Information I'd love to know

I have always wanted to know. One on one, can a tractor beam overpower thrusters?

penny wrote:I have always wanted to know. One on one, can a tractor beam overpower thrusters?

Unknown - I can see arguments either way. And I wouldn't be surprised if it varied; with a warship's tractors able to overcome the thrusters on small craft or maybe even up to smaller warships, but the emergency thrusters on large warships being too powerful for another warship's tractors to overcome. but we also don't know how applying more tractors to the same target (beyond the number needed to "zone" it) affects the total force they can impart.

OBS does have cutter, captured by the tractor beam of a boat bay able to rotate on its gyros to align. So a minimum that tractor beam didn't prevent other movement - though rotation isn't acceleration and the boat bay tractor beam likely doesn't need a lot of power as it's just pulling small craft the last little bit into their docking collar in the bay -- they'd already be within the ship's compensator field by the point it'd activate -- so even if the ship is accelerating that wouldn't impact docking.

Though speaking of acceleration we do know that tractor beams are used to tow decoys outside of the wedge -- where they'd be outside the compensator. And we know from HotQ that even when held fully "zoned" by the tractor(s) towed objects are subject to acceleration (one of the Masadan LACs had a pressure tank break loose under it and smash its way aft).
So we know a warship's main tractors can counteract several hundred gees of acceleration.

Emergency thrusters seem to top out around the 150 gees that's the most that crews can take - so in a tug of war between a tractor than can pull at 400+ gees against a thruster than can push at ~150 -- you might expect the win to go to the tractor.

However we don't know how tractors are affected by mass. Anf force is mass x acceleration. We've seen emergency thrusters accelerate entire battlecruisers (800,000+ tons) to 150 gees while the towed decoys that were pulled at about 415 gees were just 50 tons each. Those BC thrusters needed to impart over 5,000 times the force that the tractors did on the decoys; despite them accelerating the decoys almost 3 times quicker.

Depending on how tractor work (which we're not told in detail) that raw force might overcome them. Of if they stack then maybe a warship does carry enough tractors, of sufficient power, to hold a similar sized warship against it's emergency thrusters -- we just don't know.

That said, even trying to get away might do really bad things to the targeted ship. We know the other Masadan LAC that came to a bad end was because 1 tractor failed and the other 2 weren't able to full zone it. It "simply snapped in half"; presumably from the uneven application of all that force. So if you fired thrusters at an unexpected angle you might partially escape the "zone" of the tractors on you; and the resulting uneven application of force on your hull might bend or break things!

Jonathan_S wrote:

penny wrote:I have always wanted to know. One on one, can a tractor beam overpower thrusters?

Unknown - I can see arguments either way. And I wouldn't be surprised if it varied; with a warship's tractors able to overcome the thrusters on small craft or maybe even up to smaller warships, but the emergency thrusters on large warships being too powerful for another warship's tractors to overcome. but we also don't know how applying more tractors to the same target (beyond the number needed to "zone" it) affects the total force they can impart.

OBS does have cutter, captured by the tractor beam of a boat bay able to rotate on its gyros to align. So a minimum that tractor beam didn't prevent other movement - though rotation isn't acceleration and the boat bay tractor beam likely doesn't need a lot of power as it's just pulling small craft the last little bit into their docking collar in the bay -- they'd already be within the ship's compensator field by the point it'd activate -- so even if the ship is accelerating that wouldn't impact docking.

Though speaking of acceleration we do know that tractor beams are used to tow decoys outside of the wedge -- where they'd be outside the compensator. And we know from HotQ that even when held fully "zoned" by the tractor(s) towed objects are subject to acceleration (one of the Masadan LACs had a pressure tank break loose under it and smash its way aft).
So we know a warship's main tractors can counteract several hundred gees of acceleration.

Emergency thrusters seem to top out around the 150 gees that's the most that crews can take - so in a tug of war between a tractor than can pull at 400+ gees against a thruster than can push at ~150 -- you might expect the win to go to the tractor.

However we don't know how tractors are affected by mass. Anf force is mass x acceleration. We've seen emergency thrusters accelerate entire battlecruisers (800,000+ tons) to 150 gees while the towed decoys that were pulled at about 415 gees were just 50 tons each. Those BC thrusters needed to impart over 5,000 times the force that the tractors did on the decoys; despite them accelerating the decoys almost 3 times quicker.

Depending on how tractor work (which we're not told in detail) that raw force might overcome them. Of if they stack then maybe a warship does carry enough tractors, of sufficient power, to hold a similar sized warship against it's emergency thrusters -- we just don't know.

That said, even trying to get away might do really bad things to the targeted ship. We know the other Masadan LAC that came to a bad end was because 1 tractor failed and the other 2 weren't able to full zone it. It "simply snapped in half"; presumably from the uneven application of all that force. So if you fired thrusters at an unexpected angle you might partially escape the "zone" of the tractors on you; and the resulting uneven application of force on your hull might bend or break things!

Lots of detail. Thanks. I have had so many odd scenarios in my head for so long. I suppose the Star Trek universe is responsible for those scenarios. Like when the Borg locked on to the Enterprise keeping her from accelerating.

Anyway, I imagine in my head, a scenario made possible in some way, of a ship being tractored inside the transit lane keeping it from departing.

I also wonder if an LD can be tractored and kept from moving. Of course the weapons must be inert and the destruct mechanism must be disabled. But an LD is a big ship, as you said, size might affect a tractor beam's effectiveness. Perhaps an SD's tractors can immobilize it.

Hmmm... a tractor beam vs a spider drive.

These are simply scenarios found in my head.

Jonathan_S wrote:Depending on how tractor work (which we're not told in detail) [...]

Since I first encountered tractors in Star Trek, I keep trying to figure out why the emitters aren't pulled apart.