Ramming for the win! "Rapid deconstruction" done! -> couple of questions..

[Yodarkore]

Hi there,

 

I (almost) finished designed my "starter" titanium miner/combat ship, wich i layered (angled) armor all around it. So i get a decent titanium space tank. Its a nice little compact yet manoeuvrable but slow to accelerate ship with 4 mining turrets and 4 combat turrets with some cargo capacity too.

 

I was looking at another mining spot, full speed (nearly 1000m/s) then *BAM* -60000 rep to one of the factions (wich hopefully i was very friendly so no instant war declaration) and "Rapid deconstruction" achievement done in the same second. It happened I just rammed some random ship who didnt notice me flying straight and full speed...

 

After a glance on what was that achievement, it is staten "Destroy a medium sized ship within a second". Ok, job done. But what size is "a medium sized ship"?

When I look at the wreckage it was splattered all around the area therefore not identifiable beside faction's color...

 

I obviously designed my ship to be small and tough, i shall post a picture of it soon, but i didnt tought i could one shot some random freighter (I suppose it was, but unsure about it) or any "medium sized ship"! Or my ship isnt that small.. (indeed 9k titanium repairs after the ram, kinda ouch time for me too..) altough i designed it to be front to upside faced to its target, and with some ramming design in mind, being able to ram the target then looping it to finish it from other side (ramming ork ship anyone? :p ). It went better than expected on that unexpected experiment! ^^

 

Is there some in game math formula about damage done while ramming? If so, what is this formula?

 

Edit: Game setting is on normal, and 0.25 collision damage (as i'm still learning how to handle those custom flying space polygons ^^ ).

I guess i might have died if i put that to full collision damage setting! :p

 

Edit2: Is there a way to do only partial repairs and/or seeing a list of damaged parts btw?

[Yodarkore]

Here is the picture of that nasty rammer (steam screenshot):

 

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/89345971219271700/AF390CA4FAA3C9DDFBAF0453052896F71E26259F/

 

Second picture of it, fully manned, other view. This is the final last version of it. Pushing any further on this design would lead to redesign the whole ship. We can see mining turrets on front bottom of the ship, and combat turrets on front sides.

 

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/89345971219304990/0AB167DDCBA3612BEE6D73430E0622F35E92D1AA/

 

Edit: Most of the blocks are either (outside) armor layer and (inside) thrusters arrays: I use a 1:4 size for them so i can put 8 thrusters for 1 "regular sized" thruster, wich is way more effective, without going too cheesy and (imho) exploit...

[thedamngod]

The lower collision damage has very likely saved your ass. Although the armor must have had it's play in your survival as well :)

[Yodarkore]

The lower collision damage has very likely saved your ass. Although the armor must have had it's play in your survival as well :)

 

I'm also designing an even more brutal version of it, in creative mode, with additionnal frontal stone layer under the titanium armor. But since I dont know what's the in game math for ramming damage, I dont know if it is of any use to add a stone layer on it, since it seems you dont need stone armor in starter sectors.

[Thundercraft]

Heh, heh! ;D I think you should call your ship "Nasty Rammer".

 

Nice looking ship with those angles.

 

This begs the question, though: If a ship has a lot of shields, would those shields take the brunt of the damage from collisions? Would making an intentional 'shield rammer' be feasible?

 

For that matter, I can imagine managing a fleet of ships and reserving a relatively compact and cheap "Rammer" class of ship just for intentionally ramming a boss or big enemy ship. It could be pretty much all armor and engines.

 

...But since I dont know what's the in game math for ramming damage, I dont know if it is of any use to add a stone layer on it, since it seems you dont need stone armor in starter sectors.

 

I read somewhere that the only real use for stone blocks is to absorb / prevent lightning damage from lightning weapons. There is a certain enemy which uses those... Color me surprised if stone blocks are practical for anything else. Let us know what you find out.

[Ranakastrasz]

Pretty sure shields ignore collisions, so they will do nothing. Integrity fields on the other hand....

 

Its there to make sure you don't just have heavy shields and no armor. After all, who knows when a lunatic is going to be going at top speed while eating lunch and crash into you. Gotta at least have some armor...

[Yodarkore]

After all, who knows when a lunatic is going to be going at top speed while eating lunch and crash into you. Gotta at least have some armor...

