Battering ram and the art of tactically raming your ship into the opponents !

[K-T0N]

Ah, battering rams... How should we make those, and how best could we use them?
I am expecting them to lack usefulness in Starbase, but due to some influence (I am looking at you, BFGA!), I really want to make some in game.
That why I am making this post, so that we can all talk about the joys of ramming our ships into stuff to break it into a great explosion!
So, who has any suggestions on how to make some great battering ram design?

 

[Quinc]

Structural integrity is the first consideration. All ships need a structural frame and for every part to be bolted down to something else. The "durability tool" will let you see if which parts are good enough for flight. However for ramming you need to go far beyond the recommendations of the durability tool. Take the time to understand why some structural frames are better than others. Keep in mind that your ship will receive a sudden stress from the impact point. Make sure every part is thoroughly bolted down. In videos that feature ramming you can see ship parts come off of all parts of the ships, not just the area around the point of impact. A dedicated ramming ship will also need a ram. Some sort of protrusion or shield on the front which is tougher than the rest of the ship but lacks any important components. Of course a ramming ship needs ramming speed. The superior structure will help support a massive, overpowered engine block. The superior speed has other uses too of course. It would also needs extra reactor power for these engines. When it slows down the reactors could feed lasers to take out targets too nimble for the ram.
The use of ramming is not only desperation. Ramming allows you to deal significant damage to a target at a key moment. A ram deals all of its damage in a single instant, but will probably need some time before the second strike. A similar role to a weapon that has extremely high damage balanced with extremely low refire rate. Ramming would be ineffective against ships that are more maneuverable than the ramming ship, another reason for laser turrets. If you can achieve extreme speed, a suicide ramming ship could deal damage to a larger, much more expensive ship. A suicide ramming ship could be thought of as an expensive torpedo. Though again a suicide ramming ship requires an extremely high maximum speed to work at all. A non-suicide ramming ship would have to hit the enemy fast enought to deal damage, but slow enough that the ramming ship doesn't destroy itself, or only destroys the ram and not the rest of the ship behind the ram.

 

[DrunkRussianBear]

I feel like the most practical form of ramming will be boarding ramming, slamming assault pods into the side of an enemy warship would bring great surprise to the crew.

 

[Talla]

I'll need one of you expert engineers to come up with a Kamikaze ship blueprint.
With the best possible damage/cost ratio.

Make it autopilot/crash into the enemy using YOLOL.

Unless big homing missiles become an in-game thing, I think there will be a market for this.

 

[Whiteagle]

I feel like the most practical form of ramming will be boarding ramming, slamming assault pods into the side of an enemy warship would bring great surprise to the crew.

Well regardless if a Cargo Beam Lock disables a Ship's Thrusters or not, most Boarding Pods will probably have Cargo Beam "Grabbers" so they don't just bounce off on impact.

 

[Kane Hart]

One thing with the SI - Structural integrity that I hope and it did sound like it from the impressions on Discord is that small ships are nothing like splat on a windshield for larger higher armored ships. Last thing I would hate is 10 small ships at max speed just ramming into everything and ruining a capitals day because tiny fly's work better then a capital ship.

 

[DrunkRussianBear]

Well regardless if a Cargo Beam Lock disables a Ship's Thrusters or not, most Boarding Pods will probably have Cargo Beam "Grabbers" so they don't just bounce off on impact.

Yeah makes sense.

 

[K-T0N]

Well, that went fast!
Based on all that’s been said up to now, it seems that dedicated ramming ships may be more useful than I initially thought. I can also see that efficiency of such tactics will be highly dependable on the way the physics of the game will work, as we only have vague indications about how the weight of a ship (and thus its size) will impact the strength of an impact, as well as about the way strength and stress will be transferred throughout the ships frame. We should try and get a dev here to get a bit more insight about all of this.
I also am curious about boarding ramming, as I had not yet thought about it at all. If we were to make small boarding ships meant to ram into a larger one, how should we make them so that they can get deep enough a ship for boarding instead of bouncing of its amour? I am not sure the cargos beams can work to fix yourself on a larger ship...

 

[DrunkRussianBear]

Well, that went fast!
Based on all that’s been said up to now, it seems that dedicated ramming ships may be more useful than I initially thought. I can also see that efficiency of such tactics will be highly dependable on the way the physics of the game will work, as we only have vague indications about how the weight of a ship (and thus its size) will impact the strength of an impact, as well as about the way strength and stress will be transferred throughout the ships frame. We should try and get a dev here to get a bit more insight about all of this.
I also am curious about boarding ramming, as I had not yet thought about it at all. If we were to make small boarding ships meant to ram into a larger one, how should we make them so that they can get deep enough a ship for boarding instead of bouncing of its amour? I am not sure the cargos beams can work to fix yourself on a larger ship...

