Can you tow in warp ?

[cke]

I'm in a ST PBEM and this came up. Can a warp enabled ship carry another one through warp attached by a tractor beam ?

I couldn't find the answer, but then I thought of the bright folk here, so hopefully someone can help me out.

[Ineti]

I do believe I saw it happen a few times on TNG. Probably at very slow warp speeds, say no more than Warp 1 or 1.5?

[Ergi]

I was just about to write that I don't remember seeing a warp tow on screen, when I remembered an episode of DS9 in which a runabout was reduced from warp to sub-light speed by another one. This is at least proof that tractor beams work at warp speed and the usual way to use them is probably to pull something, not slowing it down.
As long as the towing ship isn't much smaller than the crippled vessel it should be equipped with a powerful enough tractor emitter and be able to produce enough energy to maintain the tractor beam. Smaller ships could also have problems enclosing an other vessel with its warp field.
With the exception of specially designed tugs having a ship in tow will probably reduce maximum speed.

[Tobian]

Yes they can, however your Engineer or OPS officer has to envelope the warp field arround the other ship, so that you don't rip it in two, so I would say you would need to make a difficult System ops (Tractor Beams) roll (something like TN 15 - 20) and then make continuous rolls (say TN10) to keep it stable (with a base time of a couple of hours) untill you drop out of warp.

It's been demonstrated on TNG before with an ocudagram showing the field envelope being extended backwards to cover the object, however the rules I made up off the top of my head

[Tobian]

Of course I am thinking game rules here, sorry - yes you can is the answer ;-)

[Ergi]

Just saw your post, Ineti. 1 or 1.5 seems much too slow. Imagine how long it would take to tow a ship back to a repair facility. Anything farther away than 20 lightyears would mean that the ship will arrive just in time for its decommission.

[Tobian]

I think it would be a factor of how flexible the specific ships Warp nacelles were, or how much power they could safelly put through them.

Two examples of that would be the Galaxy Class and the Intrepid Class. The Galaxy Class seemed to have very powerful Warp Nacelles, and a tremendous power output, and in the oposite corner the Intrepid had variable Geometry Warp Nacelles, so it would have alot more flexibility in forming it's warp field

[cke]

thank you for all of your quick responses on this. it's much appreciated.

In the PBEM, the towing ship is a suped shuttle design approved by one of the crew.

Warp Systems:
power: Matter/Antimatter Reactor (dilithium mediated)
nacelles: 2
cruising warp: Warp 9
maximum warp: Warp 9.4
emergency warp: Warp 9.8 for 36 hours

The thing being towed is a pretty small device which contains a number of nasty critters we don't want near anything else.

But knowing that it's officially appeared somewhere pretty much solves the issue for me, so thanks again.

[Sea Tyger]

I think the official rule is that as long as the ship is a size smaller than the one that's doing the towing, then yes, you can tow, and tow at warp. I'd recommend that if the ship is only 1 size smaller than yours, then you could only travel at one-half your rated warp speed. For two sizes smaller, speed is limited to 3/4 top speed. For 3 or more sizes smaller, the speed is not significantly reduced (maybe by 10% max).

Using your example, if the towed item is small (say, the size of a mid-sized sedan or smaller), then I wouldn't even worry about limiting the shuttle's warp speed.

[cke]

"Using your example, if the towed item is small (say, the size of a mid-sized sedan or smaller), then I wouldn't even worry about limiting the shuttle's warp speed."

That's interesting. The thing being towed was little more than a lure for the creatures, so it's pretty tiny.

So essentially it only becomes an issue if the towing vessel struggles to form a warp field around the item/ mass being towed.

So clearly a big item, with decent nacelles should be able to tow a much, much smaller one without too much trouble.

If I'm way off base with that someone hopefully will come in and let me know :-)

Thanks, you've just made the option I'm cheering for on the PBEM, fool proof. :-)

[Ineti]

Originally posted by Ergi
Just saw your post, Ineti. 1 or 1.5 seems much too slow. Imagine how long it would take to tow a ship back to a repair facility. Anything farther away than 20 lightyears would mean that the ship will arrive just in time for its decommission.

Oh, I know, I just remember an episode of TNG where the Enterprise was towing a ship, and I thought they had to go slow in warp to keep the beam from tearing the towed ship apart.

It was just off the top of my head.

[Tobian]

Yes I remember that episode. However in that instance it was an old garbage scow that had drifted into a system. It was verty old and unstable and it's structural integrity was extremelly untenneble... so they could only pull it very slowly.. Unless that's not the episode you're thinking of... Oh and also that was not at warp so maybe it wasn't ?

[StyroFoam Man]

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[Siroth]

You can most definitely tow ships at warp. As others have pointed out, this has been done in many episodes.

I guess the most extreme example I can mention off the top of my head is in DS9's "Paradise". It's not exactly towing, but it certainly demands that towing is possible. In the episode Sisko and O'Brien has been stranded on a planet while (unknown to them) their Runabout (large shuttle) has been sent on a collision course with the sun. Kira and Dax go looking for them in another Runabout and discover the trail of Sisko's which has missed the sun and is now flying in a straight line at warp. Unable to beam aboard the other ship at warp, they use their tractor beam to 'lasso' the wayward ship and force it out of warp and to a complete stop.

Thus it naturally follows that you can probably do all sorts of things at warp with the tractor beam, but then not all of them might be advisable. Towing another ship at warp doesn't seem to present much of a problem, however, since even in a lot of episodes where they don't actually tow another ship, they still mention off-hand that they could do so. Picard, for example, threatens Maxwell to do just that with the U.S.S. Phoenix in TNG's "The Wounded".

It's also rather obvious that the Enterprise-D towed the Stargazer back to a Starbase after the events of TNG's "The Battle" as it would otherwise have taken years for the Stargazer to arrive.

Similarly, one would have to wonder how the Enterprise-D would have brought the lost U.S.S. Pegasus back to a starbase as Admiral Pressman demanded in "The Pegasus" if it wasn't possible to tow at warp.

[Erik Filean]

An additional example of warp-speed towing: Sisko's log in "For the Uniform" [DS9] explains that after Eddington disabled the Defiant, she couldn't return to the station under her own power and had to be towed by the Malinche. The distance wasn't specified, but the situation implied that it was at least several light-years from the Bajor system, so the Malinche had to have tractored and towed the Defiant at warp, and probably at a greater speed than warp 1.5.