 

Indeed! Integrity field + good armor + lower collision damage + full speed = instakill the lunatic! :p

[Thundercraft]

Indeed! Integrity field + good armor + lower collision damage + full speed = instakill the lunatic! :p

 

As part of an experiment, I tried designing a ship for ramming. Here's my iron version:

http://tinypic.com/r/245iywh/9

 

It's all iron, save for some titanium for integrity field generators to protect all the blocks. It has 793 HP, masses at 4709 tons, and has a top speed of 271 m/s.

 

In a galaxy set for full collision damage, I tried ramming a large-ish traveling merchant. But my ship exploded spectacularly without putting much of a dent in the target. (HP bar looked the same.)

 

I also tried ramming some pirates and found that I could finish off damaged pirates pretty easily by ramming them - and come out damaged, but intact.

 

Thinking I needed more HP, I redesigned it to use mostly Ogonite for the armor and Trinium for the engines, plus some Trinium shields:

http://tinypic.com/r/xgd35e/9

 

As Ranakastrasz suggested, shields do nothing for collision damage. And that makes me very sad. :(

 

Anyway, this version has 5086 HP and a top speed of 185 m/s.

 

This is much more survivable as a ramming ship. I was able to repeatedly ram freighter ships many times larger than this ship's 3836 tons and survive. However, my targets were enormous, with hundreds of thousands of HP, and my impacts barely scratched them. Each impact was doing maybe 1% or so of their max HP in damage. By the time I could turn my ship around and recover my afterburners for another run, their mechanics had this damage mostly repaired.

 

Bottom line: Ramming as a strategy is not worth it. Shields won't help. And to make a ship big enough to destroy the enemy without destroying yourself requires too much cost in credits and materials - even if only iron. It's more economical to build a ship for traditional fighting.

[Worm]

Ramming is very effective against shieldtanks, but against AI it's mostly useless as AI ships never seem to have less hull than shields (below 7:10 hull to shield ratio).

 

Though I'm suprised that no one has mentioned firing high-speed asteroids into stations with force turrets  ::)

[Yodarkore]

It's all iron, save for some titanium for integrity field generators to protect all the blocks. It has 793 HP, masses at 4709 tons, and has a top speed of 271 m/s.

 

In a galaxy set for full collision damage, I tried ramming a large-ish traveling merchant. But my ship exploded spectacularly without putting much of a dent in the target. (HP bar looked the same.)

 

I also tried ramming some pirates and found that I could finish off damaged pirates pretty easily by ramming them - and come out damaged, but intact.

 

Thinking I needed more HP, I redesigned it to use mostly Ogonite for the armor and Trinium for the engines, plus some Trinium shields:

http://tinypic.com/r/xgd35e/9

 

As Ranakastrasz suggested, shields do nothing for collision damage. And that makes me very sad. :(

 

Anyway, this version has 5086 HP and a top speed of 185 m/s.

 

This is much more survivable as a ramming ship. I was able to repeatedly ram freighter ships many times larger than this ship's 3836 tons and survive. However, my targets were enormous, with hundreds of thousands of HP, and my impacts barely scratched them. Each impact was doing maybe 1% or so of their max HP in damage. By the time I could turn my ship around and recover my afterburners for another run, their mechanics had this damage mostly repaired.

 

Bottom line: Ramming as a strategy is not worth it. Shields won't help. And to make a ship big enough to destroy the enemy without destroying yourself requires too much cost in credits and materials - even if only iron. It's more economical to build a ship for traditional fighting.

 

I think what saved my ass was the 0.25 collision damage setting. But i also think 271 m/s and "only" around 5k hp is way too small to be efficient at ramming. But again, we still no clue about the in game math formula for ramming damage. When i killed that ship, i was flying around 1000 m/s and my ship had around 200k HP. Due to repairs costs, i didnt tried to ram anything else, beside finishing some weakest pirate ships that would have died anyway from my guns alone. Oh i also did some ramming on wreckages, pretty efficient, but you dont loot much..

 

I wouldnt recommand it as an efficient tactic for sure, especially on full collision damage settings: repairs cost way more that what you can earn by one shotting a random ship, if you manage to kill it, be it either time and/or ressources for repairs, and it seems that on full collision dmg setting, its a fast way to die and would cost even more in repairs! ^^