I'm sure that ramming through the outer plating and wedging yourself into a corridor on the enemy vessel would be quite fun.

 

[Whiteagle]

I am not sure the cargos beams can work to fix yourself on a larger ship...

But that's just it, I haven't seen anything suggesting Cargo Beams can't do this, quiet the opposite in fact!
I know there's a video showcasing "Rotating Display Stands" using Cargo Beams to hold onto Ships much larger than the Display Stand itself, and Cargo Beam Lock seems to disable a Target's Thrusters as well.
So unless Cargo Beams can't establish a Lock while either Object is in Motion, we might have a very humorous Meta dominated not by small Fighter-Craft, but Cargo Beam Tugs bullying Larger Ship into submission!

 

[CalenLoki]

.
I also am curious about boarding ramming, as I had not yet thought about it at all. If we were to make small boarding ships meant to ram into a larger one, how should we make them so that they can get deep enough a ship for boarding instead of bouncing of its amour? I am not sure the cargos beams can work to fix yourself on a larger ship...

Assuming that they change the bouncy nature of collision (right now it cancels all the momentum)
Then it's matter of aiming at weak spots and being more agile. Ramming ship, even small, can concentrate all the armour in front. Rammed ship can't, because it need armour everywhere.

 

[K-T0N]

Now that you mention it, I wonder how sais momentum is cancelled, since there are still some damage. I am assuming there is a transfer of energy into damage, which would then cancel the momentum. But in that case, how would it be transferred? Cause if it’s only on the very point of impact, then damages would only be focused on that very point and we would not be able to penetrate deeper as the loss of momentum prevent us from gaining enough strength for significant damages beyond the initial impact. In such a case, should we then aim for more flat front armor to hit and damage as large a surface as possible?
I really need to find out more about the game’s physics.

 

[DrunkRussianBear]

Now that you mention it, I wonder how sais momentum is cancelled, since there are still some damage. I am assuming there is a transfer of energy into damage, which would then cancel the momentum. But in that case, how would it be transferred? Cause if it’s only on the very point of impact, then damages would only be focused on that very point and we would not be able to penetrate deeper as the loss of momentum prevent us from gaining enough strength for significant damages beyond the initial impact. In such a case, should we then aim for more flat front armor to hit and damage as large a surface as possible?
I really need to find out more about the game’s physics.

Hopefully there will be the ability to maintain momentum and allow more realistic impacts.

 

[Propergame]

I think that the best method for a ram would use locking beams to attach Rams made of rock to the ship this method would prevent damage to the ship allowing reuse.

 

[TASADAR101]

Ah, battering rams... How should we make those, and how best could we use them?
I am expecting them to lack usefulness in Starbase, but due to some influence (I am looking at you, BFGA!), I really want to make some in game.
That why I am making this post, so that we can all talk about the joys of ramming our ships into stuff to break it into a great explosion!
So, who has any suggestions on how to make some great battering ram design?

make a plow like the imperial cruisers or be me and make a big spiky gob on the face of your angry skyfish and smash them oomies into the nearest asteroid.

 

[K-T0N]

Well now, I did not expect this topic to be resurected

Using battering rams to smash asteroids is something I never though about...
Considering the damage system of Starbase, smashing asteroid should break them in smaller pieces, which could be usefull for mining if combined with tractor beams to get said fragments...
However, I am a tad afraid that the ship will be greatly damaged from this...
If anyone in the Alpha could test to see if there are some plating that can be somewhat asteroid-proof, that'd be interesting.

 

[Meetbolio]

Sorry to ruin the cargo lock beam party, but in order to grab onto an enemy's ship with cargo lock beams, you'd need to essentially "grab" the enemy ship, which means supplying enough constant energy to the lock beams to maintain the lock. That means a lot, and I mean a LOT of energy. So while I'm developing boarding pods of all sorts, none of them feature cargo lock beams, just better ways to break the enemy's armor.



I mean unless you'd like your "little" "agile" pod to have a giant generator in it that'd need to make around 5k energy. But that's the same thing as attaching a nuke to it so... depends on your goals.

 

[Jasperagus]

I think in another thread I talked about just having a small, cheap, light and fast ship and just get multiple people on it. once they get close enough to the enemy ship they can just attach to it.