Hey danielost

1: First off, I was talking about laser weapons (amongst others) being a poor choice for an offensive weapon system in space (they could possibly be effective for point defense though). I am not sure why you mentioned lasers as a means of propulsion. I don't get where you got laser propulsion from my earlier post.

2: Also, you mentioned the Laser Engine concept without even looking to see what it is. Basically, it is a ground based laser (and ground based power plant) that hits the bottom of a ship/satellite trying to get into space. The beam heats up stored CO2 in a sort of receptacle and creates a shock wave that pushes the ship up. Now, I realize that there is more to it then just that, but we are a long way from being able to run this tech on a space ship. We always come back to how are you going to power an on board super laser in space AND get rid of the waste heat?

Hehe, also when you say this laser engine will take a statellite out in orbit, I think you meant to say it would put a satellite into orbit (I haven't seen any articles on this talking about using the engine as a weapon). These are two very different results.

Back to the Ramming argument (sigh!):

A last gasp ramming option makes more sense now that I understand what you are saying. I could even see why a ship crew would happily do the Kamikaze thing in order to protect their loved ones (as we can see, SoaSE doesn't have the most friendly way of capturing planets).

But we still come back to the problem that if ramming is a viable option because it is realistic, then why can't we use realistic ship to ship battle tactics? The simple counter to your Ram tactic would be to conduct ship combat from crazy long ranges. So if realism is what you want, then combat should be about long range mass missile/drone attacks versus massed point defense and evasive maneuvers. So while battles in SoaSE are 10 to 20 km, realistic combat would be more like in the 500 000 km range.

So, any argument that ramming should be included because it is realistic, begs the question as to why not then have realistic tactics as well.

I'll tell you what, let's have a battle and I'll use realistic ship combat tactics and you use your selective realistic tactics. So, you can use ramming AND I'll give you a fleet 10 times bigger than mine. But you have to use SoaSE weapons that have a 10 km range, ships that have a slow max speed, and short range strike craft. I'll use realistic missile cruisers at 500 000 km range from you. We will fight and I will kill your fleet. The only thing you'll be ramming are my missiles (or missile effects if I use shrapnel or X-Ray lasers).

I kinda would like a game with realistic battle tactics (but I am sure I am in the minority). But your suggestion for SoaSE to use certain 'realistic' tactics that suit your tastes and not use any of the realistic counters to your tactics...well, it would be unbalanced and would also just plain suck.

oh come on. this is what makes the Advent so kickass. assimilation over bombing!

I'm not necessarily on board for this idea however if it were to happen there would almost certainly have to be critical points on each ship and one should be able to target them as well. I know I would always target engines for obvious reasons. Moreover whenever a ship explodes then any and all ships in the blast radius would have to take damage and the closer to the doomed ship the more.

With that said given the current propensity for the game to group ships in an area tightly and if a capital ship or a few were in the group and I had say 10 G-guns within range I would focus all of then on the center capital chip and with seconds then entire fleet would likely become toast. I think that is "unbalancing" scenario the dev had in mind.

On ship collisions:

I agree, they are unbalanced, however, they would be very cool looking. So how about this. A ship made for ramming, no guns, no shields, little hull. The crew are ready to die for the cause. Maybe they take out frigates in about one hit, but it should take a few to take down a cap ship. They should inefficient cost wise, possibly only used as a last resort in defense of a planet which has a frigate factory and can churn them out. They should die from fire easily.

And they should look super sweet when they do their thing.

or how about just "300" "sparta!!!" "kamikaze" or "divine wind" ?
dont twist jihad any more than terrorists...