I completely agree with this. That's always annoyed me about tractor beam. I want to tractor something, not pin it down.

If it worked this way it would be come useful. You could use your slow cruiser, tractor something so it's right in front of you and then finally be able to fire your torps when the shield drops.

And now you have given the reason for it staying the way it is from a pvp perspective.

Any one who pvp's does ~not~ want to be stuck in the frontal arc of any ship is the 90 degree arc in front of a ship is where not only torps fire from, but also most of the offensive boff skills work from.

Also, 2 powered ships moving in on the exact same heading when tractor beamed would do nothing, problems would start to occur when either ship is taking a different direction to the other, at which point something will give on one ship or another, be it emitters of the one using tractor beam, or a section of the ship on the one being held.

As for unpowered ships, the crew in the target ship would get jostled around due to lack of power for the inertial dampners, this could also effect the emitting ship if the power to the inertial dampners is not high enough to begin with.

unless ofc the ship has sufficient mass to have it's own noticeable gravity!

No, mass is not relevant, but inertia is. The same way as inertia makes a big ship accelerate slower. This would only mean that getting a bigger ship up to speed would be slower.

As for engines, it appears all ships in STO use the same impulse engines. This is pretty true to canon, where full/half/quarter impulse are almost used as fixed speeds. Anyway, adding a big ass impulse engine to a cruiser would not make it go faster, just accelerate faster.

So the natural elements to affect the towing would be:
- Engine power
- Points in graviton particles
- Aux power
- TB version
- Inertia (but just for acceleration purposes)

How about listing some gameplay reasons as to why you would tractor a target.

Perhaps in order to bring them towards environmental effects like a gravity well or to pull them into mines? Any more? That seems a bit limited.

While you'd have to handwave the science all over the place (like we don't anyway), but the potential for two (or more) Science ships to play pinball is just too amusing.

IMO, a canon TB would lead to more dynamic gameplay.

The current TB lets you hold someone in place, removing their defence bonus. That's all.

Linking the target ship to yourself would only negate the movement defence at the cost of your own movement defence. You could still hold someone in place, but you would also have the option to move someone.

I was actually saddened the first time I tractored an enemy and he sat in place. I was looking FORWARD to dragging my enemies through space. Give us the CANON tractor beam... and I'll probably have a fangasm.

I have to admit, I was rather stoked when I got my tractor, was thinking "YES!!! I can FINALLY drag ships BACK into warp core breaches where they belong!" OR "OH PLASMA ENERGY BOLT COME HERE!! I HAVE A FRIEND I WANT YOU TO MEET!!!!" (yeah, I am a douche, what of it). And instead, I have a gravitic anchor (which is essentially what tractor beams are in this one). It's not bad, but I really would like an actual TRACTOR beam, not an ANCHOR beam.

Real world physics in STO? Laughable.

The biggest complaint about STO Tractors is that they don't take mass in effect. When a Danube Runabout "tries" to tractor a Galaxy, the 1000x bigger Galaxy should drag the Danube and not the other way around.