Tractor beams and capturing ships.

[RustiSwordz]

if a pilot bails out his juicy ship just sits there a wasted trphy when you could rig up a tractor beam and warp tow it to a corolis for a salvage reward...

[Disembodied]

There's a few ideas about this kicking about... check out the salvaging ships thread. Try a search for "remora missile" too.

[JensAyton]

There’s actually some code in there for this (methods like -claimAsSalvage, -sendCoordinatesToPilot and -pilotArrived), but unfortunately Giles never provided any documentation for this stuff, or the test OXPs I presume he was using to develop it. In particular, we don’t have pilotAI.plist or capturedShipAI.plist.

[Commander McLane]

There's a few ideas about this kicking about... check out the salvaging ships thread. Try a search for "remora missile" too.

I believe the more common expression was (is) "remora torpedo".