Not sure if there is a thread for this. But i was wondering if the devs will maybe work on the ram mechanic.

For the most part i think its done fairly well but i think ramming needs to become a bit more dangerous for both players (with exception orks maybe since it kind of is one of their strategies) and should maybe synergize even better with the Brace for impact mechanic for a "safer ram".

Hell since you guys have invented the crew health bar mechanic ramming could affect crew health for both players. It would make alot of sense both in lore and in terms of realism. This also might discourage some of the bumper car shinanigens we have seen in some games.

Also i think ramming should require a minimum travel distance of maybe 1 or 2 k or a 10-15 second cool down. (with the exception of orks because their boost is on cool down). The ram would be registered when it happens and a timer or something will go on cool down. This would prevent the ramming exploit.

This was not the case in BFGA 1 and could be exploited to no end with All ahead full and retro thruster. Causing a mere light cruiser like a dauntless to shred battleships because they could not get away from the cheeze.

@canned_f3tus Lets hope. It's my opinion that both ships should take = damage from the RAM, of coarse armor ratings & ship tonnage taken into account. Unless the ship is fitted with a upgrade for Ramming, like the Tyrant. Hell, this may already be the case.

I don't know, I've found myself rolling my eyes at it a lot in BFGA1. Without the ship being fitted for ramming with a special upgrade, it's my opinion both ships should catch fire, it's pretty catastrophic and both should lose Crew Health.

Ramming is a crazy/suicidal last ditch affair. Unless you're a Ork, then it's just fun! I can also see Tyranid hive ships trying to eat other ships, if that's a thing.

Ramming has it's place. Let's just hope mechanics are in place to make it feel risky for both parties.

@bellumvinco said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

@canned_f3tus Lets hope. It's my opinion that both ships should take = damage from the RAM, of coarse armor ratings & ship tonnage taken into account. Unless the ship is fitted with a upgrade for Ramming, like the Tyrant. Hell, this may already be the case.

I don't know, I've found myself rolling my eyes at it a lot in BFGA1. Without the ship being fitted for ramming with a special upgrade, it's my opinion both ships should catch fire, it's pretty catastrophic and both should lose Crew Health.

Ramming is a crazy/suicidal last ditch affair. Unless you're a Ork, then it's just fun! I can also see Tyranid hive ships trying to eat other ships, if that's a thing.

Ramming has it's place. Let's just hope mechanics are in place to make it feel risky for both parties.

Not quite, how it works in BFGA1 is not right. In BFG, ships without Nova cannons don't necessarily lack rams. And their strength lay in the thick armour. Basically, ram damage had a chance to be reduced by the frontal armour. Moreover, unlike in BFG:A, a ship declaring a ram (using All Ahead Full) was REQUIRED to move the full distance.

A Cruiser typically has 8hp on the tabletop. In this case, it would roll 8d6, if they beat the targets armour, they inflicted hits. For a Chaos ship this was typically 5+. So any roll of 5+ would inflict a hit on the chaos ship. The ramming ship suffered only half as many dice. So they cop 4d6 in the case of a cruiser. This is rolled vs that ships own armour.

Note; This is ONLY accounting for a "T" ram or a rear ram. If the ships rammed head on, then the ramming ship would roll the FULL 8d6. Remember, in 40k, all ships are hardened at the prow, because while a Ram is considered a last resort, it IS considered a viable tactic, and the Imperium is not shy to use it. (Chaos prefers not to naturally, they don't have as powerfully thick prow armour, and Eldar aren't doing it short of saving the Craftworld because their ships fold like a deck of cards, and don't have the mass to make it work anyway.)

The Imperial Power Ram could by taken by any Imperial Capital ship with a 6+ prow (Emperor Battleships did not have this), for 5 points unless it has a Nova Canon. The Power Ram inflicted one automatic hit before rolling for hits inflicted. (Which makes perfect sense, you've got a half kilometre long spike sheathed in a power field. Which for those who don't know, flat out disintegrates matter it comes into contact with, armour is worthless against it.)

What needs to be reworked is the mechanics allowing cycle-ramming. Even remove damage altogether if ships collide without using all ahead full. Make it like on tabletop how ships will move above or below each other unless you basically declare a ram, and then continue above or below one another after a ram is complete.

