Based on Tarryk's suggestion on BGG, here is a solution I proposed (too convoluted now, could probably be trimmed):
1. drop the tow before combat starts
2. successfully evade the enemy starship (implying leading the enemy on a wild goose chase)
3. compulsory hyperjump (a minimum of one light year), to get out of the enemy's sensor range
4. jump back to the previous coordinates (as per the example, 1LY in the opposite direction, just mark the total LY distance from a star system, the type of enemy you evaded and the type of ship you were towing, so you can always, even much later in the game, go back and try to get your prize back). Whenever you reach those coordinates, roll 1d10:
- on a 1, everything's gone - prize ship and pirate, jumping back was useless
- on 2-8, you find the towed ship where you left it, with no enemy in sight
- on 9-10, you find the cunning pirate/police spaceship you previously evaded, again at full power and life support levels, (who would naturally think you would be tempted to recover your prize, so would use it as bait for a while and then take it anyway if you don't show up again) and start space combat/evasion once again.
Of course, for the 1d10 roll we could go 1-2, 3-7 and 8-10 to make everything more challenging.
The marked coordinates, enemy type and tow type would be very simple to put down and would look like this
I-V 54, E-S41, T-S9, 11,000C
(54 ly from Impfar towards Vinwar, enemy ship type 41 - Corvette Class, towed ship to be recovered type 9 - Stealth Fighter MKII, 11,000 credits tow value)
These would allow the captain to get better characteristics, more crew, more mods and even a better ship before attempting to recover the prize ship from where they had had to abandon it.
Rinse and repeat until you win, you lose interest, you run out of fuel/power or are defeated.
As for taking the towed ship back to base, I would also add a +10 TL penalty while towing, in order to diminish the CM bonus only during jumps and cruises (refuelling, power generation, asteroid mining etc. can all be done normally, with the tractor beam off), and double the fuel and power costs for jumps and cruises, just to simulate the more difficult calculations, manoeuvres and the power necessary for the extra mass. After all, the prize ship is usually worth tens of thousands of credits - it should feel earned. I certainly feel like I have earned the puny 25c Scraps from some enemies in away missions, so a ship should be much more awesome.
The docking fee at space stations should also double to 100C. Crew fees should also apply when selling a towed ship (they did help recover it, after all).
And finally, to make it really worthwhile, a positive difference of 10 or more between the TL (Tech Levels) of your current ship and the towed ship should award the captain +1 REP automatically when docking anywhere with both ships at once (bringing in a Frigate MKII TL20 with a meager Assault Shuttle TL10 should make you quite famous in this region of the galaxy).
I hope ideas like this, refined and tested, of course, will feature in next D100 Space iterations.
