Colonial Chrome

Not to try and poke holes in your ideas, but there is a bit of a loophole in the idea of using arrays of tractors and repulsors to maneuver ships.

What having CRM arrays means is that tractors big and powerful enough to sling around the mass of a whole starfighter are a) relatively small and light, b) not all that power-intensive, and c) pretty cheap to make in large quantities.

So why don't capitol ships mount 'capture' arrays of these things to catch and lock down starfighters, so they can be dragged into the hangar bay, or just potshotted with a turbolaser while they can't maneuver?

No, it seems to you there is one. Actually, it does not really appear to be a loophole to me, even though I have a different theory on the starship behaviour in Star Wars, that includes the CRM concept, but goes a bit further, relying on some other EU sources...



You misunderstood the concept. Repulsorlifts and tractor beams are not incredibly powerful precision systems. Catching a single almost immobile starfighter for example is not an easy task for a skilled and talented Star Destroyer tractor beam operator, as detailed in the Thrawn trilogy multiple times. Even the huge and incredibly powerful tractor beams of the Death Star were no instant success guarantees to catch a small ship and they were far larger than a dozen of the average type of cannon, used to blast ships of that size to pieces.

Repulsorlifts are not even supposed to work remotely like that. You can think of repulsorlifts more like of a hovercraft or helicopter. Instead of blowing air that pushes against something, it is a directional field that interacts with mass. Especially dense mass. You can move a piece of paper with the air from your lungs, but you cannot punch a hole into it that way, even though the air volume you got could easily be used for such a task. My CO2 pistol needs much less gas volume for that task. What you lack is proper channelling of the effect. With a concave cylinder and a good seal, you can do the trick. However, your repulsorlift system does not have such constraints, which would cross-vector control fields, which I think is what actual tractor beams employ. You can control the direction, but you cannot focus it on a precise point enough to have much effect. If you can aim it a a big ship or an asteroid, that is enough for most applications and usually the target of such actions is incapable of any countermeasures or evasions. Especially if it is a rock.

At the same time, the targeted ship of such an attack - if it was effectively possible at all - would do the same thing with the attacker. The attacker would pull and the target would push. The only result would be, that the target would lose some manoeuvrability. Not that much, though. After all, it is still designed to operate in empty space, where there is no big ship nearby to push against. If the system was disabled that way, it would just rely on basic space flight mode again.

Last but not least, you could mount more effective systems in place of your flycatcher tractorbeams. Think about it for a moment: You got a turreted or otherwise guided energy-system, that is able to track a small and fast moving target, lock onto it fast and employ it's effect long enough to make a difference, yes? So why would you want that effect to be "push a bit or draw it in a bit and then hope your buddy next door hits it with a cannon", if instead you can have it "explode in colourful sparks and be done with it"? After all, you obviously already solved the tracking and targeting issues and you have a clear line of fire. Why shoot gravfields, if you can shoot plasma bolts?

Eventually, it is the same reason why 8 men in an 8 man squad carry 8 firearms, instead of 4 firearms and 4 with grappling hook rifles and nets, to draw enemy soldiers in and have them shot by a buddy.

The CRM does not work by precisely tracking minute targets. It works by targeting and tracking as many different targets as possible. If it slips off a few, that does not matter much. Ben used a bunch of crazed spidermen to visualize the effect. I would use a different visualization. Do you remember the plasma lightning balls that were so popular in the 80s? Think of those. The arcs are constantly moving, losing contact, being replaced by others in an endless cascade. That is how I think such a system works. It simply tries to lock onto any mass it can find and it is happy with whatever it gets. Since eventually, it gets a bit of everything, it can manage the fluctuations and create a stable situation. If the field arcs too much in one direction, it autoadjusts simply by trying to maintain uniform distribution.



Capitol ships surely do that. 200 congressmen are needed to man the controls and another 20 wave flags.

Okay, I went back and re-read the CRM section and I see where my ideas went awry. I had managed to miss the part about ships being able to establish CRM 'blocker' fields to prevent the relatively low-power CRM's from doing what I was thinking of.

This also answers why tractor beams are rarely used in combat applications (execpt in cases of gross power mismatches i.e. ISD vs. Millenium Falcon) - evey ship has a certain amount of 'anti-tractor' built in which makes combat uses highly unreliable.

That teaches me to read the tech section more carefully before I post...

There is one problem with the concept of blocking the CRM, though. It makes half of the concept useless for the explanations it is used for.

If it was not only possible to block it, but advantageous and common to do so, it would no longer explain the transmission of vibrations and thus of sound. Unless of course blocking other's CRM would at the same time block your own CRM. It would still have had to be done at least once in the movies, which it has not.

The concept could be refined to remove that issue, if we assumed that it is in fact not possible to block it and instead only possible to limit the effect. Like making the lock more slippery or by limiting the force that can be applied. In that case, hostiles would block you from locking onto their hull with your CRM for full effect, but enough effect would be left to transmit vibration (thus sound) and give at least more bonus than not locking at all.

Actually, the blocker fields are more like making the surface of your ships, as you said, 'slippery' to the enemy ships. With many CRM beams flitting around the enemy, you're always going to be able to get some lock, but just as you were using the plasma ball analogy, the same would apply, each of several beams would get lock, lose lock, get lock again but you'd not be able to hold a really solid lock on an enemy who has their blockers enabled. That in turn makes life a little uncomfortable in the cockpit, you're constantly being buffeted, and you're never going to be 100% certain that you can perform this or that move properly.
No matter though, you'd be able to get enough of a lock for the vibrations to get back.

Many enemies won't bother using their CRMS in blocking mode - it reduces their ability to use them for other tasks, such as assisting their own fighters, they don't prove to be tremendously combat effective anyway and as Void opined, you can use the crew and resources more effectively in other roles.

I'll have a look at tweaking the page to make that clearer.


Has to, for, what, being Canon? Absolutely, I've never said it was Canon. However, Star Wars is a fantasy film hexology - no one involved in creating them has the slightest interest or concern about these matters. Good job too. However, when we go and play RPGs a working model of how it all works is, in my experience, beneficial to the GM as it provides the backbone of consistency. To me the CRMS is the best solution to two space based problems. Not only does it resolve two-for-one, it only uses technology that is well known in the oevre, so reducing handwavium.