If you kill the ability to 'cycle ram' then the issues with it should disappear entirely. It will become a tool of last resort.

stutter/cycle rams where already nerfed heavily
it hasnt been a viable tactic from before marines

@Bellumvinco both ships already do equal damage except for ship tonnage (damage is determined by max hp x speed) and reduced by armor value

if anything ramming damage should go up
atleast speaking from my experience from playing a Goff fleet and a imperial ram fleet, it does too little

and the idea of having a minimum range before it does anything or only work while boosting is silly
i would like ships to need a longer time to get to max speed wich would be enough to nerf cycle ram even more but any more is unnecessary because it has already been done

@ashardalon said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

and the idea of having a minimum range before it does anything or only work while boosting is silly

Not at all. Remember, the ships in the game are NOT true to scale.

See the stem coming from ships? That represents their actual position. The circle around it represents the nearest several thousand kilometres. A ram actually represents a ship throwing it's engines to the stops to try and ram a ship before it can evade, and do this over thousands to tens of thousands of kilometres (to, in extreme ends, even hundreds of thousands of kilometres. Based on the game scale, each 1cm = 1'000 to 2'000km.

The fastest ship in BFG is the Necron Dirge class Raider with a standard speed of 50cm, on all ahead full (required for a ram), it gains d6x10cm extra movement. So the maximum distance a Dirge can travel all ahead full is 110cm, which means they're capable of travelling betweem 110 thousand kilometres and 220 thousand kilometres before an enemy could be expected to reasonably avoid them.

Separate point, but fun fact, with a maximum roll for all ahead full, the Necron ship could turn five times (on All Ahead full, a Necron ship can turn once ever 20cm of movement. And for a Dirge class, every one of those turns could be a 90 degree turn.)

if you need to boost to do damage by ramming a cathedral into a cathedral would break a lot of stuff
for example ramming a ship into another ship
if it needs to boost to do damage would break the logic of the physics and make cool maneuvers irrelevant

and a minimum range for rams are already a thing
a thing that doesnt need to be expanded

@ashardalon said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

if you need to boost to do damage by ramming a cathedral into a cathedral would break a lot of stuff
for example ramming a ship into another ship
if it needs to boost to do damage would break the logic of the physics and make cool maneuvers irrelevant

There is no logic to physics in 40k. These are ships that throw hundreds of thousands of megatons at one another while being capable of thousands of gravities of acceleration and casual relativistic flight with armour that can withstand that sort of firepower and even rams.

We're talking FULL Ork levels of "Clap your hands if you believe it" magical physics.

Not to mention, you can throw around the word Cathedral. But these are not Cathedrals as we know them, they're the opposite. A Cathedral is a fragile thing, break a few flying buttresses and it'll mostly collapse without any extra help. These are cathedrals that can ram into a planet, and the planet loses.

It doesn't need all ahead full to do damage.

It needs all ahead full to ever hit.

and a minimum range for rams are already a thing
a thing that doesnt need to be expanded

Bluntly. Yes it does. It also needs to require all ahead full to work, with it being put on cooldown (say, the bar is automatically emptied if you hit an obect.)

But

I agree with you, pending the changes I think need to be made the damage needs a heavy increase. (Basically with the same rules as tabletop, ship HP/100 = hits. Each hit does 100 damage, but armour can negate those hits.

You get a GOOD ram, and bye-bye enemy cruiser in one hit. But you're going to kick the snot out of yourself to do it.

but if you ram a ship into another ship it shouldnt be only the first ship that takes damage
the second will take less because of the reduced speed but it should still be damaged
similarly, escorts
ramming escorts with for example a retribution isnt done by using it like a spear, you use it like a newspaper and wack them to death
you do that with a high energy turn not a boost
would that still take damage? should ramming aside a escort on the way to your target take all your boost?
will be a great cheeze tactic
just rush an escort infront of a escaping battleship and now its helpless

a year and a half ago stutter rams where an issue, but its fixed already so i dont think it needs more nerfing
i assume a lot havnt played in a long time from how you fear stutter rams
because now they are not a problem and they havnt been for a long time

@ashardalon said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

stutter/cycle rams where already nerfed heavily
it hasnt been a viable tactic from before marines

@Bellumvinco both ships already do equal damage except for ship tonnage (damage is determined by max hp x speed) and reduced by armor value

if anything ramming damage should go up
atleast speaking from my experience from playing a Goff fleet and a imperial ram fleet, it does too little

and the idea of having a minimum range before it does anything or only work while boosting is silly
i would like ships to need a longer time to get to max speed wich would be enough to nerf cycle ram even more but any more is unnecessary because it has already been done

A cool down for ram and making ramming very dangerous for both players would be a good thing. Even if cycle ramming was nurfed it still existed.

