Tractor Beams are Cool BUT…

Star Citizen Alpha 3.12 has the addition of Tractor Beams which you can purchase as a module for your hand held multitool I think anywhere you can purchase said multitool as well as the new refinery decks on space stations.

Just attach it to your multitool in the utility slot in the loadout manger from the mobiGlas and then Press 4 to pull out the tool.

These are pretty cool and allow you to pickup objects of upto 250kg and are useable both planetside or in EVA.

There are 2 main useful functions currently moving boxes from wrecks or derelicts to your ship, allowing you to grab these boxes more easily and quicker.

The other major use is you can in EVA use it to propel yourself like a grappling hook or more like spider man. You have to target structures or very heavy things to make these traversals successful.

This is basically the Sata-Ball traversal tool that we saw many years ago… this is all minus the sata-ball and I think the stun gun function that it had.  (I think technically that was an actual physical grappling hook tho).

Tractor Beams are Cool BUT…

There is a bit of an issue here with 3.12 and the tractor beam tho… and that is the usability of it where it’s needed. It can’t be used in Green or Armistice Zones currently… you can’t pull it out. So in some of the main areas where you want to actually move boxes and in the best places where it would be great to make use of it for a delivery mission, like at an outpost collecting or dropping off said box.

I think it’s just an oversight, as we know CI are able to allow for the pulling out of these items, like the WowBlast Nerf Pistols which you can use and fire at these zones… we also know that CI are going to be relaxing the no-fire-zones around these areas too so it might just be they are going to be doing that soon and then the tractor beams will be a load more useful…

Currently they are fun BUT they need to tweak where you can use them.

In the future these are going to be incredible for puzzle solving, salvaging, repairing, looting, potentially even S&R and a lot more.

It’s also the next step towards ship sized tractor beams that will be used for larger scale cargo movement, mining, salvage, repair and towing ships… We don’t know when they will actually implement the gameplay for ships but it’s as I said a step closer now.

I am very much looking forward to using these tractor beams for looting ships and the salvage mechanics in the not too distant future (hopefully) these should start to get a lot more functionality when icache and true physicalized Inventories and all the various other associated content come online…