I would also say that space tugs would have oversized powerplants, so as a hero ship, they could add heavier shields or weapons than would be expected for a vessel of that size.
I'd add in EVA pods like the pods in 2001 or the Worker Bee from Star Trek as overlooked and extremely handy. Maybe someday you could do a video about them as well?
I'm imagining a scene where a group has to move a gigantic fortress bristling with weapons so that it can get into position to destroy its enemy, but can't do so on its own, so it has a tug pulling it while all weapons on the fortress are firing at all of the enemies around it.
I could also see tugs being used to move small debris in an asteroid field. Asteroid fields are really poorly portrayed in sci fi though. An asteroid field would be a cool place to have a battle if your ships were running at high impulse though
The sci-fi story I'm writing actually introduces the hero ship for the first time while in port. Its an old cargo ship that has been made obsolete by larger and newer cargo vessels, so now it has basically specialized in delivering luxury goods in record times in order to remain competitive.
Unfortunately they're not considered sexy enough sci-fi to be more visible. That's like ignoring the importance of logistics while gushing over technical details of military equipment.
In my story, i'm designing my hero ship to be a commercial passenger transport, Helps with income and passport visa while in foreign ports. i love the idea of having a merchant/mall deck for traveling passengers and locals while docked.
@@twandepan I got the idea by combining Startrek with a game called Suikoden. I wanted the ship to start off relativity empty but fill up with shops and crewmen as the plot advances. This way, each "Guest" could be potentially a new friend or foe.
If I didn't know any better I'd think every ship in the Star Trek universe was some super advanced warship, and normal things like freighters, cruise lines, and personal craft don't exist.
One of my favorite instances of a "tug" inspired vessel was the shield ships from Star Wars Heir to the Empire that were specialized to protect other ships from the intense radiation of a particular star.
I love the idea that the Millennium Falcon is a kind of barge tug, because it explains so much that otherwise doesn't make sense. It's a small ship with massively overpowered engines designed to push huge pallets of freight around the galaxy. Now that is something you could turn into a speedy blockade runner while making it continue to look like a tramp "freighter" (really a freight tug).
The Salvage Corvettes and Resource Harvesters of the Homeworld games fit in here perfectly and deserved a mention. Several missions use them as integral to the plot.
If we're looking at Homeworld, the Junkyard Dog needs a mention. They made a tug something to be feared. Another example from videogames could be the Trains from Freelancer. They're just a tug with a pair of engines hanging out at the sides and an attach point at the back for cargo units. As the name implies, you'd have a long train of cargo units with a single tug at the front used to move bulk cargos around in a system. Their appearance was reflected in gameplay as well - instead of destroying the tug itself, you could smash the cargo units it was pulling to loot them without killing the crew. Edit to add: Just remembered another one from Homeworld 2 - the Progenitor Movers. The 'hero' fleet didn't have a dedicated tug ship anymore, but their mining ships had small multi-purpose arms that could be used for repair work or pulling other ships around.
Don't forget the trusty Ramming Frigates from Cataclysm. Designed probably for bumping around asteroids and other ships, but later pressed into a combat role.
An interesting take on this is in the Honorverse. Since any large vessel that can get up to a decent speed is a potential weapon vs. stations or planets, and the universe has some mind control shenanigans going on, ships have to power down their engines and wait for a tug WAY out. The tugs have dual pilots and the pilots are very highly cleared and screened.
This was the kind of purpose I was thinking of. On a related note, tugs might be helpful since engine exhaust (or even thruster exhaust) could damage parts of a station or docking craft. The space shuttle, for example, had to select specific thruster groups to dock with the ISS. Tugs could offer a way to temporarily add thruster groups in strategic locations to spacecraft in areas where they avoid damage. It could be interesting to see how different cultures might circumvent the need for tugs in a universe like that.
@@f38stingray In the case of the Honorverse, there is the complication that the main engines of most ships are powerful gravity warping devices (gravity manipulation being the main applied phlebotinum of the Honorverse) that would shred any other ship within a range of a few (dozen maybe? EDIT: looked it up, hundreds for large ships) kilometres of the main ship. Ships have reaction thrusters as backups of course, but their main drives would destroy the space station (of course invoked in one book where the heroes use the gravity drive of a shuttle to destroy a battlecruiser). For this trope of space tugs, the idea that while ships COULD dock on their own, they would have to use secondary drive systems which might be weak, etc., would be super relevant. A writer could then use this as a plot point. A random dramatic idea I just had while writing this might be something like the Honorverse example, where bringing up the main drive would destroy the station and kill your friends onboard, but might be necessary to get going in time to stop the ship on a kamikaze run towards the main planet. Of course, this is kind of a forced sacrifice and an engineering/planning idiot ball a la Cold Equations. You'd hope in your universe people would be smart enough to have some sort of rapid (but dangerous and semi-destructive) emergency undock and "push clear" system, or just picket ships ready to deal with such things.
@@ParanoidMarvinMk2 The Honorverse has tugs to move around things around the planets too; in addition to pulling ships to the scrappers and occasionally things out of the shipyard (the ones we see get out are getting out on reaction thrusters, like the second Fearless and the Nike if I remember right) we see the perspective of a tug during the destruction of Hephaestus station where the tugs turn on their own wedges and use it to intercept large pieces of debris from falling onto Landing and other cities.
I assume you mean they must come to a stop long before reaching their destination. You described this as "turning their engine off", but it would be the opposite, they'd have to turn their engine on full throttle to decelerate. Without drag, either the whole of cruise is zero thrust for efficiency, or the entire second half of cruise is decelerating (first half accelerating)(perhaps 1G for comfort). It takes as much effort and time to safely slow down as it does to speed up. An interstellar ship could accelerate to relativistic using laser sails over a century, still be a small fraction of the way to its destination, and be without thrust the rest of the way, and wipeout life on the planet it strikes, even though it had been essentially derelict for a millennia.
@@JWQweqOPDH This was specific to a particular fictional universe, as I said, where the main engines of ships are capable of destroying everything within a hundred kilometers or so, because reasons. They are also very powerful, so ships generally travel at high speeds (0.6-0.8c) for cruise, and can accelerate up to those speeds quickly. The point was that those cruise speeds and powerful engines give a role for tugs. If you ever read the Honorverse, you would know that David Weber is VERY VERY aware of the scale of space and the role of coasting to get somewhere.
Nothing beats leaving port scenes. The adventure calls, the pilots and engineers are checking their departure lists. Space Controls acknowledge starting request, hangar doors open/unlocking docking clamps... Glorious.
I like the concept of an orbital tug basically being a small vessel with a very big engine whose whole purpose is to ferry cargo between the ground and orbit
My setting has something similar, orbital barges. Though they're not tugs, rather they're optimize for lobbing huge amounts of cargo down and up from a gravity well, and are basically just huge platforms with powerful antigravs but not so great engines - just good enough to achieve orbital speeds once they're in space, but that's about it.
@@csweezey18 I mean, most space craft are rockets. Plus, carrier rockets usually only go one way, up. Orbital tugs deliver cargo from planetside to orbit and vice versa, to my mind.
You know what, I really like this idea. So many hero ships are either small freighters or ex-military, so one that's a tug is pretty neat. Imagine a small ship, with a pair of small high-efficiency engines rigged beside the huge main thruster that's like 50% the entire thing. The crew goes around doing jobs for various organizations to salvage ships and clean up convoy lanes, while doing some off the book jobs on the sides. If there's an active conflict in the area that they can operate around, all the better. Imagine all the stories you can tell without even getting into stuff that's personal to the crew!
5:36 In Nebulous Fleet Command, tugs are actually one of the ships you can outfit and bring into combat. They're decently fast and maneuverable but have basically paper armor, but they can fit a pretty deadly 250mm autoloading main gun and punch up against heavier ships if you fit them with missile launchers or rocket launchers. They can also fit a fully sized reactor and act as jamming, early warning, and electronic warfare platforms.
In KOTOR 2 there is, surprisingly, an example of maneuvering thrusters being used by a large Republic warship as it docks with a fuel station. Only time I've seen that visually represented in Star Wars.
This just reminded me of the Planetes anime, where the main job of the main cast is to clean up space debris. The ship was called the Toy Box and was set up as EVA craft but also had armatures to pick up debris. It's style very much reminded me of how tugs can fill in many roles beyond just move things.
@@Vinemaple I found a copy at an anime convention a long time ago. It is under the Bandai publishing, but seeing as it is hard sci-fi its likely hard to find in print.
