Ramming Damage

[stecal]

Ok, A few ideas leap out at me:

1) A ramming warhead weapon mount that adds a lot of structural tonnage to absorb damage to the rammer. This only makes sense since a ship designed for ramming would have a reinforced bow.

2) Warheads change damage type from normal to "skips all shields." Only armor would count like vs mines.

[PvK]

couslee, if you want it to work the way you describe, simple change your settings.txt file.

However, to repeat what I said before, in case you might agree, in my opinion it is a lesser evil to have the settings the way they are, than to have to live with what would happen if they were equal, or reversed. The real problem here is not the damage levels, but the fact that ramming is automatically successful, and has almost nothing to do with speed or maneuverability. You should not be able to ram fighters and faster ships with another ship. The only thing allowing this to happen is the turn-based movement system. In reality, if a slower or equal-speed ship tries to ram an enemy ship that does not want to be rammed, it will have a very hard time succeeding, because the target will simply alter course to avoid the ramming maneuver. Without any reasonable way to avoid ramming, it would be both unrealistic an unbalanced for ram ships to do equal or more damage to their targets. Untrained cheapo ships with armor would be smashing elite expensive ships left and right. This is already quite possible - I have lost many elite expensive ships to ram ships with no training and less speed than mine.

PvK

[Baron Munchausen]

Actually, if you consider the speeds involved ramming is ridiculously under-powered. I have changed both of the ramming damage modifiers to 300 percent in my personal config. I suppose that means that you could build a fleet of rammers and rule the galaxy -- if your race is suicidal enough. But it seems only logical to me that only a very large size difference would make it possible for one ship to survive ramming or being rammed.

Maybe I should mod one of the AIs to build lots of rammers just to see what would happen...

This does make drones more powerful, btw.

[PvK]

Sure, if spaceships collide directly, it would do massive damage. Again, the problem is they wouldn't collide, unless the rammer was suicidal, and faster and more maneuverable than the target. The turn-based combat and the weapon ranges and damages make it pointlessly easy to ram.

Not to mention the balance issue that suddenly cheap ships can wipe out expensive ships.

Maybe there are some sci-fi explanations where ships really would be so easy to ram, and crews really would be willing to commit suicide that way, so elite weapon-armed ships would be a foolish design, and ships full of organic armor would reign supreme. The thing is, I wouldn't really want to play such a game, at least not for very long.

PvK

[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.

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.

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)

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.

[couslee]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
I have changed both of the ramming damage modifiers to 300 percent.

why bother with ANY weapons when you can build a flying steel I-beam

[ February 04, 2003, 04:46: Message edited by: couslee ]

[Grandpa Kim]

From the Baron

...if you consider the speeds involved...

...you should end up with a cloud of super-heated plasma.

[Fyron]

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.

There are no holes. The argument is that the whole thing is unrealistic, both for the faster and the slower ships. I see no holes.

[MacLeod]

Originally posted by couslee:

And being able to ram fighters is silly.

I don't really think it's THAT inconsiderable.
Imagine a bunch of canoes out in the middle of the ocean. The Nimitz comes along and lays a direct course through the canoes.

Odds are the people in the canoes aren't going to have a good day.

For an easier comparison, look at a Borg cube. It's huge compared to most any other starship, but I'd bet it wouldn't have trouble ramming most of those smaller ships.

[PvK]

Originally posted by MacLeod:

quote:

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Originally posted by couslee:

And being able to ram fighters is silly.

I don't really think it's THAT inconsiderable.
Imagine a bunch of canoes out in the middle of the ocean. The Nimitz comes along and lays a direct course through the canoes.

Odds are the people in the canoes aren't going to have a good day.

For an easier comparison, look at a Borg cube. It's huge compared to most any other starship, but I'd bet it wouldn't have trouble ramming most of those smaller ships.

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The Nimitz can only ram canoes because it is much faster than they are, so much so that they essentially aren't moving. Try having the Nimitz ram a flock of speedboats. (Not to mention, ram fighter planes.) Better still, try having the Nimitz do what ships can do in SE4 - ram dozens of fighters at once, and have them have no chance to evade, or even to split up so only one gets hit.

PvK