I’ve trying a roman republic playthrough, and an important part of that would be an option to ram the many enemies’ ships with yours. Large carronades can substitute for that a bit, but a better feeling could be felt if we had actual rams! So,
let’s have ramming damage be calculated based on the mass of the ramming ship, and the speed difference between it and target, and to be applied to both target and attacker. Chance of ramming successfully should be calculated basing on the attacker’s and defender’s top speeds, much the same as it is now. For instance, let’s imagine that a 15000ton trireme moving at 6km/s can generate up to 60 points of damage ramming an alien missile cruiser that’s capable of moving at 4km/s. If the cruiser were unable to move, this maximum amount of damage would then be 180.
Then, add a new class of ship component - ram. A single ram can be mounted on a ship, and it might have to contend for the slot with a spinal beam weapon. Basing upon a race’s armour technology, and component size, a ram would have the ability to offset a certain amount of ramming damage when present on the attacking vessel.
For example, let’s say a 15HS TL2 ram can offset up to 24 points of ramming damage. A ship equipped with that would then be able to inflict up to 24 ramming damage on an opponent, while sufferring none itself. On a successful attack, roll a dice to damage the ram, with something like ~5% to break it when used at “full” capacity, which would put it out of action.
A ram should be able to have a target ship assigned to it, much like a fire controller, but not an option to fire. Instead, add a fleet order to attempt a “normal” ramming attack where every ship would inflict no more than the amount of damage that the ram can offset, to the tagret assigned to the ram in “ship combat” tab. This would represent a normal combat option for races that, like Greeks, are so inclined as to ram their enemies, not the desperate suicidal type of attack. In a “suicidal” type of ramming attack, the ram would still offset the damage taken by the attacking ship, and run a much higher chance of being damaged,smth like (damage dealt/ram capacity -1) + 5% chance of breaking. In this example, inflicting 1.95 times the rated damage would always break the ram.
In the example of the trireme ramming the alien cruiser above, a “normal” ramming attack would cause 24points of damage to the cruiser, none to the trireme, and break the ram one out of 20 times. A “desperate” attack would inflict 60 damage to the cruiser, 36 to the trireme, and definitely break the ram.
As it would seem that since the ram is sitting out there on the exterior of the ship, and can’t/shouldn’t be covered by armour, perhaps it should be considered exposed to enemy fire even when ship armour is undamaged. It should be a tough component to break in this manner, though, perhaps even contributing to the survivability of the ship by deflecting damage from normal armour and (when the htk roll is good) swallowing it.
As for how to balance it all, perhaps aim towards an idea that a ship that is 60% engine, 15%armour, and 20% ram, should be a dangerous if niche combatant.