@@Vinemaple There are literally dozens of sites for anime watching these days. Animension and wcofun are among the most accessible. Probably want an adblocker before going to either but I've been using both for a long while and they're fine.
The Kushan Salvage corvette fits the bill very well. it was made to move around stuff while the mothership was being built and in combat, They can yoink enemy capital ships to be retrofitted, or salvaged.
Space Truckers, both from the Movie said name and from Cowboy Bebop. They are essentially barges with tugs. They would be useful for within star systems for bulk cargo. Either between stations and orbital mining platforms and fabrication factories. Delivering bulk cargo to interstellar ships. You'd also have the rough and tumble subculture of space truckers/tuggers. A bar room brawl aboard a space station adds flavor to your story. Or the occasional weird eyewitness story over too many beers and shots of rotgut.
It's something I started appreciated heavily once I made huge spacecraft in KSP. They tend to dock awkwardly, so having a pod with extra large RCS thruster assist them during docking help a lot.
The Nostromo in Alien (of the Alien franchise), started with a Tug and it was everything you could want in a sci-fi horror tug. (Also a call out to the novel of the same name).
I heard, Nostromo were executive craft but become obsolete in it's role and been customly repurposed as tug ship for various cargo, from space stations to space factories and installations. Wish there's were fan redesign of original ship that takes that idea, it's really interesting to see Nostromo with other drives and more fancy equipment and look.
In a similar fashion, I always love seeing industrial ships in sci Fi as well like the ishimura in dead space, or the mining vessels and barges in eve online. So many cool ways to take the concept!
You should do one on ship tenders. A lot of modern navies have scaled them back or phased them out for being less useful or necessary. It would be interesting to see what space tender ships would be like in the far flung reaches of the universe.
Capital size ship that is 50 percent massive engines for speed and the other half is all cargo and cargo handling for supporting. Minimal weapons and only basic armor and defenses. Alternatively if you want to up the scale even more you can start blurring the line between tender and mobile dock yard as well.
I was thinking of this as well. In settings where it's impossible or impractical to tow crippled vessels to a repair station, for example you can't tow through hyperspace, you need to bring the repair station to the ship. It could also be used to constuct space stations or other space infrastructure in situ.
You missed Cowboy Bebop. Jet, who seemed to be the owner of the primary ship seemed to run a salvage gig. His personal flight craft was specifically a salvage vehicle with a huge claw for grabbing onto things. Whether they wanted to be grabbed or not.
I recently watched Cowboy Bebop for the first time. I couldn't get into it. Interesting universe, funny characters, acceptable dialogue even through the (absolutely fantastic translation), but abysmally plotted. I've rarely watched a "tightly plotted" show like this one was suppose to be where I ended up thinking the entire story was just filler. Like, if the whole thing is just going to be a character drama, and you're not going to have a worthwhile plot, then don't keep dangling the existence of one in front of the audience! Just do the character drama and use straight up filler plots! But if you want to be a tightly plotted show, then actually put the effort in. I also didn't like the fact that it was depressing as hell, but that's a personal preference. There was nothing wrong with that choice, I just didn't appreciate it.
@@jasonwalker9471 The show was designed with Jazz as a guide. Not everything follows the way you expect it to. Its not for everybody. But it is highly regarded. No laws saying you have to like it though. Not everyone likes Jazz.
I really like the look of a utility/industrial craft the multi-purpouse nature allows for some well justified little stories (distress call there, salvage here etc.) while being sufficiently small to feel like home to its crew
In a little sci-fi concept a friend and I have been bouncing around as part of a potential writing project, we've decided to use a Ground-to-Orbit launcher as the 'hero ship' (kind of). In the setting, most ships are built for pretty limited conditions, and many settlements and such exist on planets with higher gravity than Earth, so on most of them some variation of a 'small ship that is 90% volatile engine' is pretty common. The main one, just known as Racker, has the thrust capabilities of a ship 7-8 times it's size. The crew meant to be aboard is essentially a pilot and 5 engineers to keep the thing working as it tows vastly larger ships into space, where the larger ship can then get on it's way. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks the tug concept is VERY underutilized in sci-fi.
The tugboat, for it's size, is the most powerful craft afloat. Agreed 100%. A salvage tug with all kinds of robot arms and equipment would make a great hero ship, either a charming little one that can pull it's weight with the big boys or a large professional one with all manner of cool contraptions. I didn't know about Anchor Handling Tugs before though; I must say they do look cool with those large smooth bows and I've love to see a ship based on them. Funny you mentioning shunting locomotives, I've been semi-thinking about making ships based of various locomotives in the same way SW bases their ships of old warplanes and vessels. There's a lot of neat shapes and aesthetics to be found there.
Tugs are so versatile story setting! You could have small old ship or you can have huge ship with all types of machinery like a huge menupulator arms that can do precise work or be capable to snap ships in half.
Anchors Handling Tug Supply Vessels are also very important to pull up and layout out platform anchors. In order to do so they are equipped with pretty hefty anchor winches and bollards to handle the 10ths of kilometers of anchor line they need pull up. This distinguishes them from Platform Supply Vessels, which are basically the lorry's of the Ocean's.
I imagine tug vehicles being looped into the function of a generalized utility vehicle, the best example I can think of is the resource harvester from homeworld, it can repair vehicles, salvage wreaks, tow nonfunctional vehicles for capture, mine local asteroids, ect..
This is one time that I not only agree with you but Ive actually implemented this in my setting! A modified workbee/tug is the hero ship and such things are useful in the setting for a number of roles including the construction of the massive gates that allow long distance travel across the galaxy, kind of like an oversized stargate but for spaceships. hauling large pieces of a space born mega project like that calls for a lot of things including large tug boats!
I have a feeling the Cerritos/California class from ST:Lower Decks is something of a "hero tug." The designers have stated that it's design is for a "certain something" we haven't seen yet, and it's a smallish work ship with a massive engine and power system.
Cheers for the X4 reference. A great game for those willing to put up with some indie studio jank and the steep learning curve with a big modding scene.
One more for your list: The Eureka Maru from Andromeda is first introduced into the series pulling the Andromeda from a black hole. While officially designated a cargo ship, the Eureka Maru was used as a salvage ship and is probably more aptly described as a tug in actual function. At the very least, it's equipped to work as one.
In the old Independence War space sim games. Several of the Indies ships were explicitly tugs repurposed as Space Technicals. Also, it was one of the early games that used Newtonian physics.
I know you don't really cover ships in anime but I highly recommend the hero ship in outlaw star. A lot of ships in that series have arms to maneuver weapons and other things and even though the ship is not set up to be a salvage ship the owner has it classified as one to use it as a cover.
Saw the title and thought, "Tugs? Not sure how they would be interesting, but hey, it's Spacedock, so this is probably still worth the watch." I'm glad I didn't skip this one as it has so many cool ideas. Definitely an untapped area of worldbuilding.
Hey Great video! I've been saying this for years, that we need to see more of the "mundane" utilitarian and logistics and worker craft that would be plentiful as hell in a full-on space-going economy and civilization! Tugs, and cargo ships, and tankers, and all sorts of other utility craft. I agree this is a real missed opportunity with so much SciFi that we don't get to see these craft.
One of the cool tug-ships that come to my mind is the ARGO SRV from Star Citizen. It's basically two engines with a tractor beam, looks industrial, and is supposed to do exactly what real world tug-vessels do.
In Star Trek, runabouts are often equipped with tractor beams to serve as tugs. In ST beta canon there are dedicated tug ships as well. And Spacedock's favorite video game Battlezone II (AKA Battlezone: Combat Commander, which you use the music from) also has a dedicated tug vehicle.
There are a tonne of dedicated tugs in Star Trek, and they're often seen. DS9, the various TOS movies, and Lower Decks all feature tugs galore. Heck, in Lower Decks the main ship is an engineering support ship that often serves the roll of "large tug".
For an episode dedicated to tugs and industrial salvage vessels, I'd have figured there would be at least one mention of the Homeworld setting. Salvage corvettes are your lifeblood in the first game, and the hero ship is an industrial deep-space mining platform in the semi-sequel HW Cataclysm. Oh well, can't reference all of them all the time, I suppose.
Hope you'll one day make a video about space villain lairs and hideouts! From the safety of nebulae to the protection of gravity wells and hazardous phenomena, many of these places are very cool visually as well as conceptually, leading to really creative problem-solving to not just infiltrate or crack their defenses, but even for merely finding the place and getting there without becoming lost or dust or worse.
