There was ramming. In fact, there were ram frigates (or were they in HW1?). As well, cap ships could be ordered to smash into one another, damaging both ships (much fun).
All ships would attack automatically if put into the correct stance. And the other thing: moving ships often kept themselves oriented to fire their weapons, or at least had large weapons that could fire while not pointing direct at the enemy; and there were distinct advantages to moving them around, namely in bringing short-range weapons into range. If I recall, some cap ships only actually turned to the orientation you ordered them to move to if it was particularly far away and they needed to utilize their main engines.
I've got the urge to reinstall HW2 and the PDS mod again. I might be a bit off in my memory of the game, but battles did seem far more interesting in it. The higher count of fighters and corvettes could have been a good part of it.
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Ram frigates? I own both versions of Homeworld, and I have never heard of such a ship. Fighters could Kamikaze in HW 1, but you had to order them to do so. ANd I've never seen captial ships ram into each other.
They would fire on enemies automatically when they came in range, but they wouldn't move. Now if you set them to agressive, they would attack without being ordered to do so. But this caused problems, since they would pursue anything that came into reasonable range, whether it be a probe or a ship it had no chance of defeating. It was not uncommon to see fighters relentlessly pursuing enemy vessels across the map when set to agressive; not fun at all.
Short range weapons were usually reserved for fighters, which had to come close for them to be utilized, otherwise, when ordered to attack, ships would get in range automatically.
Moving ships had no real advantage (particularly ion frigates), unless you wanted them to miss, or to retreat. Besides, they moved dirt slow (crusiers are a fine example).
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