@CANNED_F3TUS

Man, why you gotta hate on the Orks so much? The reason they're so much fun is because of their ramming.

@ashardalon said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

but if you ram a ship into another ship it shouldnt be only the first ship that takes damage

Again, the scale you see is not real scale. Even by terms of 40k realism you cannot ram a ship into another ship. That'd require pushing it across thousands of kilometres and the other ship not doing anything.

the second will take less because of the reduced speed but it should still be damaged
similarly, escorts
ramming escorts with for example a retribution isnt done by using it like a spear, you use it like a newspaper and wack them to death
you do that with a high energy turn not a boost

Which should not be possible at all. On TT a Retribution trying to ram an escort would have to take a difficult Leadership test to even make the attempt. (3d6)

would that still take damage? should ramming aside a escort on the way to your target take all your boost?
will be a great cheeze tactic
just rush an escort infront of a escaping battleship and now its helpless

Yes it should.

a year and a half ago stutter rams where an issue, but its fixed already so i dont think it needs more nerfing
i assume a lot havnt played in a long time from how you fear stutter rams
because now they are not a problem and they havnt been for a long time

Nerfed =/= non-existent.

@ashardalon said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

stutter/cycle rams where already nerfed heavily
it hasnt been a viable tactic from before marines
[...]

stutter/cycle rams are still the only "correct"way to ram (boost>ram>full stop>repeat). which patch changed ramming after release?

@fosil said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

@ashardalon said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

stutter/cycle rams where already nerfed heavily
it hasnt been a viable tactic from before marines
[...]

stutter/cycle rams are still the only "correct"way to ram (boost>ram>full stop>repeat). which patch changed ramming after release?

The one they did for the Space Marines. Boarding and Ramming both got a rework. Because Ramming became dependent on ship speed, rapidly pulsing the engines would result in your own ship suffering as much damage as the target, as well as dealing really small damage compared to just smashing in to the enemy at peak velocity.

@romeo said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

@fosil said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

@ashardalon said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

stutter/cycle rams where already nerfed heavily
it hasnt been a viable tactic from before marines
[...]

stutter/cycle rams are still the only "correct"way to ram (boost>ram>full stop>repeat). which patch changed ramming after release?

The one they did for the Space Marines. Boarding and Ramming both got a rework. Because Ramming became dependent on ship speed, rapidly pulsing the engines would result in your own ship suffering as much damage as the target, as well as dealing really small damage compared to just smashing in to the enemy at peak velocity.

Plus. We all know the best way to ram is to Nutcracker a bitch.

Remembers a Space Station mission where playing as Orks I killed the Station, not by stutter-ramming, but by using microwarp to jump three Kroozas onto three sides of the station and hitting da big red button.

@romeo never hated on orks ramming lol. Its one of their main ways of dealing damage and i think these guys should take the least damage when ramming. and it makes sense for them. Im more boggled with the other factions ramming so much. Sorry i should have clarified it better gonna edit it.

@kadaeux said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

Nerfed =/= non-existent.

actually, since its been nerfed to do no more damage then just pushing
yes, nerfed = non existant

and the scale also doesnt matter so much considering the speeds
thousands of kilometers!! as if that matters, you just referred to a ship moving 220 000 kilometers in one turn wile i was referring to ramming into a close formation only 4 or 5 thousand kilometers apart
and whether or not the ship does anything to avoid it is up to you

the beauty of ramming comes from its simplicity
thats why its the orks main weapon
yes it should be risky, its damage should go way up for both sides but in no way should you add silly things like a retribution shitting its pants to push a iconoclast to the side
there might be some people panicking somewhere but the people that matter on the bridge wouldnt give a fuck
stupid TT rules shouldnt be transferred
in all the lore books i have read the people on the bridge made the decision and the rest doesnt even have the slightest idea of what is going on, so who is going to have a panic attack from ramming a ship so small that it wouldnt even be felt a few dozen decks down

@ashardalon said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

@kadaeux said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

Nerfed =/= non-existent.

actually, since its been nerfed to do no more damage then just pushing
yes, nerfed = non existant

Did you get a different version to everyone? Ramming is still quite effective.