There are a few examples in the animated Star Wars series, of various sizes and purposes. Some are massive tugs that haul clusters of freight containers, somewhat comparable with modern freight liners, while others use tractor beams to help with docking maneuvers at space stations.
The spider class tug of IW edge of chaos comes to mind when talking about tug space ship. And it is interesting how a tug ship turned to combat ship idea feels odd for space combat yet somehow fit the space pirate trope.
@@Thepissheadman The salvage corvettes physically move the Frigates. The Ion Frigates, are fixed-mount bow-aimed. So, move the frigate, move the gun's POI.
@@labrat810 Exactly. If memory serves I had two recovery corvettes vs three pirate ion frigates. I kept bouncing back and forth between all three, misaligning them from shooting Homeworld 1 (or whatever the main vessel was named) until I got the upper hand with my other ships and won the scenario.
Space Tugs are the best. The Heroship in my scifi story is a salvage ship that has an array of articulated mechanical arms with which they can hold the wreckage in place to work on, or use it to cling to another ship that lost engine power and give it a tug, or even redirect potential dangerous smaller asteroids. (Salvage-)tugs are super versatile!
This reminds me of superlifters in The Culture series. They're carried by GSVs, whacking great and very fast ships, to help smaller ships carried inside the GSVs to slow down to speeds that their FTL fields can deal with.
5:38 I mean - the Nebulous inspiration is very much direct, considering the OSP ships are quite literally civilian ships with guns bolted on, including literal tugs and cargo feeders, which are pretty much switches - hauling small amounts of cargo for the big cargo liners
I think there's even MORE case for tugs in space than on the sea. In space there's lots satellites or other space infrastructure which needs to be placed in long term orbits. Giving each sat their own drive is costly and wasteful. A tug is basically a freighter whose cargo is on the outside.
Honestly such tug vessels would be very useful for transporting space stations from star system to star system as most space stations would be difficult to store in aregular freighter and it plainly makes more sense to tug them there with an FTL tug than building them on the spot if advanced machine parts and the like are required.
I've had a lot of uses for tugs in Space Engineers. Especially in factions with low player counts. Having a couple small, cheap, powerful ships to help with docking large craft, salvaging debris in places too tight for bigger ships, or helping large ships that have run out of fuel or power get back to a station is extremely useful. And since they're relatively cheap, losing one or two isn't a huge material setback like losing a bigger rescue vehicle would be.
On the topic of barges and tugs, I really love the "detachable head" concept where the majority of a ship's mass is skeleton structures for housing containers and the cockpit is the only fully capable vessel. This is a perfect main character vessel because you got the home base and the adventure ship. The cargo section has limited mobility and controls, but the cockpit section contains the hyperdrive and more powerful engines. It's not really a "barge and tug" but not a single continuous ship either.
The hull series of ship from star citizen and the Srv are two good exemple of what you're explaining in this video one is a freighter and the other one a tow ship
I like the idea of Space Tugs, but for Long Range instead of short so a bunch of smaller craft can 'piggyback' on a 'commuter tug' that is just a MASSIVE engine with fuel tanks & a cockpit - or maybe running constantly on eliptical orbit between planets/gates/etc.
The video of the Enterprise D saucer recovery shows tugs being used to lift it from the surface. I know from early design and story boarding for TNG they wanted to show a "tug" that would be as big as a ship, It would essentially wrap around and grab the ship. Mostly it was all structure and warp drive. This was back when Tractorbeams couldn't work at warp. However due to the same old "costs to much" they just went with glossing over and using Tractorbeams at warp.
As a professional mariner, I have a deep respect for all tug and towboat operators. We definitely need more working vessels, and working people, in science fiction! As a KSP player, while I don't use my RCS-powered station tugs, or my rescue and salvage vessels, very often, when I need them they are crucial, and can mean the difference between reverting/restarting and continuing. I think it's dubious to call them tugs, but what I do use a lot of are recoverable drones that deliver modules or cargo to space stations or other vessels, then de-orbit and splash down on Kerbin. It started with the need for something like the Soviet _Progres_ freighter, and now they're almost half of my launches.
The Spaceship Hunter-Gratzner from Pitch Black is a sorta modular ship / tug where the back and the front are detachable and cargo / transport pods are carried in the middle
Hanving lots of smaller engine drones for salvage and towing makes a lot of sense. Most ships won't have towing in mind for long trips, so we won't have the hard point needed for the tug ship to get a hold without damaging it. Thing towing a car that doesn’t have a tow hitch. If you wrap a rope around the hood or something, something is gonna get damaged. But if you spread the force across the ship's surface with lots of smaller drones, you can exert the same total force to the ship, while applying not as much to each point of contact.
I remember the tugs in Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon. You can use them to pull around your ships, enemy ships, ally ships, ram light craft out of existence. All sorts of fun things. Mostly, you tow ships on your team so it can be repaired. Sometimes you haul a barge.
Great piece, I agree on the utility hero ship, an Expanse spin off would be awesome for that. Thanks for mentioning the Nostromo, its the first one I thought of, Go Tugs!
One of my favourite sci-fi spaceship ever is definitely the largely forgotten Tug-314 interstellar tug from Star Wars. Instead of using mechanical arms, it uses two massive powerful tractor beam projectors mounted on each side of the vessel. It also comes in two different flavours, the standard small variant and the large variant. The standard variant is the most commonly used around space stations and posts used to move around light cruisers and frigates, while the large version is utilized on major space ports used to move around star destroyers. Not only is this ship so damn gorgeous, it also serves several other roles such as search and rescue(literally saved R2-D2 and the universe as a result), firefighting, and salvage operations.
Star citizen is getting a tug ship later this year. Already has a few great industrial ships like the Reclaimer salvage ship seen near the end of this video.
Conventional Naval Tugs FOR towing space craft in and out of the ocean also makes a lot of sense! If you land your Acclamator, or other large buoyant spacecraft, at sea having an set of TUGS to guide and dock them makes a lot of sense. Another very useful kind of TUG in atmosphere would be the ones pulling cloud cities and large floating structures. In Science Fiction setting some of the most common barges for a tug to tow is the flying barge.
3:15 I came here because one of the things I did in KSP was create manned and unmanned 'tugs' for moving stuff around a space station, since each tug could provide more thrust to move big objects better than an RCS thruster, and by not bringing those engines with me for "the last mile" it saved payload mass. Space plane goes up, tugs unload the supply payload and attach it to the station. Or "giant interplanetary engineering section" goes up, tugs drag it to the craft and attach it since it can't maneuver on its own.
My favorite ship class to use back in my SFB days was the Kzinti CGT battle tug variant with battle pods. It was essentially a monitor of sorts. Slow af but armed to the teeth and could take a beating.
Thunderbird 3 from the latest version of thunderbirds has a tug style feel when it's 3 arms unfold and utilises grappling lines to drag debris, other ships etc around in space
I love that the Ptolemy Class got a brief clip shown at the end as its one of my favorite Star Trek Designs. I'd also have to mention the Starfleet Tug Ships that briefly appeared in DS9 and the Republic TUG-314 from Star Wars the Clone Wars as cool utilitarian designs that may not be the prettiest ships but have a cool industrial look that makes them seem good at their jobs.
Speaking of the game where you fly around and salvage stuff, we played an RPG once where we flew around in a light freighter. One day we found an attack ship with a huge railgun that we didn't have enough fuel to even fire, let alone fly. So, we hauled it around the solar system for a few months using it's own inertia to keep floating beside us and only intervened when we needed to stop it or start it moving.
The Starfinder tabletop RPG introduced 'Hauler' frame vessels; capable of fielding Oversized engines meant to haul things bigger than themselves, but also capable of getting a speed boost from them when unencumbered, with room for on-board maintenance expansion bays or other modifications meant for repair and rescue. I introduced a pair to the fleet my crew is a part of and named them Nomadic and Traffic. Bonus points if you know what that references.
I've been playing Starsector recently, and it has a ship class called the "Ox" which is labelled as a "tug" and gives your fleet a small boost in its travel speed at the cost of very high fuel use when you use it in FTL travel. Really cool if you have the fuel supply to run it, and helps keep your bigger ships moving more like smaller ones do.
This is actually how freighters work in the Freespace universe: few have meaningful onboard cargo capacity, but they dock with and move around external cargo containers instead. The larger ones are also used for recovering or capturing disabled vessels.
