity cost...
 

TomJoad

TomJoad
Or even the ability to land on the asteroid and mine directly under the ship.

On another yet similar note; Yesterday I decided to restart, wiped my save.

I figured I was going to start in the same system as before which I found kinda bland. Aiabiko System.

My new starting system is LHS 3447.

LHS 3447.jpg

There are 2 K class stars, 2 metallic belts (one has 6 clusters the other 5.) This system will be profitable to mine, will start this today.... I haven't even bothered to travel out from it yet. Yes the scooping is a painful drain yet in the correct system with multiple docks to unload over short distances it can be worthwhile.
 

Leavon

L
Tractor Beams

To the team that thought up mining I'd just like to say thank you for giving us the opportunity to perform this vital function in keep the manufacturing chain running by supplying the raw materials that are necessary in any functioning economy. Might I make a small suggestion and if this has been discussed previously please feel free to direct me to that thread. Would it have been a stretch to include tractor beams for directing the ore to the scoop? I mean not all of us are capable of judging the distance to asteroids as those that designed the game and loosing even starter ships several times is a real pain and I don't think it's too much to ask for. Tractor Beams, Tractor Beams, Tractor Beams. Please!
 

Steve50

Steve50
No, no and no. Tractors beams do not belong in the Elite universe.

I have one golden tip for you, positioning.. If you position your ship in the right place, when you blast off fragments they will come towards you, you only need then to use small thruster adjustments to pick each one up. Fast and easy.
 

zerocool

Z
Tractor beams and scaling progression options

Tractor Beams. After a certain point from the beginning of the game, Ive found that most streamers and players (myself included) don't bother to pick up loot ever. It's almost never worth the time. This is probably the main reason I haven't gotten into mining. It just is way too tedious after awhile. I don't see why we can't have nice things in the year 3300.

Also Just a side note, I've been playing since beta 1 and my biggest problem with this game so far is that your options to make money don't scale as you transition into the mid game. You will be stuck trading forever if you hope to get into any higher end ships and after you get in something like, say an asp, any options to make money through combat can hardly cover the cost of munitions and repairs. Exploration and combat need money making options that scale and compare with trading. Its almost like Frontier has made the Npc's way too easy and scaled for beginning game to stretch out the begining game but then there are things like rare commodities where a player can get in a hauler and make stupid amounts of money exponentially faster than doing anything else. I'd love to see the Harmless-Elite ranking system for enemies actually matter for the ai difficulty and cost of bounties in a more notice able way. Also we have missions to go kill the strongest ship in the game and you can do it in a viper and only ever get 100-190k for it. More diverse combat missions that scale into mid/end game would be great.

So unless you were abusing rare commodities in gamma 2.0 up until they patched it ( and made 100's millions and are already in a python or anaconda months before anybody else will be) you will hit a point in the game where if you want to progress you have to play the park unpark trade grind game for hours upon hours. This is how you make players interest in progress fizzle out and probably the biggest threat to sustained interest in Elite Dangerous.
 

Zyana

Zyana
If i remember right from original elite, there used to be tractor beam... may also mix with other elites/clones. but at now mining is waste of time in most parts, really need some tools.
 

Vinedict

V
I would like to put in my vote for tractor beams or some kind of equivalent. Perhaps a cargo collecting arm, an upgrade for a larger bay door, or my personal over the top suggestion: cargo collecting drones. They could hop out when cargo bay is open and collect everything and then you close it back up when they are done. Tractor beam is probably more feasible and scientifically accurate though.
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
Please - a huge NO to tractor beams! You want to mine ore? You blast bits off an asteroid and scoop it!

You want to collect cargo? You find it and scoop it! That is why you have scoops!

There was never tractor beams in the original Elite, and sometimes when you tried to mine an asteroid a grumpy old Rock Hermit launched ships at you to blow you up.

And if you can't scoop - then learn!
 

Blu3

B
#give me tractor beam!

I tried the mining side of the game. But when I saw that i had to pick up every single rock that fell off the asteroid I gave up right there and then:mad:. A tractor beam needs to be implemented ASAP to save the mining side of the game.Cargo scooping is time Consuming.We're flying ships that can pretty much fly by the Sun and refuel But we have to manually scoop up the cargo/rocks,There is a big technological gap there.:S

GIVE ME TRACTOR BEAM!!.jpg
 
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