and the scale also doesnt matter so much considering the speeds
thousands of kilometers!! as if that matters, you just referred to a ship moving 220 000 kilometers in one turn wile i was referring to ramming into a close formation only 4 or 5 thousand kilometers apart
and whether or not the ship does anything to avoid it is up to you

The scale matters greatly. A ship can do a great deal more to avoid a ship trotting along at normal thrusting power than at extending thrust.

the beauty of ramming comes from its simplicity
thats why its the orks main weapon

Except that it is not the Orks main weapon. Even in the lore Orks don't ram all that often.

yes it should be risky, its damage should go way up for both sides but in no way should you add silly things like a retribution shitting its pants to push a iconoclast to the side
there might be some people panicking somewhere but the people that matter on the bridge wouldnt give a fuck

The people on the bridge would most certainly give a fuck. Especially considering a Ram is NOT a first resort. It's a case of you've been in battle for who knows how long, and that ship needs to die now. If your ship had 3 points of hull left out of 8 and you rammed, you're still rolling 4d6 to see what damage you take yourself (and 8d6 to see what they take). There is every chance you will kill yourself doing so.

stupid TT rules shouldnt be transferred

Except there is nothing stupid about it.

in all the lore books i have read the people on the bridge made the decision and the rest doesnt even have the slightest idea of what is going on, so who is going to have a panic attack from ramming a ship so small that it wouldnt even be felt a few dozen decks down

You really don't understand the scale involved do you? NO ship in Battlefleet Gothic is that small. The smallest ship is 1km long, the largest normal ship is about 8-9km long. You WILL feel it through the whole ship if you collide. This isn't some guys weekend fishing boat vs a tanker. This is more like a Frigate colliding with a Carrier. everyone on both ships IS going to feel it. The ship that rammed, intentional or not is going to lose almost all velocity.

when you ram a 5x2 kilometer ship going full speed into a 0.5x0.25 kilometer ship
it wouldnt take all their momentum
do you even inertia bro

@ashardalon said in Will ramming be reworked or tweaked?:

when you ram a 5x2 kilometer ship going full speed into a 0.5x0.25 kilometer ship
it wouldnt take all their momentum
do you even inertia bro

Except there are no 0.5x0.25 kilometre ships. None. Zip. Zilch.
Nor are there any ships that are 5kmx2km.

Not to mention that the dimensions are less relevant than mass. Using the Rogue Trader RPG...

A Repulsive Class Grand Cruiser (7.4km long, 1.5km abeam at fins approx) has a mass of 39 megatonnes. (39 Million Tons. Don't think about it, the mass and accelerations in the Rogue Trader don't make any sense except in comparing ships to each other.)

A Viper class Scout Sloop (0.95 km long,0.25 km abeam at fins approx) has a mass of 4.9 megatonns (4.9 million tons.) It is a full eighth of the mass of the Repulsive.

A Prius weighs 1.3 tons. An average Peterbilt style truck weighs about 15 tons. A Prius is 11.53 times lighter than the Truck. Yet on average an accident between them will stop them. (Ok ok. It'll stop the Prius in much the same manner setting off a bomb in it would but still.)

Now. Let's factor in extra information.

In a ramming assault, side on, unless they kill the target, that arrests momentum as the enemy hull is preventing them from moving.
Then in said ram, not only is the enemy hull preventing them from moving, but it's adding the equivalent of 12.5 percent of their mass extra to push.
Then we have the rammed ships own thrusters which will be acting to arrest the change in momentum.
Then we have the damage to the ramming ship spilling vast quantities of air out into space through the prow further eroding momentum.
Then we have other damage to the ramming ship, such as potential engine damage, secondary explosions and worse.

NOW if we factor in the impact from a relativistic impact, which if we were going to be judging wholly off of real physics, over .65c it doesn't matter how fast you're going. Your mass colliding with another object not sharing your relative velocity is basically antimatter for the energy released. So, let's say you take 10% damage. In the case of the Repulsive, that's 3.9 megatonnes of antimatter equivalent energy released. That WILL stop you dead, if not impart significant thrust in the reverse direction.

(In fact, if it were 100% real physics base, he collision would absolutely annihilate both ships completely.)

So yes. I "do even inertia bro".

*Special Note: I used the figures for the Repulsive as it's the largest ship in the Rogue Trader RPG we have numbers for. Battleships don't appear in it.