Boarding and Ramming Targets

[Taera]

"nearest, most damaged, fastest, strongest" (or weakest) works pretty well for ramming ships.

[atari_eric]

I wonder if anything forces ships to re-evaluate "nearest" or "most damaged"... would having a fired-upon ship re-trigger this?

Also, I wonder about the economic ramifications (no pun intended) of building megatons of one-shot (usually) ramming ships.

[Thantis]

I guess it depends on how long your ships survive...the initial build up could be extremely costly (just in terms of the massive numbers of ships you would need to build to make this an effective strategy), but once you enter combat - lots of those ships aren't going to make it back.

After a certain point, I believe you'd see a negative ship balance, as it would be hard to replace what was lost - when stardard & more survivable designs would Last longer in a protracted war. As a Last ditch defense or as a diVersionary tactic (to get your opponent to change his designs & then hit him with a conventional attack) it might work.

In my current game, with lots of excess production potential, I am think of building a suicide fleet, just to go after my opponent's carrier fleets (with more than a few fighter traps - all PD & direct fire vessels). I plan to burn my way through the fighters & catch the carriers against the side of the tactical combat screen.

I'm still running the simulations to see if it will be worth the time and effort necessary - although the crash-doubling of my fleet might render the point moot.

[Phoenix-D]

In most cases where you want rammers, normal ships won't do you any good because the enemy is so advanced and has so much point defense you can't even -hit- him.