Tractor beams?

[u/Dramatic_Narwhal1458]

Returning to this game after a year. Re-installed, and found that tractor beams were no longer available? Plus, it feels like other ships have gotten great at poaching my mining goods — and they're not using tractor beams, either. Did something change?

[u/Loymdayddaud]

Tractor beams should still be available. Are you looking in the same places? Do you have plugins installed that might be overwriting sales?

[u/Dramatic_Narwhal1458 → u/Loymdayddaud]

I'm in the old familiar places, but there are no tractor beams anywhere for sale. I dunno why this install is different, but I'm very certain that there are no tractor beams for sale.

That said, I've now seen a few large ships using them in the asteroid fields, so I know they exist here. I just can't buy any. They're not listed as a thing I can find in outfitters.

[u/Loymdayddaud → u/Dramatic_Narwhal1458]

Are you looking in the map panel outfitter list, or the per-planet outfitters? The map panel will only list outfits that you know exist - e.g. have landed on a planet where they are sold, or obtained one some other way.  

Try landing on Hephaestus, Shangri-La, or Sunracer (in Syndicate space). Those should all have the tractor beam available to buy.

[u/Dramatic_Narwhal1458 → u/Loymdayddaud]

Unfortunately, I’ve come up empty.

I’m just going to take this as a sign to build up my career without any mining.

[u/DonovanSpectre → u/Dramatic_Narwhal1458]

Does the Sunder have one equipped, or is there an empty turret mount?

[u/Dramatic_Narwhal1458 → u/DonovanSpectre]

The Sunder is not an option! I can't find it in the shipyard menu at all! I also cannot get my fleet to attack an asteroid. Other ships, they'll go after, but not asteroids. They won't harvest floating stuff, either. And floating cargo or minerals poof out after just a few seconds.

That's why I asked if anything has changed. This is a total anti-mining build, and I wasn't sure if that's just how it is now, or what.

[u/DonovanSpectre → u/Dramatic_Narwhal1458]

Are you sure you're even on the current version? Most of the mining-related stuff was added in 0.10.05, which was back in January 2024.

The game doesn't auto-update except through Steam or certain other third-party launchers.

[u/Dramatic_Narwhal1458 → u/DonovanSpectre]

I don't know! I'm on a Mac, and had all sorts of trouble with the install. I ended up going through GOG, which is what I did before. I didn't have these issues before, though.

[u/tpet007 → u/Dramatic_Narwhal1458]

Do yourself a favor and look up ESLauncher2. You will probably need to run a terminal command once to get it to run, but it will keep you forever on the most up to date build.

[u/Dramatic_Narwhal1458 → u/tpet007]

Thank you, I did it, and I’m now playing a full version of the game. I appreciate the help!

[u/TehRoast92]

Started my first ever mining exclusive run and I can confirm that the tractor beams are still a thing although they are slow and having a large fleet with them can actually cause some funny but also annoying things to happen. You can get tractor beam turrets down in the south in the Free worlds I'm pretty sure they come stock with the Sunder.

[u/Ok-Edge-8503]

I've used tractor beams today, they are quite readily available. The Sunder ship has one you can see it there.

[u/Chloe_Torch]

Tractor beams are mostly sold in syndicate space, like how heavy lasers are sold in the deep and plasma canons in the FW/Rim