Tow and bugs. Im privateer. Two times i tried to tow a...

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1810 days, 10 hours, 26 minutes ago

Tow and bugs. Im privateer. Two times i tried to tow a...

Tow and bugs. Im privateer.
Two times i tried to tow a COBOL, one time with BR4, second time with Meteor. Ships had warp 9 and TW engines. Both times "Unable to lock tractor beam on COBOL, They moved away before we could tow them". Tow distance one time was long enough (~60 ly), second time was short (~15 ly). Looks like this COBOL towes medium freighter, but why it stop me to tow COBOL itself?

1810 days, 10 hours, 19 minutes ago

ville kauppinen

RE: Tow and bugs. Im privateer. Two times i tried to tow a...

Towing ships move in the order of ID.

1810 days, 7 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Tow and bugs. Im privateer. Two times i tried to tow a...

towing is processed in a complex way - probably the cobol itself had a second ship on the hook (and had the lower id number) and therefore moved away before you could tow it.. to understand how towing work i recommend this article here ;)

http://www.planetsmagazine.com/strategy/strategic-knowledge/straight-talk-about-the-tractor-beam/

and maybe, since it sounds that you are playing the privs: why not rob the cobol dry first, if you have enough ships around? or rob dry and then tow?
you can determine the cobol's fuel by taking the empty mass (plus the components if you want to be exact) and then looking up in the game how much cargo+fuel he must have.. then you know if it is possible or likely that you can rob it dry.

1810 days, 7 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Tow and bugs. Im privateer. Two times i tried to tow a...

maybe to add: when a ship is robbed empty (of fuel) it can not perform its mission (will be reset to exploration) - then it won't be able to tow and therefore not move away with another ship on the hook before you get your chance to tow it ...

1810 days, 7 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Tow and bugs. Im privateer. Two times i tried to tow a...

Robbing on the planet isnt good idea because beam up fuel mission.

1810 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Tow and bugs. Im privateer. Two times i tried to tow a...

Mission drop is good but this planet rob requires at least three ships on the planet(two for rob 500kt fuel one for tow) and 2 ship in the tow point (due possible beamup fuel) Instead, towing to space requires only 3 ships.

1810 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes ago

ville kauppinen

RE: Tow and bugs. Im privateer. Two times i tried to tow a...

Yes it is. First ship(s) robs, second tows to another (cloaked) wolfpack - sometimes you grab it because its doing something else than beaming up and if not then you'll get it next turn by the waiting wolf pack.

1810 days, 6 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Tow and bugs. Im privateer. Two times i tried to tow a...

the problem is that the cobol is towing sth and has a low id - imho you have 2 options

- get a lower id tower there to tow the cobol to your wolfpack
- rob the cobol dry to force a mission drop and then tow to the wolfpack

depends on the situation and how much overall mass the cobol shows..