This was a semi-common use for Al'kesh's in Stargate. The most notable example of one is the Lucian Alliance Freighter, which was really just a bunch of cargo modules linked via tractor beams to the back of an Al'kesh that was pulling it.
Working on an actual tug boat myself, I would love to see more tugs in Sci-Fi or industrial ships as hero ships, there are so many aspects in our job that would fit neatly in science fiction that its a shame they did not do so already
The Homeworld series also featured tugs. They were a significant tactical option, one which was sometimes mandatory for several campaign missions, and were a great way to put your opponent on their back foot if you could execute a grab of a major capital ship. Then there’s the “junkyard dog”. Which is a mission-specific _enemy_ tug, one that does what you normally try to do with your own, but far more powerful. It takes any of your capital ships on its own and hauls them away in order to reprogram them as part of its own stockpiled, salvaged fleet. The mere _capability_ of being able to drag other larger things around, including _unwilling_ other larger things (if you piled onto them with several tugs), could make for great plot pivots. And it has. Though it’s… not actually a tug… the Deathstar being able to execute massive long-range tractor beams made it… a tug. A really, really awkward pull-things-in-to-devour-them kind of tug (think of it like a really, really sluggish Pac-Man). Finally, if you’re showing a tractor-trailer arrangement as a tug, there’s a closer analogy: a terminal tractor. These things have an even smaller profile than most tractors, often only one seat and an accordingly smaller cab, and a much faster hitch that can engage and disengage from a trailer comparatively rapidly. They’re used for moving trailers about in a trailer yard, including both docking and undocking them from loading bays and just plain shuffling things around in the yard as needed. Those are your real “tugboat”-style workhorses. Fewer in number, but where they’re in use they’re way, way busier.
In Nathan Lowell's sci-fi books you encounter tugs often in the stories, though always as quick bit parts. My favorite tug in a game is the Federation Battle Tug in Star Fleet Battles
Tugs in space really make more sense than every craft having it's own RCS thrusters to move around. When fuel consumption is a problem, it might be useful to not haul around tons of rcs fuel, or having to save fuel for eventual docking. Especially for cargo ships that don't need to move about very much. Warships might still have considerable amounts of actuation fuel, just to guarantee maneuverability in combat, as do fighters, but cargo ships basically only have to fire in one direction for a long time, then fire in the opposite direction for about the same time. The rest can be done by tug boats or drones
This is exactly why I love the runabouts, and the two cargo hauler ship classes from Enterprise. In the runabouts' case it's both speculative from the shows but also explicitly designed-for in the sketches, where the crew area at the back could detach and something much longer go in its place. In the Enterprise example we're shown the long cargo-section trains the tiny but powerful haulers pull. Definitely agree we could see a lot more of it. So many have weird concepts like "cargo shuttles" when, like, why use interior space from your space-car when it could pull a much bigger load behind it! Anyway, if you're not familiar with the TV show "Tugs" (a spinoff of Thomas the Tank Engine set in a dock), you might like it. The opening theme includes some narration, which just calls-out that they've got the highest strength to size ratio of any water craft.
That wave piercing anchor handling ship (an Ulstein SX157 apparently) is absolutely gorgeous. Might have to fire up From the Depths and try to replicate that. On a more relevant note, The Culture, one of the highest tech sci fi settings out there, has tugs. Ironically, their job is largely to help small ships get up to the speeds that only larger ships can reach normally, as top speed and acceleration in the Culture universe is pretty much entirely dependent on the shear quantity of matter you have dedicated to your engines. The fastest ships are also the largest, in the hundreds of kilometers long.
Another great use for a tug or tug-type vessel in space would be getting unmanned cargo modules up to speed and then catching them on the other end. If sci-fi is accurate at all, there will be mining in the asteroid belt and even the Oort Cloud. The only way that such tasks remain profitable is to keep transport costs low. What could be cheaper than setting a ballistic path, getting the module up to speed, and then letting it go? One tug could propel many modules, one at a time, and another could match speed and catch them at the other end.
Honestly though I have always had a soft spot for industrial type vessals in science fiction, it always makes for a amazing bit of world building in order to make a universe seem grounded and real as even if the main story is about military matters the industrial side of things is always crucial in such settings.
AHTS former crewperson. Can confirm how awesome they are. Moved rigs and cargo, it does everything and they are tough as nails. Squish most other ships because of the ice rated armoured hulls. If you get a chance to tour one, do so. Especially the bridge with the forward and rear control stations. Right out of science fiction, MFD touch screens and joysticks. LIDAR, GMDSS, two types of RADAR, GPS, and GMDSS radios. Very high tech, arguably the highest, industry. Trust me on checking out the bridge, throw some green paper over the windows and it could be straight out of Firefly.
My sci-fi setting has a lot of tugs, from freighter tugs to docking and orbital tugs designed to help larger ships in potentially crowded planetary orbit conditions. There are also a lot of 'worker bees', which are basically a variant of the tug with smaller engines. Which are also helpful for moving small craft that are not under power (Fighters/Shuttles). Utility vessels play and important role in my setting and it's kinda sad how underused they tend to be.
I once imagined a war-time scenario in space of a repair and refit station. It would have these external docking bays with smaller tug vessels flying out and clamping on and guiding the larger ships as they come in for repairs, as in many cases they may be too damaged to safely navigate themselves into the space dock. They would also grab and yank off loose parts or catch debris to prevent it drifting into the station or other ships. A very hectic environment where in some cases you have limited time to fly out, grab a ship and safely guide it in before it collides with the station.
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I would also say that space tugs would have oversized powerplants, so as a hero ship, they could add heavier shields or weapons than would be expected for a vessel of that size.
I'm surprise you didn't mention the og of the tug boat world, Little Toot. When it comes to the hero ship being a tug craft I mean.
I'd add in EVA pods like the pods in 2001 or the Worker Bee from Star Trek as overlooked and extremely handy. Maybe someday you could do a video about them as well?
I'm imagining a scene where a group has to move a gigantic fortress bristling with weapons so that it can get into position to destroy its enemy, but can't do so on its own, so it has a tug pulling it while all weapons on the fortress are firing at all of the enemies around it.
I could also see tugs being used to move small debris in an asteroid field. Asteroid fields are really poorly portrayed in sci fi though. An asteroid field would be a cool place to have a battle if your ships were running at high impulse though
We definitely need more leaving port scenes in sci-fi.
Babylon 5 really nailed space traffic for the time and budget.
@@jtjames79yes
The sci-fi story I'm writing actually introduces the hero ship for the first time while in port. Its an old cargo ship that has been made obsolete by larger and newer cargo vessels, so now it has basically specialized in delivering luxury goods in record times in order to remain competitive.
Oh AGREED.
These are some of my all time favorites and they're so relatively rare.
@@mitwhitgaming7722 I like that, that's cool
Infrastructure and commercial vessels are VASTLY underrepresented in sci-fi.
Unfortunately they're not considered sexy enough sci-fi to be more visible. That's like ignoring the importance of logistics while gushing over technical details of military equipment.
In my story, i'm designing my hero ship to be a commercial passenger transport, Helps with income and passport visa while in foreign ports. i love the idea of having a merchant/mall deck for traveling passengers and locals while docked.
@@IN-tm8mwThat's neat. I see a lot of ST:TNG style "which guest alien has done it THIS time" episode potential here.
@@twandepan I got the idea by combining Startrek with a game called Suikoden. I wanted the ship to start off relativity empty but fill up with shops and crewmen as the plot advances. This way, each "Guest" could be potentially a new friend or foe.
If I didn't know any better I'd think every ship in the Star Trek universe was some super advanced warship, and normal things like freighters, cruise lines, and personal craft don't exist.
One of my favorite instances of a "tug" inspired vessel was the shield ships from Star Wars Heir to the Empire that were specialized to protect other ships from the intense radiation of a particular star.
So basically Icarus from Sunshine
Shield ship is best waifu fite me
@darkleome5409 Basically, but Heir to the Empire came out 15 years earlier.
I kinda always imagined them looking a bit like those giant ships from Eve online. Basically an umbrella.
I agree that this counts. Working vessels in sci-fi FTW!
I love the idea that the Millennium Falcon is a kind of barge tug, because it explains so much that otherwise doesn't make sense. It's a small ship with massively overpowered engines designed to push huge pallets of freight around the galaxy. Now that is something you could turn into a speedy blockade runner while making it continue to look like a tramp "freighter" (really a freight tug).
