[E. Albright]

Umm... No one's mentioned the nastiest trick you can pull as far as ramming's concerned. To wit: yesterday I was playing the .56 demo, and was at war with the red-shipped lizards. I'd an outpost colony in one of their systems with perhaps 10 weapon platforms and 4 Escorts in orbit. They attacked with 4 Cruisers & 1 L. Cruiser. Later that same turn they repeated the effort with 5 L. Cruisers. I lost one Escort and 2 weapon platforms.
And my point is? The escorts had no weapons on them, just 6 engines and 3 Organic Armor III's. They'd charge the Cruisers as they approached the planet, and if they got targeted by a large volley of missles, they'd run from them 'til they ran out of fuel. This would usually leave me with 2 Escorts free to wreck havoc. They'd each ram a Cruiser, and then run to avoid the L-mount beam weapons from the crippled ship or its brethern. In a round or two, their armor would have regenerated, and they'd be ready to help the weapons platforms clean up the remenents of the enemy fleet. I don't even want to get into what my Cruisers could do to enemy vessels...
If you want to see something frightnening, start a game at high tech (and as Organic), and design a nasty Battle Station, and a Cruiser that's nothing but OA & Engines (ECM helps too, and brings the design to an even 500kt). Then go to the simulator, and charge the BS with the Cruiser. It can rarely survive a single impact, and the Cruiser won't even wreck all its armor. Furthermore, unless the BS has weapons which skip armor, the Cruiser'll probably be at full strength when it hits, regardless of batteries of Massive-mount weapons... (Note: if you make the BS an OA beastie, I'll not attest to the vericity of the above...)