Multi-Use Tether(s):
Damage: 1/second
Energy: 10/second
Speed: 80m/s
range: 50m
Effect: grabs on to anything, your enemy, a roid, a station, for the cost of 10 e/sec when tethered to a player, it lowers that players agility by the mass of the original and tethered ship divided by the torque*thrust of the engine of the tethered ship. A player tethered onto a warping ship will warp with them at no energy cost.

sorry if this may be a bit unclear, just woke up :/

the warping effect seems rather reminiscient of my thread on wormholes.
http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1265&page=12

You could use the tether to whip you around asteroids, turning at much higher speeds than normal. Potentially very cool, but I think it would overly complicate things at this early stage of the game.

The programming for the physics of that would be mighty hard...

Ever played "Thrust"? Same priciple ony 3D...
Should not be too hard if the physics ingame are as advanced as they seem to be.

Made this suggestion back in the 3.1.x days. And as I said back then, it would be fun to watch the victim purposely do sharp turns against an asteroid, causing the enemy to slam into the asteroid. Teeheehe...

I dont think the physics would be too hard, just act as a tethered ship was one ship. and Verd, theres no risk to tethering your oponent and following :D

although it would have to wait for BOTH comps to load the sector before they both came out

Rather, constrain the distance between the two ships to the length of the tether. Since this engine is based on real physical priniciples I definitely think that this could work. Wheee!

Edit: (or perhaps when one ship jumped the tether would snap?)

Um, if it costs energy to hold the tether, how would you warp?

I can see this being exploited though. What if the flag capper were to tether a teammate that is boosting?

I'd say that would be a fairly legal tactic

yup, why couldnt you do that?
it would put 2 cappers vulnerable, yet they could turbo

and if your tethered to somebody and they warp, it costs YOU no energy to warp with them

Mmmm... I still say it'd be hard to program, though. For example, what happens if you snap around too fast? Just how much tensile strenght DOES this tether have?

I would assume the tethered ships would take damage also. Hitting the end of the tether would be like hitting an invisible 'roid....

/me prances around chanting "tether! tether! tether!"

One of the things I remembered asking to the devs was whether we'd see a linkage of cargo boxes on the back of the Marauder, as you'd put more and more cargo on, and whether the link of cargo boxes would twist and turn like a train as your ship would make turns etc. Unfortunately the devs said that they didn't have anything planned like that for now. So if that tether effect isn't going to be added for the cargo boxes of the Marauder, I think the chances of seeing a tether weapon is pretty low. If we do see some advanced tether physics being implemented, I think the chances of seeing both would be pretty high. But right now all we can do is wait and see. I do think it would be a really cool idea though.

erm....Why would you need a train of cargo boxes on a maud? it would just waste server space.

aw :'( no marauder trains.... ah well.

You could still make a train of marauders though :D

Bump for interesting read.