Also, and more importantly, explains why there is no cargo space on a "freighter".
@@steemlenn8797 Exactly!
@@steemlenn8797 My thoughts exactly.
The off-centre flight deck is also a big give away to aid the view ahead passed the containers. The view to the left sucks, though.
@@toxictony4230 which is why the sensor dish is over there
The Salvage Corvettes and Resource Harvesters of the Homeworld games fit in here perfectly and deserved a mention. Several missions use them as integral to the plot.
Also for their shocking combat effectiveness. What's that, an attack fleet? It's mine now te he he.
If we're looking at Homeworld, the Junkyard Dog needs a mention. They made a tug something to be feared.
Another example from videogames could be the Trains from Freelancer. They're just a tug with a pair of engines hanging out at the sides and an attach point at the back for cargo units. As the name implies, you'd have a long train of cargo units with a single tug at the front used to move bulk cargos around in a system. Their appearance was reflected in gameplay as well - instead of destroying the tug itself, you could smash the cargo units it was pulling to loot them without killing the crew.
Edit to add: Just remembered another one from Homeworld 2 - the Progenitor Movers. The 'hero' fleet didn't have a dedicated tug ship anymore, but their mining ships had small multi-purpose arms that could be used for repair work or pulling other ships around.
Given how rarely they're given as examples, Spacedock must have to pay a fee or something for each mention of a ship or concept used in Homeworld.
How long have you tried to salvage the Turanic Carrier before you realized you can't?
Don't forget the trusty Ramming Frigates from Cataclysm. Designed probably for bumping around asteroids and other ships, but later pressed into a combat role.
An interesting take on this is in the Honorverse. Since any large vessel that can get up to a decent speed is a potential weapon vs. stations or planets, and the universe has some mind control shenanigans going on, ships have to power down their engines and wait for a tug WAY out. The tugs have dual pilots and the pilots are very highly cleared and screened.
This was the kind of purpose I was thinking of. On a related note, tugs might be helpful since engine exhaust (or even thruster exhaust) could damage parts of a station or docking craft. The space shuttle, for example, had to select specific thruster groups to dock with the ISS.
Tugs could offer a way to temporarily add thruster groups in strategic locations to spacecraft in areas where they avoid damage. It could be interesting to see how different cultures might circumvent the need for tugs in a universe like that.
@@f38stingray In the case of the Honorverse, there is the complication that the main engines of most ships are powerful gravity warping devices (gravity manipulation being the main applied phlebotinum of the Honorverse) that would shred any other ship within a range of a few (dozen maybe? EDIT: looked it up, hundreds for large ships) kilometres of the main ship. Ships have reaction thrusters as backups of course, but their main drives would destroy the space station (of course invoked in one book where the heroes use the gravity drive of a shuttle to destroy a battlecruiser).
For this trope of space tugs, the idea that while ships COULD dock on their own, they would have to use secondary drive systems which might be weak, etc., would be super relevant. A writer could then use this as a plot point. A random dramatic idea I just had while writing this might be something like the Honorverse example, where bringing up the main drive would destroy the station and kill your friends onboard, but might be necessary to get going in time to stop the ship on a kamikaze run towards the main planet. Of course, this is kind of a forced sacrifice and an engineering/planning idiot ball a la Cold Equations. You'd hope in your universe people would be smart enough to have some sort of rapid (but dangerous and semi-destructive) emergency undock and "push clear" system, or just picket ships ready to deal with such things.
@@ParanoidMarvinMk2 The Honorverse has tugs to move around things around the planets too; in addition to pulling ships to the scrappers and occasionally things out of the shipyard (the ones we see get out are getting out on reaction thrusters, like the second Fearless and the Nike if I remember right) we see the perspective of a tug during the destruction of Hephaestus station where the tugs turn on their own wedges and use it to intercept large pieces of debris from falling onto Landing and other cities.
I assume you mean they must come to a stop long before reaching their destination. You described this as "turning their engine off", but it would be the opposite, they'd have to turn their engine on full throttle to decelerate. Without drag, either the whole of cruise is zero thrust for efficiency, or the entire second half of cruise is decelerating (first half accelerating)(perhaps 1G for comfort). It takes as much effort and time to safely slow down as it does to speed up. An interstellar ship could accelerate to relativistic using laser sails over a century, still be a small fraction of the way to its destination, and be without thrust the rest of the way, and wipeout life on the planet it strikes, even though it had been essentially derelict for a millennia.
@@JWQweqOPDH This was specific to a particular fictional universe, as I said, where the main engines of ships are capable of destroying everything within a hundred kilometers or so, because reasons. They are also very powerful, so ships generally travel at high speeds (0.6-0.8c) for cruise, and can accelerate up to those speeds quickly. The point was that those cruise speeds and powerful engines give a role for tugs. If you ever read the Honorverse, you would know that David Weber is VERY VERY aware of the scale of space and the role of coasting to get somewhere.
Leaving port/docking scenes definitely have a special place in my heart!
Nothing beats leaving port scenes. The adventure calls, the pilots and engineers are checking their departure lists. Space Controls acknowledge starting request, hangar doors open/unlocking docking clamps... Glorious.
The Star Trek scenes I never skip.
Mine would be, the ones similar to 1979 movie, mysterious and spooky. With semi/pseudo realistic designed ships.
I like the concept of an orbital tug basically being a small vessel with a very big engine whose whole purpose is to ferry cargo between the ground and orbit
My guy... You just described rockets...
My setting has something similar, orbital barges. Though they're not tugs, rather they're optimize for lobbing huge amounts of cargo down and up from a gravity well, and are basically just huge platforms with powerful antigravs but not so great engines - just good enough to achieve orbital speeds once they're in space, but that's about it.
@@csweezey18 😂
@@csweezey18 Yeah but orbital tugs sound better...
@@csweezey18
I mean, most space craft are rockets.
Plus, carrier rockets usually only go one way, up.
Orbital tugs deliver cargo from planetside to orbit and vice versa, to my mind.
You know what, I really like this idea. So many hero ships are either small freighters or ex-military, so one that's a tug is pretty neat.
Imagine a small ship, with a pair of small high-efficiency engines rigged beside the huge main thruster that's like 50% the entire thing. The crew goes around doing jobs for various organizations to salvage ships and clean up convoy lanes, while doing some off the book jobs on the sides. If there's an active conflict in the area that they can operate around, all the better. Imagine all the stories you can tell without even getting into stuff that's personal to the crew!
5:36
In Nebulous Fleet Command, tugs are actually one of the ships you can outfit and bring into combat.
They're decently fast and maneuverable but have basically paper armor, but they can fit a pretty deadly 250mm autoloading main gun and punch up against heavier ships if you fit them with missile launchers or rocket launchers.
They can also fit a fully sized reactor and act as jamming, early warning, and electronic warfare platforms.
I remember in the clone wars republic medical stations had tugs to help the medical frigets dock with the station
And funnily enough, those tugs are built by MandalMotors. Don't ask me why.
In KOTOR 2 there is, surprisingly, an example of maneuvering thrusters being used by a large Republic warship as it docks with a fuel station. Only time I've seen that visually represented in Star Wars.
You can't forget the action potential of the grappler ships from Outlaw Star. It was like watching a mecha battle between lanky mermaids.
I wish giant robot arms on spaceships was more of a thing, that has so much potential.
This just reminded me of the Planetes anime, where the main job of the main cast is to clean up space debris. The ship was called the Toy Box and was set up as EVA craft but also had armatures to pick up debris. It's style very much reminded me of how tugs can fill in many roles beyond just move things.
I always appreciated how its little skeletal “skiff” craft was named the Fishbone. (I translated the show, BTW.)
How did you watch Planetes? I've been trying to find it for years! In the US, that is.
@@Vinemaple I found a copy at an anime convention a long time ago. It is under the Bandai publishing, but seeing as it is hard sci-fi its likely hard to find in print.
@@Vinemaple I had to search for a bit, but I finally found a fairly viewable version here on RUclips.
@@Vinemaple There are literally dozens of sites for anime watching these days. Animension and wcofun are among the most accessible. Probably want an adblocker before going to either but I've been using both for a long while and they're fine.
The Kushan Salvage corvette fits the bill very well. it was made to move around stuff while the mothership was being built and in combat, They can yoink enemy capital ships to be retrofitted, or salvaged.
