[dmm]

Either shields should stop a ramming ship or they shouldn't. In StarTrek, for instance, shields stop most everything. In Dune, as a counter-example, shields stop energy and high-speed physical weapons, but not low-speed physical weapons (thus allowing hand-to-hand combat between two shielded people). MM can decide how they want to do it, but they have to be consistent or else it's dumb.
Contrived example: A has 50 S, 200 DR
B has 150 S, 150 DR
A rams B. One of 3 results should occur:
1) Shields count. A is gone, B has 0 S, 50 DR.
2) Shields don't count. B is gone, A has 50 S, 50 DR.
3) Shields absorb damage but can't inflict it (really wierd but possible). Then you'd have
A has 0 S, 100 DR (150 damage)
B has 0 S, 150 DR (150 damage).

But ealbright is claiming that the result would be
A has 0 S, 100 DR (150 damage)
B has 0 S, 100 DR (200 damage)
which doesn't make sense. It isn't consistent. There's just no rationalization for having one ship inflict more damage than the other. It violates Newton's Third Law.

No, wait! It's worse than that. I see that now ealbright is claiming that the rammer's shields don't help at all, so the result would be
A has 50 S, 50 DR (150 damage, all to DR)
B has 0 S, 100 DR (200 damage, 150 to S and 50 to DR)
which would also violate the principle of relativity -- somehow the physics of SEIV knows who is the rammer and who is the rammee.

Somebody please tell me this isn't true!

[note added later by dmm: Aargh! I tried it. It's true! If I ram a ship with just engines and shields into an _identical_ ship, the rammer is destroyed while the rammee just has shields reduced. Please, MM, fix this! It's a really stupid bug!]

[This message has been edited by dmm (edited 02 October 2000).]