Ram Attack!

[Socialist Threat (OP)]

I'm sorry, that's my first fight where I actually have a strong necessity to ram weakened enemy.     I searched wiki and the forum and I found only "Fixed bug where parasites still on board their mothership would attempt to ram".    

Well they would attempt to ram, so it means it's possible to ram? But how do I do that? Just use the "Move" command, or is it a bit more complicated?

Some pic to encourage the conversation.    



(sorry for no-picture, I guess hyperlinks are a bit unwelcomed here)

Pic's sign: Ram attack is the weapon of heroes!
Glory to Stalin falcons - the menace to fascist vultures.    

[Beersatron]

The player can not ram and I am not sure if Steve has any plans to add it in soon.

Only certain types of NPRs can ram, it is always enjoying to find out which ones

Your links will be malformed until you hit a certain post count, it is to help stop spammers.

[Socialist Threat (OP)]

Is that post count - 10 ?
Yep, it is.

>Only certain types of NPRs can ram, it is always enjoying to find out which ones
Hey that's not honest! I'm out of ammo, I have no close-ranged weapons except CIWS and here's a single enemy's ship approaching me at overhelmingly high speed, out of ammo as well, but having nice little lasers which. . . .  ahh, well.  Why oh why did I underestimate guns before?

[Nathan_]

Take heart comrade, soon your valiant forces will commence ramming operations against his warheads, which will be sure to suffer 100% casualties!

er, well except not. blasted lasers.

[Socialist Threat (OP)]

Um, well, I just posted the pic because it looks pretty funny as for me... Some guy's trying to ram a fighter from the behind...staying safe...oh, really? And there's another enemy's fighter burning at the background - so was it rammed already too?

And the very phrase has become a catch-phrase. "Ramming is the weapon of heroes", one would say when some crazy guy rams his car in oncoming truck's forefront.

[Erik L]

That doesn't seem like a healthy method to get home again.

[Atlantia]

It's not about getting home, it's about dying for the revolution and joining the likes of Lenin and Marx. Any positive hero would gladly give his life for world communism, which means world peace.

[Thiosk]

If steve opened up ramming, I would play a game entirely by ramming, to celebrate such an event.

I would also ram flying ####s.  For Science!

[Arwyn]

The picture was based on actual events in WW II. The Soviets had a specific name for ramming attacks, Taran, and was used by pilots against the Luftwaffe in the very early days of the war. It was strictly forbidden to perform it over enemy territory, but the Soviets were completely outclassed in the air in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa, and several Soviet pilots used it to down Luftwaffe aircraft when they were unable to bring them down with their substandard planes and ammunition.

Importantly, the Taran was NOT a suicide attack like the Japanese Kamikaze or Taiatari. The "preferred" method was to run the propeller in to the control surfaces of the enemy's tail, which was usually fatal to the enemy, but knocked the prop off the attacking fighter. The theory was that they would be able to glide back in for a landing and just put a new prop on the bird.

Actual practice was a lot more difficult and messier. Despite that, the Soviets actually had a few pilots use the Taran multiple times. One Soviet pilot used it four times before dying.

Several other air powers used ramming, but most were impromptu, like the several RAF ramming attacks during the Battle of Britain. Organized ramming was done by the Japanese most notably, but the German Sturmbock squadrons used heavily reinforced fighters, mostly FW-190s to ram Allied bombers.

This impromptu history lesson brought to you by a several beers and many years of aviation history and flight sims....

[Erik L]

It's not about getting home, it's about dying for the revolution and joining the likes of Lenin and Marx. Any positive hero would gladly give his life for world communism, which means world peace.

I'm a firm believer in making the other guy die for his beliefs/country

[Arwyn]

I think the biggest issue with ramming is that it basically just doesn't pay off.

What the Soviets, Germans, and Japanese all learned (thought the Japanese ignored it) was that the crew training/attrition wasn't being factored in, and it was killing them.

Pilots (and starship crews) are murderously expensive to train, and it takes long periods of time.  You DONT want to send your best pilots or crews on ramming attacks, because they are more than likely going to get lost in so doing. So, you send the raw barely trained newest recruits, and the down side is that they can barely operate their craft, much less pulling off the fairly difficult stunt of hitting a very fast object doing its level best to AVOID being hit.

Long term, it empties out your manpower pool, and you don't have replacements to the veteran crews to keep them functioning efficiently.

In the case of Japan, they had some absolutely excellent planes by the late war period (Ki-84 Hayate, N1K2 Shinden Kai) but not enough experienced pilots to fly them.

From an Aurora perspective, its a hellacious waste of resources, if you think missile combat is an economic drain, ramships are even worse.

So, huge economic drain + huge manpower drain = Fail.

And also from a game perspective, it would more than likely get abused to hell and back, and I thinks thats one of the reasons Steve didn't allow PC ramming.

[Socialist Threat (OP)]

Umh, ok. Well I just have a situation when it would help me really badly - i have a whole fleet which is around 10 000+ crew, and not a single missile, and some enemy is approaching with all these laser gun. So it would be a huge waste of resources anyway.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

well, i presume these ships are faster than you regardless, and your chance of ramming someone whose faster than you is nil anyways >_<