The tug is used to automate the hauling of ships back to a station via flagging a ship with a hotkey.
Functionality
The tug command is run on huge ships with a dock bay. When run, the tug will stay docked at its homebase waiting for you to flag a ship for it. When the tug sees that you have flagged a ship for tug, it’ll jump there, pick up the ship (and others you may have flagged in the sector), drop it off at the tug’s homebase, and dock again. This command makes capturing and recycling ships easy. It’s just another quick way to keep your shit together.
Flagging a ship for tug is done via hotkey.
The Tug command’s menu allows you to configure strip functionality. Stripping is a command run on a ship that removes all of its wares and onto the ship/station where it’s docked. Often, a tug is used to collect derelict ships which are stripped anyway.
Strip functionality
The Tug command menu allows for a few different strip options. In LU, stripping generally means removing all the wares from a ship and dumping them where it’s docked.
- None: No stripping performed
- At homebase: Ships are stripped upon the tug landing at its homebase, wares deposited onto homebase
- On this ship: Ships are stripped upon docking with the tug, wares deposited onto tug
There’s two ways to flag a ship for tug.
- Use the hotkey when the ship to be tugged is targeted (under interface)
- On the ship that needs to be tugged: run Flag ship for tug from the ship.
Obviously, the ship to be tugged needs to be owned by you.