Don't forget about the movers or the “raming” frigate
@@Thepissheadman aye.
Hippity hoppity, we take your property!
Space Truckers, both from the Movie said name and from Cowboy Bebop. They are essentially barges with tugs. They would be useful for within star systems for bulk cargo. Either between stations and orbital mining platforms and fabrication factories. Delivering bulk cargo to interstellar ships. You'd also have the rough and tumble subculture of space truckers/tuggers. A bar room brawl aboard a space station adds flavor to your story. Or the occasional weird eyewitness story over too many beers and shots of rotgut.
Heavy Metal Queen.
It's something I started appreciated heavily once I made huge spacecraft in KSP. They tend to dock awkwardly, so having a pod with extra large RCS thruster assist them during docking help a lot.
They have them in Star Wars: Tie fighter. Tiny little tugs that moved cargo containers and recovered ships during capture missions.
Yeah and also got concussion missiles or proton torpedos launched at them
@@ravneiv And, of course, YOU gotta stop them.
The Nostromo in Alien (of the Alien franchise), started with a Tug and it was everything you could want in a sci-fi horror tug. (Also a call out to the novel of the same name).
Ahem. "A call-out to the ship of the same name in Joseph Conrad's novel 'Heart of Darkness.'"
@@seanbigay1042 Yes that too.
I heard, Nostromo were executive craft but become
obsolete in it's role and been customly repurposed as tug ship for various cargo, from space stations to space factories and installations.
Wish there's were fan redesign of original ship that takes that idea, it's really interesting to see Nostromo with other drives and more fancy equipment and look.
In a similar fashion, I always love seeing industrial ships in sci Fi as well like the ishimura in dead space, or the mining vessels and barges in eve online. So many cool ways to take the concept!
You should do one on ship tenders. A lot of modern navies have scaled them back or phased them out for being less useful or necessary. It would be interesting to see what space tender ships would be like in the far flung reaches of the universe.
Capital size ship that is 50 percent massive engines for speed and the other half is all cargo and cargo handling for supporting. Minimal weapons and only basic armor and defenses.
Alternatively if you want to up the scale even more you can start blurring the line between tender and mobile dock yard as well.
I was thinking of this as well. In settings where it's impossible or impractical to tow crippled vessels to a repair station, for example you can't tow through hyperspace, you need to bring the repair station to the ship. It could also be used to constuct space stations or other space infrastructure in situ.
Now I'm nostalgic for the TV show Tugs. That was a wonderful show, really.
With a killer theme tune!
@kaitlyn__L The tugboat, for it's size, is the most powerful vehicle alfloat.
I appreciate the heck out of how you put the credits for each shot at the bottom of the screen.
You missed Cowboy Bebop. Jet, who seemed to be the owner of the primary ship seemed to run a salvage gig. His personal flight craft was specifically a salvage vehicle with a huge claw for grabbing onto things. Whether they wanted to be grabbed or not.
I recently watched Cowboy Bebop for the first time. I couldn't get into it. Interesting universe, funny characters, acceptable dialogue even through the (absolutely fantastic translation), but abysmally plotted. I've rarely watched a "tightly plotted" show like this one was suppose to be where I ended up thinking the entire story was just filler. Like, if the whole thing is just going to be a character drama, and you're not going to have a worthwhile plot, then don't keep dangling the existence of one in front of the audience! Just do the character drama and use straight up filler plots! But if you want to be a tightly plotted show, then actually put the effort in.
I also didn't like the fact that it was depressing as hell, but that's a personal preference. There was nothing wrong with that choice, I just didn't appreciate it.
@@jasonwalker9471 The show was designed with Jazz as a guide. Not everything follows the way you expect it to. Its not for everybody. But it is highly regarded. No laws saying you have to like it though. Not everyone likes Jazz.
Awesome ship, really fits him
I really like the look of a utility/industrial craft the multi-purpouse nature allows for some well justified little stories (distress call there, salvage here etc.) while being sufficiently small to feel like home to its crew
In a little sci-fi concept a friend and I have been bouncing around as part of a potential writing project, we've decided to use a Ground-to-Orbit launcher as the 'hero ship' (kind of). In the setting, most ships are built for pretty limited conditions, and many settlements and such exist on planets with higher gravity than Earth, so on most of them some variation of a 'small ship that is 90% volatile engine' is pretty common.
The main one, just known as Racker, has the thrust capabilities of a ship 7-8 times it's size. The crew meant to be aboard is essentially a pilot and 5 engineers to keep the thing working as it tows vastly larger ships into space, where the larger ship can then get on it's way.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks the tug concept is VERY underutilized in sci-fi.
Tugs are immensely cool little vessels, there's a certain charm IMO to something like a harbor tug
Hardspace Shipbreaker had a few Tug and Salvage Vessels. Those were always fun to break apart.
The tugboat, for it's size, is the most powerful craft afloat.
Agreed 100%. A salvage tug with all kinds of robot arms and equipment would make a great hero ship, either a charming little one that can pull it's weight with the big boys or a large professional one with all manner of cool contraptions. I didn't know about Anchor Handling Tugs before though; I must say they do look cool with those large smooth bows and I've love to see a ship based on them.
Funny you mentioning shunting locomotives, I've been semi-thinking about making ships based of various locomotives in the same way SW bases their ships of old warplanes and vessels. There's a lot of neat shapes and aesthetics to be found there.
Tugs are so versatile story setting! You could have small old ship or you can have huge ship with all types of machinery like a huge menupulator arms that can do precise work or be capable to snap ships in half.
Anchors Handling Tug Supply Vessels are also very important to pull up and layout out platform anchors. In order to do so they are equipped with pretty hefty anchor winches and bollards to handle the 10ths of kilometers of anchor line they need pull up. This distinguishes them from Platform Supply Vessels, which are basically the lorry's of the Ocean's.
I imagine tug vehicles being looped into the function of a generalized utility vehicle, the best example I can think of is the resource harvester from homeworld, it can repair vehicles, salvage wreaks, tow nonfunctional vehicles for capture, mine local asteroids, ect..
This is one time that I not only agree with you but Ive actually implemented this in my setting! A modified workbee/tug is the hero ship and such things are useful in the setting for a number of roles including the construction of the massive gates that allow long distance travel across the galaxy, kind of like an oversized stargate but for spaceships. hauling large pieces of a space born mega project like that calls for a lot of things including large tug boats!
I have a feeling the Cerritos/California class from ST:Lower Decks is something of a "hero tug." The designers have stated that it's design is for a "certain something" we haven't seen yet, and it's a smallish work ship with a massive engine and power system.
Cheers for the X4 reference. A great game for those willing to put up with some indie studio jank and the steep learning curve with a big modding scene.
seconded
Some say, jank is the spice of life.
One more for your list: The Eureka Maru from Andromeda is first introduced into the series pulling the Andromeda from a black hole. While officially designated a cargo ship, the Eureka Maru was used as a salvage ship and is probably more aptly described as a tug in actual function. At the very least, it's equipped to work as one.
In the old Independence War space sim games. Several of the Indies ships were explicitly tugs repurposed as Space Technicals. Also, it was one of the early games that used Newtonian physics.
I know you don't really cover ships in anime but I highly recommend the hero ship in outlaw star. A lot of ships in that series have arms to maneuver weapons and other things and even though the ship is not set up to be a salvage ship the owner has it classified as one to use it as a cover.
Saw the title and thought, "Tugs? Not sure how they would be interesting, but hey, it's Spacedock, so this is probably still worth the watch." I'm glad I didn't skip this one as it has so many cool ideas. Definitely an untapped area of worldbuilding.
Glad you liked it!
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
Hey Great video! I've been saying this for years, that we need to see more of the "mundane" utilitarian and logistics and worker craft that would be plentiful as hell in a full-on space-going economy and civilization! Tugs, and cargo ships, and tankers, and all sorts of other utility craft.
I agree this is a real missed opportunity with so much SciFi that we don't get to see these craft.
One of the things I loved about Homeworld were the salvage ..I think frigates…..not tugs but ship stealers
Salvage Corvettes... 90% of how you won the first game is how many enemy ships you could steal.
Ahh, the line of turned Tiidani Ion Cannon frigates marching out past the render distance. Fun times 😊
One of the cool tug-ships that come to my mind is the ARGO SRV from Star Citizen. It's basically two engines with a tractor beam, looks industrial, and is supposed to do exactly what real world tug-vessels do.
