Bug: Tow Immunity by abusing the intercept mission
This bug / design flaw allows you to break the tow-lock of any ship (except of grav ships) without even moving. This basically gives you a tow immunity.
Siggi described how to do it:
"You can set your mission to intercept a ship in the same spot. Then set your waypoint 90 ly away.
It would seem this satisfies the long waypoint since when tow lock is calculated your waypoint seems to be 90ly. Then when intercept movement comes your waypoint gets reset to the other ship which is at your same location."
See this thread:
http://play.planets.nu/#/activity/1756306
As this is against the designer's intention to allow races to tow-and-kill ships (which is especially vital for cloaker races), it should be rated as bug - critical bug.
This should be fixed now.
- big beefer
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CSY commented
This is most assuredly a HUGE game breaker, especially against cloaking races! I imagine the horrors of this plaguing the next blitz tournament...
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Ryder Cross commented
This is the first I've heard of this move, but it does explain some strange tow breaks in a few of my games in the past. Emork, I do think some of the other players know this move and likely have been using it for some time. I'm sure there are other "bugs" like this that we have yet to hear about that players are also using to their advantage.
I vote this as a serious "bug" that needs to be fixed ASAP, otherwise I'll start using it myself.
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emork commented
If I understood it right you can establish tow immunity (except against gravetronic) with two ships at a spot for the little cost that these ships can't execute another mission than intercept and you have to set the long waypoints again every turn. Zero fuel needed - which is normally the limiting factor for the big races to constantly escape tows. No, the cloaking races won't be pleased at all.
It's worthy a discussion if this is good to stay or should be regarded as a bug. My very personal vote would be for bug in this case. Reasons are
* this manoveur has very little requirements but cripples the main combat tactic of several races
* I think since long that the intercept mission should be resetted if you alter the waypoint afterwards
* I never heared of this manoveur before so I assume was not possible in TimHost or even older version of NuHost (I may be wrong here)