penny wrote:Doh! Just a few clicks upstream kzt said that David said that the LD's tractor's had the range of PDLCs. What, 100,000 km?
If a wedge does interfere with a spider drive's operation then g-torps would go haywire before they reach attack range. If not explode. So, there can't be interference, lest it is with a much more powerful wedge. But I certainly won't rule it out. Thanks for the responses. I was pulling my hair out.
tlb wrote:Yes, a tractor beam might well have the range of a PDLC, but that does not mean that the spider drive needs to reach out that far to work. Even though the beam is very strong (compared to normal tractor beams), it still must attenuate some with distance. So why reach the full theoretical distance when the Alpha wall is right at hand? The beam does not need to reach out more than a few kilometers in order to pull the ship ahead and I hope the LD would not get within 100 kilometers of a warship with an active wedge.
penny wrote:You mean 100,000 kilometers?
Seems like rather extraneous information from the author if it has no significance. It begs the question of just how far the beam does extend before breaching hyperspace. And exactly how is the maximum range ever reached if before the maximum range is reached hyperspace is breached. Does the LD have an idle/neutral gear where the LD's tractors do not breach hyperspace? It would seem logical that the LDs tractors could be utilized as, well, normal tractor beams for towing / grabbing objects in n-space.
Something else, IINM, there are several tractor beams grabbing hold of the alpha wall. Are each of those beams grabbing hold of the same area on the wall?
It also seems intuitive, in an emergency that any ship's tractor beam can interfere with an LDs tractor's operation.
As I understand it, KZT was talking about the range where a tractor beam could do damage and not the range for spider drive operation. I am not using the 100,000 km range, since I see no reason for the drive beams to reach out that far.
I expect the spider drive beams are dedicated to movement, because it would mess with the flow if you tried to divert one to tow an object. The ship is big enough to have general purpose beams. An ordinary general purpose beam is not going to interfere with anything, because it is not strong enough to interact with the Alpha wall. The only problem would be if the towed object gets hit with a drive beam.
The way I visualize the drive process, it looks like an 8 man racing boat (not that the number of beams is limited to 8) with the beams being the oars. On command the beams point forward (but off to the sides) and each grabs its own piece of water (Alpha wall) and pulls the boat forward; then releases and prepares to repeat. Neutral or idle just means that the beams are turned off, or at least have their power turned down to not grab the wall.
The beams are repetitively, not continuously, grabbing the wall at a place further ahead each time. The drive beam heads could actually be fixed at a forward angle, but then the ship would have to switch bow for stern in order to decelerate.