quote:
Originally posted by Nitram Draw:
Wouldn't that have be a rather large explosion to give collateral damage? Since the ships only occupy one space and a planet takes up 4 spaces how close can they be?
It would have to be a large explosion for a direct hit with a weapon to do much damage, too. In all cases we're talking about very high energies. This might not seem realistic but I don't think ramming is realistic either. Think of its effect on game play:
1) You would no longer be able to cram your ships cheek-by-jowl to concentrate PDC protection or fire-power without a balancing risk.
2) The objection about people using boarding frigates to take out dreadnoughts with a SDD would be at least partly balanced by the difficulty of arranging your attack to keep other ships out of harms way. How does a boarding frigate close in without getting destroyed? With support from other capital ships that might be damaged if they are too close when the enemy ship is boarded. But if they aren't close enough the boarding frigate will probably be vaporized before it can board. The "cost-benefit" of this tactic could be completely changed.
3) "Suicide" attacks will begin to really mean something. If you can self-destruct (or just ram and blow up) against an enemy formation and damage MANY ships for the loss of your one it will suddenly be a truly dangerous and scary tactic. Maybe there ought to be some sort of morale penalty to make it more costly for the source empire. Formations might have to be redesigned to account for this, too. More space between ships to minimize damage -- which would make individual ships more vulnerable.
It has lots of potential.
