Ramming

[Professor Fenway]

Question- Will ramming ever, ever be a viable tactic? It's a suicide move, but think about it. A spaceship moving at 3 km/s releases energy upon impact equal to its weight in TNT. A spaceship moving at 90% the speed of light releases energy equal to its weight in ANTIMATTER upon impact.

At high enough speeds, it would be able to take down dreadnoughts- if it could penetrate the shields. How would this be balanced?

You must cycle engines up before ramming, which means powering down ALL non-engine systems (Shields included). This is obvious to the would-be rammed guy. He also must have distance between him and target. This gives the would-be-victim time to blast the unshielded ship to smithereens before it reached him, minimizing damage.

The damage on impact is based on the speed, the shield/hull strength of the defender, and the hull strength of the attacker. If the attacker's hull strength overpowers the shield, it continues and applies the damage to the hull.

This is a last-resort tactic. Like, dreadnought is about to destroy your massive base and you have one cruiser last resort. Very risky, but if it works, you could annihilate the whole ship.

Of course, your ship is destroyed in the process.

[joykler]

i think frost made it possible to ram people but i have hear nothing about explosions
i quite like it
but i dont think a ship has to be destroyed in the process
think of piercing ships
for boarding

they are used in alot of space movies and series

[fr0stbyte124]

A ship flying into something at interplanetary speed (for the sake of discussion, I'm going to call that the warp drive) is going to be way, way too fast to sufficiently calculate. We need to slow stuff down before it can interact with other objects which are in a different frame of reference. That's a technical "need", not a style need, btw. Plus, it's going to suck if people are randomly exploding from other ships whizzing by them at unbelievable speed.

Here's an interesting thought. In Star Wars, you have to avoid crossing major gravity wells in hyperspace, and this effect could be used to ensnare ships and prevent them from escaping if you had a big enough gravity well generator. What if we did something similar? It wouldn't be hyperspace, but what if your max cruising speed was directly based on how close you were to any other objects? As you leave a planet you automatically speed up, and as you approach another one you begin to decelerate. If you pass a ship going the other direction, both will slow down to normal speeds as they pass (with the warp engines. Conventional engines wouldn't be bound by this rule). This effect could also be used to make pursuit possible, or you could set up minefields that can't simply be warped across. Pirates could hide in an asteroid belt and use the fact that ships can't immediately escape to lay in ambush.

There could also be ways of getting around this limitation. For instance, ships in a fleet formation, or less formally, locked into the same frame of reference and both have their warp drive primed will be able to fly in the same "bubble". Perhaps the mass of the ship affects the bubble, making it easier for scouts to enter and exit a fight, but likewise can't waylay a larger ship as easily. And maybe there could be technology which artificially increases or decreases the bubble size to be used either to escape or to ensnare, and that this technology can be tampered with via electronic warfare.

I don't know. The idea needs some fleshing out, but it would be an interesting and unique mechanic, and it would also solve a lot of problems stemming from ships crossing distances too fast and easily.

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As for subspace ramming, it's a legitimate strategy and the damage will get calculated. How practical it is will depend on the distance at which battles take place. Realistically, explosions would be nerfed in space, because there is no medium to carry the shockwave. Whether we choose to ignore that, I don't want to be doing a ton of explosion physics between entities; it's not exactly cheap on the large-scale.

[blockman42]

Just stick with what Fr0st said

[joykler]

fros i clicked your link and i think this is a great idea and dont needs discussion
it just needs to be added

[fr0stbyte124]

Even if the idea is good, it still needs to be elaborated on. What I outlined is insufficient by itself.

[blockman42]

Even if the idea is good, it still needs to be elaborated on. What I outlined is insufficient by itself.

explosions, nuff said.

[fr0stbyte124]

Good plan. Nice and thorough.

[Professor Fenway]

Subspace ramming is the only that would work, everything else is too fast. Excellent idea fr0st.

Will the explosion be localized around the impact though? I mean, it would allow cutting a dreadnought in hald (if designed poorly) and screwing everything up.

[fr0stbyte124]

Theoretically. We won't have a full-fledged physics engine, so we're going to be limited in how large the affected area during a collision is going to be. For small things, it should look plausible, but zoom out far enough and it will be more cutting than exploding, just like TNT. Expect more disintegration than debris.
As for how much it would cut, that is going to depend on the tweaking of hitpoints. We should be able to treat collisions like any other weapon, to an extent.

[҉]

it would allow cutting a dreadnought in hald (if designed poorly) and screwing everything up.

Is that a bad thing? If you get rammed by a ship big enough to cut your dreadnaught in half, you're pretty screwed anyway. We'd have to make sure you couldn't cut a dreadnaught in half with a frigate, but if a ship of comparable size hit a dreadnaught point-first, the target breaking completely in half wouldn't be an unreasonable outcome. Also, it would look insanely awesome.

[Iv121]

Hey funny fact - If I ever meet a big threat in an RP I will send in one Raynor class Destroyer to cut it in half - because the forward part of the ship is actually mostly a cannon, separate from the main hull I'm probably going to loose it yet the ship itself would survive while your ship is going to get blown up

[Laserbilly]

A ship flying into something at interplanetary speed (for the sake of discussion, I'm going to call that the warp drive) is going to be way, way too fast to sufficiently calculate. We need to slow stuff down before it can interact with other objects which are in a different frame of reference. That's a technical "need", not a style need, btw. Plus, it's going to suck if people are randomly exploding from other ships whizzing by them at unbelievable speed.

Here's an interesting thought. In Star Wars, you have to avoid crossing major gravity wells in hyperspace, and this effect could be used to ensnare ships and prevent them from escaping if you had a big enough gravity well generator. What if we did something similar? It wouldn't be hyperspace, but what if your max cruising speed was directly based on how close you were to any other objects? As you leave a planet you automatically speed up, and as you approach another one you begin to decelerate. If you pass a ship going the other direction, both will slow down to normal speeds as they pass (with the warp engines. Conventional engines wouldn't be bound by this rule). This effect could also be used to make pursuit possible, or you could set up minefields that can't simply be warped across. Pirates could hide in an asteroid belt and use the fact that ships can't immediately escape to lay in ambush.

There could also be ways of getting around this limitation. For instance, ships in a fleet formation, or less formally, locked into the same frame of reference and both have their warp drive primed will be able to fly in the same "bubble". Perhaps the mass of the ship affects the bubble, making it easier for scouts to enter and exit a fight, but likewise can't waylay a larger ship as easily. And maybe there could be technology which artificially increases or decreases the bubble size to be used either to escape or to ensnare, and that this technology can be tampered with via electronic warfare.

I don't know. The idea needs some fleshing out, but it would be an interesting and unique mechanic, and it would also solve a lot of problems stemming from ships crossing distances too fast and easily.

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That is a really cool idea! I like the idea that while a battleship could whiz by a frigate without even a polite greeting, a corvette in the same situation would have to stop and pay its respects. Large factions could even start using strategy by setting up defense pickets that would force anything smaller than a cruiser to drop out of warp and into a devastating trap!

This could be a really cool feature for the game, I hope you're able to include it!

[Iv121]

Don't think so - It's a bit of bullying isn't it my friend ?

[Laserbilly]

Don't think so - It's a bit of bullying isn't it my friend ?

I don't think it's bullying, I think it works best as a defensive measure rather than an attack strategy.

But you might have a point, maybe it would be better if traps brought ships of all sizes out of warp rather than just smaller ones. That way, some mid-level pirate couldn't just farm newbies since he'd always have the chance of pulling a ship that's too large for him to handle out of warp.