In Star Trek, runabouts are often equipped with tractor beams to serve as tugs. In ST beta canon there are dedicated tug ships as well.
And Spacedock's favorite video game Battlezone II (AKA Battlezone: Combat Commander, which you use the music from) also has a dedicated tug vehicle.
There are a tonne of dedicated tugs in Star Trek, and they're often seen. DS9, the various TOS movies, and Lower Decks all feature tugs galore. Heck, in Lower Decks the main ship is an engineering support ship that often serves the roll of "large tug".
@@jasonwalker9471 Indeed.
For an episode dedicated to tugs and industrial salvage vessels, I'd have figured there would be at least one mention of the Homeworld setting. Salvage corvettes are your lifeblood in the first game, and the hero ship is an industrial deep-space mining platform in the semi-sequel HW Cataclysm. Oh well, can't reference all of them all the time, I suppose.
Hope you'll one day make a video about space villain lairs and hideouts! From the safety of nebulae to the protection of gravity wells and hazardous phenomena, many of these places are very cool visually as well as conceptually, leading to really creative problem-solving to not just infiltrate or crack their defenses, but even for merely finding the place and getting there without becoming lost or dust or worse.
The fanmade image of Millenium Falcon is really great. I always wondered what makes this thing a "cargo ship" as it is described in Episode IV.
The DS-12 Toy Box from the anime Plants is a great example of tug or utility space ship. Also well worth watch, for a bit hard-ish sci-fi.
Dont forget Firefly had an actual salvage/tug ship in the show, in the episode "Out of Gas". Very cool looking ship
I always love the ship and tech breakdowns he on Spacedock. Please keep em coming!
There are a few examples in the animated Star Wars series, of various sizes and purposes. Some are massive tugs that haul clusters of freight containers, somewhat comparable with modern freight liners, while others use tractor beams to help with docking maneuvers at space stations.
Bonus points for mentioning X4 😍
When playing the old X-Wing game I always loved the design of the tug it featured 😅
The spider class tug of IW edge of chaos comes to mind when talking about tug space ship. And it is interesting how a tug ship turned to combat ship idea feels odd for space combat yet somehow fit the space pirate trope.
I’ve seen concept art of the Corellian Freighter being used as a tug but it’s something else to have Spacedock cover it
Yes! I remember using tugs to knock enemy electro-magnetic gun ships out of alignment in the first "Homeworld" game.
IDK why I never thought of using the salvage corvette for disrupting aimed ion frigate fire. nice!
I know you can capture those frigates but how would you use them to disrupt fire?
@@Thepissheadman The salvage corvettes physically move the Frigates. The Ion Frigates, are fixed-mount bow-aimed. So, move the frigate, move the gun's POI.
@@labrat810 Exactly. If memory serves I had two recovery corvettes vs three pirate ion frigates. I kept bouncing back and forth between all three, misaligning them from shooting Homeworld 1 (or whatever the main vessel was named) until I got the upper hand with my other ships and won the scenario.
Space Tugs are the best. The Heroship in my scifi story is a salvage ship that has an array of articulated mechanical arms with which they can hold the wreckage in place to work on, or use it to cling to another ship that lost engine power and give it a tug, or even redirect potential dangerous smaller asteroids. (Salvage-)tugs are super versatile!
This reminds me of superlifters in The Culture series. They're carried by GSVs, whacking great and very fast ships, to help smaller ships carried inside the GSVs to slow down to speeds that their FTL fields can deal with.
5:38 I mean - the Nebulous inspiration is very much direct, considering the OSP ships are quite literally civilian ships with guns bolted on, including literal tugs and cargo feeders, which are pretty much switches - hauling small amounts of cargo for the big cargo liners
I'm afraid I'm very behind on my Nebulous knowledge, need to give it another try!
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
I think there's even MORE case for tugs in space than on the sea. In space there's lots satellites or other space infrastructure which needs to be placed in long term orbits. Giving each sat their own drive is costly and wasteful. A tug is basically a freighter whose cargo is on the outside.
Honestly such tug vessels would be very useful for transporting space stations from star system to star system as most space stations would be difficult to store in aregular freighter and it plainly makes more sense to tug them there with an FTL tug than building them on the spot if advanced machine parts and the like are required.
I've had a lot of uses for tugs in Space Engineers. Especially in factions with low player counts. Having a couple small, cheap, powerful ships to help with docking large craft, salvaging debris in places too tight for bigger ships, or helping large ships that have run out of fuel or power get back to a station is extremely useful. And since they're relatively cheap, losing one or two isn't a huge material setback like losing a bigger rescue vehicle would be.
On the topic of barges and tugs, I really love the "detachable head" concept where the majority of a ship's mass is skeleton structures for housing containers and the cockpit is the only fully capable vessel. This is a perfect main character vessel because you got the home base and the adventure ship. The cargo section has limited mobility and controls, but the cockpit section contains the hyperdrive and more powerful engines. It's not really a "barge and tug" but not a single continuous ship either.
The hull series of ship from star citizen and the Srv are two good exemple of what you're explaining in this video one is a freighter and the other one a tow ship
I like the idea of Space Tugs, but for Long Range instead of short so a bunch of smaller craft can 'piggyback' on a 'commuter tug' that is just a MASSIVE engine with fuel tanks & a cockpit - or maybe running constantly on eliptical orbit between planets/gates/etc.
The video of the Enterprise D saucer recovery shows tugs being used to lift it from the surface.
I know from early design and story boarding for TNG they wanted to show a "tug" that would be as big as a ship, It would essentially wrap around and grab the ship. Mostly it was all structure and warp drive. This was back when Tractorbeams couldn't work at warp. However due to the same old "costs to much" they just went with glossing over and using Tractorbeams at warp.
As a professional mariner, I have a deep respect for all tug and towboat operators. We definitely need more working vessels, and working people, in science fiction!
As a KSP player, while I don't use my RCS-powered station tugs, or my rescue and salvage vessels, very often, when I need them they are crucial, and can mean the difference between reverting/restarting and continuing. I think it's dubious to call them tugs, but what I do use a lot of are recoverable drones that deliver modules or cargo to space stations or other vessels, then de-orbit and splash down on Kerbin. It started with the need for something like the Soviet _Progres_ freighter, and now they're almost half of my launches.
The Spaceship Hunter-Gratzner from Pitch Black is a sorta modular ship / tug where the back and the front are detachable and cargo / transport pods are carried in the middle
Hanving lots of smaller engine drones for salvage and towing makes a lot of sense. Most ships won't have towing in mind for long trips, so we won't have the hard point needed for the tug ship to get a hold without damaging it.
Thing towing a car that doesn’t have a tow hitch. If you wrap a rope around the hood or something, something is gonna get damaged.
But if you spread the force across the ship's surface with lots of smaller drones, you can exert the same total force to the ship, while applying not as much to each point of contact.
I remember the tugs in Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon. You can use them to pull around your ships, enemy ships, ally ships, ram light craft out of existence. All sorts of fun things.
Mostly, you tow ships on your team so it can be repaired. Sometimes you haul a barge.
I am so happy you actually finally did a video on this!
One of your most inspiring and thought-provoking videos. Thanks!
Great piece, I agree on the utility hero ship, an Expanse spin off would be awesome for that. Thanks for mentioning the Nostromo, its the first one I thought of, Go Tugs!
Even the Star Trek TOS technical manual included a tug. I kitbashed one myself based on that book.
One of my favourite sci-fi spaceship ever is definitely the largely forgotten Tug-314 interstellar tug from Star Wars. Instead of using mechanical arms, it uses two massive powerful tractor beam projectors mounted on each side of the vessel. It also comes in two different flavours, the standard small variant and the large variant. The standard variant is the most commonly used around space stations and posts used to move around light cruisers and frigates, while the large version is utilized on major space ports used to move around star destroyers. Not only is this ship so damn gorgeous, it also serves several other roles such as search and rescue(literally saved R2-D2 and the universe as a result), firefighting, and salvage operations.
Love this one! I've always had a special place in my heart for tugboats.
Star citizen is getting a tug ship later this year. Already has a few great industrial ships like the Reclaimer salvage ship seen near the end of this video.
Conventional Naval Tugs FOR towing space craft in and out of the ocean also makes a lot of sense! If you land your Acclamator, or other large buoyant spacecraft, at sea having an set of TUGS to guide and dock them makes a lot of sense. Another very useful kind of TUG in atmosphere would be the ones pulling cloud cities and large floating structures. In Science Fiction setting some of the most common barges for a tug to tow is the flying barge.
