Well, we've discussed this a lot, but that was a long time ago. To sum up (old-timers feel free to correct me):
We were divided on the issue of damage. Some felt that a head-on collision should obliterate both vessels. Others pointed out that collisions wouldn't necessarily be head-on, and that getting rammed from the rear might not do any damage at all. Everyone agreed in the end that modeling the damage "properly" would require keeping track of so many things (speed, heading, facing, supplies, etc.) that it would require a complete overhaul of combat. So I think the standard 40% number was a compromise. But that is moddable, as has been pointed out, so I think MM tried to accomodate people in this case.
OTOH, most people agreed that ramming should not be automatically successful, and that smaller and/or faster ships should have an advantage over relatively larger/slower ships in initiating or avoiding a ram. This has never been implemented, much to my annoyance. The annoyance is because it is such an easy code change, so I feel that MM has been unresponsive in this case.
As far as shields go, people were split. Some felt shields should either count, or not count, for both ships. Others liked giving the "ramee" an advantage, and came up with a techno-babble justification. Again, it would not be hard for MM to make this moddable, but it isn't.
As far as warheads go, they are obviously way too large, expensive, and ineffective. Compare them with a self-destruct device, which always blows up both ships, even if the SDD was on an escort and the boarding ship was a mothership. (Of course that's a ridiculous example, but that's the point.) But warheads are moddable, so again, no complaints there.
In the midst of all of our arguing about realism, some people tried to make the case that, after all, SEIV is meant to be a game and that play-balance is sometimes more important than realism. Hopefully those compromisers have left the forum forever! (Just kidding.
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