Not sure if this has been suggested before, but it seems like it would be easier to pick up drops from a kill with some type of 'tractor beam' device. Maybe even have the drops target-able/filterable so you don't just pick up everything at once if you don't want to.

Can anyone see any game play issues with this?

Game play issues? No

But I can't honestly see what the point is. There is no existing mechanism by which this could be implemented, so it would involve a huge amount of dev work for very little if any benefit.

How about you not assume you know how much "dev work" stuff takes, ladron? There are some very simple ways this could be implemented, but I'm not sure it's not exploitable; I'd like to hear some discussion.

Gee, you would?

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/18097

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/1421

I don't really see the point of this, at least as far as I can understand what's actually being suggested. Picking up cargo isn't hard now -- I pick up a lot of "spilled" cargo, frequently while under fire from NPCs and the occasional deluded [VPR] -- and whatever challenge it presents in terms of running it over and ejecting whatever I don't want cannot possibly be sufficient to cause me or anyone else to sacrifice a port to the tractor beam.

If this is about being able to "drag" cargo containers behind a ship that would otherwise be unable to hold all of the cargo, then maybe that's something worth talking about.

Okay, well apparently it's been discussed before. But I'm not saying it should take up a slot or anything.

As a new player I have just been finding it a bit frustrating having to fly back and forth to retrieve all the items that got dropped off a mob.

I wasn't trying to imply any use for it outside of picking up items, but dragging things does sound interesting.

Wait, you're asking for this because you're too lazy to be an effective scavenger? And you think it would be implemented as a non-port... device?

/me takes the thread out back, puts it on its knees, and gives it a .45 slug to the back of the head

Waste of ammo.

I suggest (if such a thing were to be implemented) not a beam, but a gravitational field, a bubble, the form of an ellipsoid enclosing the ship and adding 5+5=10m to the axes.

Hey, as long as that bubble triggers prox fuses, I'm OK with it.

Sure! No rose without thorns.

This is implemented in Eve and is quite widely used (as I'm sure some of you know). It is most regularly used by those who salvage from deep space swarms (i.e. hive skirmishes) as a primary activity. Those who invest in a tractor (or multiple tractors) are far more efficient at making a profit from the items scattered around a sector. On large group missions a salvage vessel will often accompany other players to gather loot quickly.

But then in Eve it is trickier to manouver as precisely as you can in VO, so I guess it is more necessary.

It could be an interesting form of anti-missile defense too, if it was implemented so it could be used in that way a-la SFB.

A tractor beam would be kinda pointless for cargo, but if you could latch on to another ship and slow it down by it having to drag you along, that would be amazing. Give it a very high grid requirement so you could only equip it and man there's another great group dynamic weapon to use.

Great fun

if you could latch on to another ship and slow it down by it having to drag you along, that would be amazing

Heh, maybe the Itani would finally know what it's like to participate in a NW, rather than just show up to one and run around...

My gut tells me they would boycott NW from now on if that happened >.>

Also excellent. The UIT would have no one to team up with.

Another aspect to some of this discussion is that with radar occlusion implemented it would seem to me that players in small fighters could attach to biggies like XT moths and be invisible to radar until they detach. This would add excitement to trading and pirating. With tractor beams perhaps you could move around small asteroids and build structures in space. All kinds of devious possibilities there, hiding things, ambushes, etc.

Just as one example you could build a hide, populate it with hunters and leave one ship outside to be the Ewac/detetector as the ones inside should be blind due to radar occlusion. Trigger the Ewac to send a message and the ants pour out.

Roids are, I believe, fixed.

It is also used in Pirate Galaxy to pick up booty after a ship is destroyed. There are several options that allow the player to tractor in items.

cybersleuth58 necromancy +5