what if you just gave the bigger ships enough firepower to disable smaller ships before they hit, so ramming isn’t a very effective first move strategy but can be effective after a the gun battle has deteriorated a bit.
Also if its sail you can have wind direction so its hard to ram head on, you have to follow the wind, as damage would be relative to the ships combined velocity and therefore requiring complex manovers to get into a collision course with enough momentum to do damage and there by giving even more time for the larger ship to shoot.
Preventing kamikaze griefing
some thoughts:
have a special "go ramming speed" command and special ramming attachments/upgrades. lets say the ramming command can be activated if the player is OUTSIDE a certain range of a ship. The logic is that you need space to get up to ramming speed so you can't just get in real close and ram.
This enables the game to detect the intent to ram and makes it part of the gameplay. The other ships are notified immediately if a ship activated the ramming command to enable them to react accordingly.
Hitting ships without the ram command merits warning flags and low damage done the rammed ship.
Players might make ramming boats as a main strategy but the game should provide counters. Example is a larger ship will need to be farther from the target ship to build up speed. decreasing the minimum ramming distance might require getting really expensive engines that guzzle up tons of fuel, to make it harder to maintain a ramming boat. Another way to decrease ramming distance is to put on less armor but this has the the disadvantage of being blown to bits trying to ram the target.
If you implement salvaging, add penalties to rammed ships, make it less profitable to ram and sink ships than to just cripple and take over them. ramming also damages your own ship so repairs are probably more costly.
Another thought is insurance. Players can buy insurance in the game that has a ramming policy. They player might recover their ships (or a percent) if they die due to ramming. Then have the percent recovered go down if the player rams other ships or gets rammed. You might let the players also pay for insurance like in real life.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
have a special "go ramming speed" command and special ramming attachments/upgrades. lets say the ramming command can be activated if the player is OUTSIDE a certain range of a ship. The logic is that you need space to get up to ramming speed so you can't just get in real close and ram.
This enables the game to detect the intent to ram and makes it part of the gameplay. The other ships are notified immediately if a ship activated the ramming command to enable them to react accordingly.
Hitting ships without the ram command merits warning flags and low damage done the rammed ship.
Players might make ramming boats as a main strategy but the game should provide counters. Example is a larger ship will need to be farther from the target ship to build up speed. decreasing the minimum ramming distance might require getting really expensive engines that guzzle up tons of fuel, to make it harder to maintain a ramming boat. Another way to decrease ramming distance is to put on less armor but this has the the disadvantage of being blown to bits trying to ram the target.
If you implement salvaging, add penalties to rammed ships, make it less profitable to ram and sink ships than to just cripple and take over them. ramming also damages your own ship so repairs are probably more costly.
Another thought is insurance. Players can buy insurance in the game that has a ramming policy. They player might recover their ships (or a percent) if they die due to ramming. Then have the percent recovered go down if the player rams other ships or gets rammed. You might let the players also pay for insurance like in real life.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
I think you could make ramming a valid tactic and then just balance it as a weapon type. Big ships can't ram small ships, because the small ships will just scoot out of the way most of the time, thanks to their superior maneuverability, and if the big ship misses, its inertia will carry it along and harm its tactical positioning. Small ships can ram large ships at will, but their small size and lower top speed will allow the large ship to withstand the impact fairly well, while the small ship will be annihilated.
If you arrange it so that ramming and losing the small ship does about as much damage as the small ship could hope to inflict with proper weapons in the amount of time it would take for the large ship to destroy or disable it, then ramming won't be overpowered, and will be used as an extreme tactic, as it should be.
If you arrange it so that ramming and losing the small ship does about as much damage as the small ship could hope to inflict with proper weapons in the amount of time it would take for the large ship to destroy or disable it, then ramming won't be overpowered, and will be used as an extreme tactic, as it should be.
Quote:Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
I think you could make ramming a valid tactic and then just balance it as a weapon type. Big ships can't ram small ships, because the small ships will just scoot out of the way most of the time, thanks to their superior maneuverability, and if the big ship misses, its inertia will carry it along and harm its tactical positioning. Small ships can ram large ships at will, but their small size and lower top speed will allow the large ship to withstand the impact fairly well, while the small ship will be annihilated.
If you arrange it so that ramming and losing the small ship does about as much damage as the small ship could hope to inflict with proper weapons in the amount of time it would take for the large ship to destroy or disable it, then ramming won't be overpowered, and will be used as an extreme tactic, as it should be.
Let the big ships try to ram them. If the smaller ships are more maneuverable they SHOULD be able to see it coming and get out of the way fairly effectively.
If there lower level...then why cant the higher level just blast it before it gets close? And lower level ships, like other people said, shouldnt do as much dmg. I dont see the problem really, a higher level ship should beable to rip them to shreads if all they gonna do is kamikaze into them. How many blasts can a ship handle! :-p
goood luck though
goood luck though
Quote:Original post by Falling Sky
If there lower level...then why cant the higher level just blast it before it gets close? And lower level ships, like other people said, shouldnt do as much dmg. I dont see the problem really, a higher level ship should beable to rip them to shreads if all they gonna do is kamikaze into them. How many blasts can a ship handle! :-p
goood luck though
you could also have it so the ships speed and manuverability decrese as the riging gets torn down and the hull shreded
Author
You'd be surprised how many broadsides it takes to incapacitate a ship (though the disparity in sizes would help). Anyways, yeah, I think I'll go with the "big ships don't care, small ships can dodge" idea. It has the benefit of not requiring explicit rules to implement, just a good balance between weaponry and maneuverability.
Maybe if the front of the ship was more susceptible to collision damage than the rest of the ship? So the person doing the ramming would normally hit nose first, causing much more damage to their own ship than the opponents...accidental side-swipes wouldn't do much damage. Only head-to-head chicken matches would be interesting. If you see someone trying to ram you, veer off (also good for being able to fire) and you're mostly protected.
Past a certain time in history, ramming became a non-tactic. It was ineffective because ships could blow other ships apart at range long before they even got close enough (guns/torpedoes at close range....).
The larger/more powerful ship should simply be able to sink any weaker 'battleship' at close range.
Depending on your game mechanics/theme (like allowing unrealistic heavy armor/ships structure) you could also rationalize the more powerful 'battleshhips' being simply so strong that when a weak' one tried to ram it it would be the weak one that crumples up like tin foil.
Do the new players automaticly get a big 'battleship' ?? Why not start them on destroyers or frigates that are much smaller and much less likely to do alot of damage during any ramming attempt (and certainly get blow apart by 'big' guns of a real battleship). They didnt call destroyers 'tincans' for nothing......
The larger/more powerful ship should simply be able to sink any weaker 'battleship' at close range.
Depending on your game mechanics/theme (like allowing unrealistic heavy armor/ships structure) you could also rationalize the more powerful 'battleshhips' being simply so strong that when a weak' one tried to ram it it would be the weak one that crumples up like tin foil.
Do the new players automaticly get a big 'battleship' ?? Why not start them on destroyers or frigates that are much smaller and much less likely to do alot of damage during any ramming attempt (and certainly get blow apart by 'big' guns of a real battleship). They didnt call destroyers 'tincans' for nothing......
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