[PvK]

Originally posted by couslee:
PvK,
I certainly can understand your PoV. If it was real time combat, you would be partially correct. However, Say two ships are nose to nose in combat, and one ships decides to proceeded with a ram. It will have some element of supprise by begining it's progress to ram first. The target ship would have to turn around before engaging it's faster engines, allowing even more time for the ramming ship to get closer. You make it sound like the faster ship can do an insta-turn and wisk itself to saftey. Doubt that.

If your ramming is going to destroy my ship, it is going to be extremely high priority for me to maneuver my ship so that you never get a chance to ram me. If my ship is as fast as yours, and as maneuverable, you will never get in this position. If I am "nose to nose" with you, that was a fatal error on my part.

Actual ship captains (and aircraft pilots, car drivers, etc), even non-military ones, make avoiding collisions a very high and constant priority.

But this is turn based combat. And in such, the faster ship can move into firing range and shoot at a target, while the other ship just sits there. This is being just as unrealistic. If your big expensive experienced ship is comming at me, it's ok for me to just sit still while you get your turn at advancing and taking your shots, with no chance to move out of your weapon's range. But it's not ok if you have to sit there while I get my turn? That is kind of one sided. So the faster ship argument in full of holes imo.

If you want ramming to be an equal element of combat to ranged weapons, perhaps so. Personally, I enjoy an emphasis on ranged weapons. Part of the problem is that the distance a ship can move in one turn, and its weapon range, are pretty close in the standard unmodded game. If I move into effective direct-fire range, you may be able to ram me as your next move. If tactical movement per turn were smaller compared to weapon range, it'd be a little less unbalanced. When letting the AI manage battles, the situation gets much worse, because I end up having to have all my ships set to Max Weapons range if I want to avoid exposing my ships to potential overrun by ram ships.

What is unbalanced is the total damage dealt during ramming. In a no friction setting like space, I would think that a collision would have more of a pushing effect than the damage caused by movement resistance (tires on the road, gravity, ect). I think perhaps a more realistic amount would be to have damage based not on the total mass, but around 20% of the total mass. To represent glancing blows and targets being pushed away. This could be done by tweaking down both numbers to 20. The target ship should NOT get an advantage when being rammed. It does not have the benefit being the ship that begins the maneuver, and in turning to move away from the approaching ship it exposes is wearker structural sides. If anyone should get and advantange it should be the attacker. And just because my ship is small means nothing against a massive ship who's design is less armored to allow for multiple weapons. If I am driving a rocket designed for the purpose of ramming, I would drive straight through the massive ship like a McDonalds restaruant. So the whole 100%kt/60%kt total mass determined ramming damage is unbalanced and unrealistic. (of course, as I have said before, the only realism that truely applies is that it somes on a pLastic disk and breaks if folded)

Well that could be an interesting sort of game, I suppose. Galley warfare in space. I think it would be the exception, though, rather than something for the default game settings.

Also, if the warhead was modded to a one use/one range weapon, I may not have to resort to the final effort of ramming. And if used correctly, would become a damaged component and not included in the ramming damage calculation.

If only damage was turned way down for both sides, then adding 300 damage to both ships using a Cobalt3 warhead the way it is now would make more sense and be more balanced. So maybe modding the warhead is the wrong approach. Maybe the base ramming damage is what really needs to be fixed. That would also slow down the "swarm of rammers" you are concerned about.

And being able to ram fighters is silly.

Well, you could certainly change the settings to 20% and add some range-one weapons. It sounds like it could be an interesting mod. SE3 Ripper Beams used to be potent range-one weapons...

PvK