3:15 I came here because one of the things I did in KSP was create manned and unmanned 'tugs' for moving stuff around a space station, since each tug could provide more thrust to move big objects better than an RCS thruster, and by not bringing those engines with me for "the last mile" it saved payload mass. Space plane goes up, tugs unload the supply payload and attach it to the station. Or "giant interplanetary engineering section" goes up, tugs drag it to the craft and attach it since it can't maneuver on its own.
My favorite ship class to use back in my SFB days was the Kzinti CGT battle tug variant with battle pods. It was essentially a monitor of sorts. Slow af but armed to the teeth and could take a beating.
Star Citizen's ARGO SRV tractor beam tug ship should be in game in a few months. Very excited for that.
Thunderbird 3 from the latest version of thunderbirds has a tug style feel when it's 3 arms unfold and utilises grappling lines to drag debris, other ships etc around in space
Great work as always folks, many thanks to hoojiwana and all the rest of the Spacedock crew!
I love that the Ptolemy Class got a brief clip shown at the end as its one of my favorite Star Trek Designs. I'd also have to mention the Starfleet Tug Ships that briefly appeared in DS9 and the Republic TUG-314 from Star Wars the Clone Wars as cool utilitarian designs that may not be the prettiest ships but have a cool industrial look that makes them seem good at their jobs.
Speaking of the game where you fly around and salvage stuff, we played an RPG once where we flew around in a light freighter. One day we found an attack ship with a huge railgun that we didn't have enough fuel to even fire, let alone fly. So, we hauled it around the solar system for a few months using it's own inertia to keep floating beside us and only intervened when we needed to stop it or start it moving.
The Starfinder tabletop RPG introduced 'Hauler' frame vessels; capable of fielding Oversized engines meant to haul things bigger than themselves, but also capable of getting a speed boost from them when unencumbered, with room for on-board maintenance expansion bays or other modifications meant for repair and rescue. I introduced a pair to the fleet my crew is a part of and named them Nomadic and Traffic. Bonus points if you know what that references.
I've been playing Starsector recently, and it has a ship class called the "Ox" which is labelled as a "tug" and gives your fleet a small boost in its travel speed at the cost of very high fuel use when you use it in FTL travel. Really cool if you have the fuel supply to run it, and helps keep your bigger ships moving more like smaller ones do.
you can have multiples of the ox to stack the speed bonus.
penalties stack too, but just get another prometheus for the fleet to solve that.
@@nobody8717 Thanks, I thought that would probably work, but never tried it!
Extraordinarily well thought out, and underrated video.
Was getting worried that the Nostromo wasn't going to get a mention as the video went on. Gald I was wrong on that! I love that ship.
This is actually how freighters work in the Freespace universe: few have meaningful onboard cargo capacity, but they dock with and move around external cargo containers instead. The larger ones are also used for recovering or capturing disabled vessels.
This was a semi-common use for Al'kesh's in Stargate. The most notable example of one is the Lucian Alliance Freighter, which was really just a bunch of cargo modules linked via tractor beams to the back of an Al'kesh that was pulling it.
Working on an actual tug boat myself, I would love to see more tugs in Sci-Fi or industrial ships as hero ships, there are so many aspects in our job that would fit neatly in science fiction that its a shame they did not do so already
there is anime about it
The Homeworld series also featured tugs. They were a significant tactical option, one which was sometimes mandatory for several campaign missions, and were a great way to put your opponent on their back foot if you could execute a grab of a major capital ship. Then there’s the “junkyard dog”. Which is a mission-specific _enemy_ tug, one that does what you normally try to do with your own, but far more powerful. It takes any of your capital ships on its own and hauls them away in order to reprogram them as part of its own stockpiled, salvaged fleet. The mere _capability_ of being able to drag other larger things around, including _unwilling_ other larger things (if you piled onto them with several tugs), could make for great plot pivots. And it has. Though it’s… not actually a tug… the Deathstar being able to execute massive long-range tractor beams made it… a tug. A really, really awkward pull-things-in-to-devour-them kind of tug (think of it like a really, really sluggish Pac-Man).
Finally, if you’re showing a tractor-trailer arrangement as a tug, there’s a closer analogy: a terminal tractor. These things have an even smaller profile than most tractors, often only one seat and an accordingly smaller cab, and a much faster hitch that can engage and disengage from a trailer comparatively rapidly. They’re used for moving trailers about in a trailer yard, including both docking and undocking them from loading bays and just plain shuffling things around in the yard as needed. Those are your real “tugboat”-style workhorses. Fewer in number, but where they’re in use they’re way, way busier.
In Nathan Lowell's sci-fi books you encounter tugs often in the stories, though always as quick bit parts.
My favorite tug in a game is the Federation Battle Tug in Star Fleet Battles
Tugs in space really make more sense than every craft having it's own RCS thrusters to move around. When fuel consumption is a problem, it might be useful to not haul around tons of rcs fuel, or having to save fuel for eventual docking. Especially for cargo ships that don't need to move about very much. Warships might still have considerable amounts of actuation fuel, just to guarantee maneuverability in combat, as do fighters, but cargo ships basically only have to fire in one direction for a long time, then fire in the opposite direction for about the same time. The rest can be done by tug boats or drones
This is exactly why I love the runabouts, and the two cargo hauler ship classes from Enterprise. In the runabouts' case it's both speculative from the shows but also explicitly designed-for in the sketches, where the crew area at the back could detach and something much longer go in its place. In the Enterprise example we're shown the long cargo-section trains the tiny but powerful haulers pull.
Definitely agree we could see a lot more of it. So many have weird concepts like "cargo shuttles" when, like, why use interior space from your space-car when it could pull a much bigger load behind it!
Anyway, if you're not familiar with the TV show "Tugs" (a spinoff of Thomas the Tank Engine set in a dock), you might like it. The opening theme includes some narration, which just calls-out that they've got the highest strength to size ratio of any water craft.
That wave piercing anchor handling ship (an Ulstein SX157 apparently) is absolutely gorgeous. Might have to fire up From the Depths and try to replicate that.
On a more relevant note, The Culture, one of the highest tech sci fi settings out there, has tugs. Ironically, their job is largely to help small ships get up to the speeds that only larger ships can reach normally, as top speed and acceleration in the Culture universe is pretty much entirely dependent on the shear quantity of matter you have dedicated to your engines. The fastest ships are also the largest, in the hundreds of kilometers long.
Another great use for a tug or tug-type vessel in space would be getting unmanned cargo modules up to speed and then catching them on the other end. If sci-fi is accurate at all, there will be mining in the asteroid belt and even the Oort Cloud. The only way that such tasks remain profitable is to keep transport costs low. What could be cheaper than setting a ballistic path, getting the module up to speed, and then letting it go? One tug could propel many modules, one at a time, and another could match speed and catch them at the other end.
Honestly though I have always had a soft spot for industrial type vessals in science fiction, it always makes for a amazing bit of world building in order to make a universe seem grounded and real as even if the main story is about military matters the industrial side of things is always crucial in such settings.
AHTS former crewperson. Can confirm how awesome they are. Moved rigs and cargo, it does everything and they are tough as nails. Squish most other ships because of the ice rated armoured hulls. If you get a chance to tour one, do so. Especially the bridge with the forward and rear control stations. Right out of science fiction, MFD touch screens and joysticks. LIDAR, GMDSS, two types of RADAR, GPS, and GMDSS radios. Very high tech, arguably the highest, industry. Trust me on checking out the bridge, throw some green paper over the windows and it could be straight out of Firefly.
My sci-fi setting has a lot of tugs, from freighter tugs to docking and orbital tugs designed to help larger ships in potentially crowded planetary orbit conditions. There are also a lot of 'worker bees', which are basically a variant of the tug with smaller engines. Which are also helpful for moving small craft that are not under power (Fighters/Shuttles). Utility vessels play and important role in my setting and it's kinda sad how underused they tend to be.
I once imagined a war-time scenario in space of a repair and refit station. It would have these external docking bays with smaller tug vessels flying out and clamping on and guiding the larger ships as they come in for repairs, as in many cases they may be too damaged to safely navigate themselves into the space dock. They would also grab and yank off loose parts or catch debris to prevent it drifting into the station or other ships. A very hectic environment where in some cases you have limited time to fly out, grab a ship and safely guide it in before it collides with the station.