Ramming - why so serious?

[-KM-]

Just one little thing to ad here. Some people argue that ramming isnt realistic becasue who would do a suecide mission risking the lives of all the crew and themselves in order to couse damage or sink the enemy. I think both the history and our present world is so full of examples of people that do pure suecide missions in order to hurt what they beleave is the enemy that we dont really have to argue about if it would be possible for someone to do that. As a few example you could take soldiers in old batles used as a meatshield marching towards thier death (killed by thier own if they didn t) Second world war in russia  with miniguns shoting at thier own soldiers if they would turn and run when fighting the germans. Terrorists blowing themselves up etc. There so many examples of people who of free will use part with thier lives to couse harm to what they beleave is the enemy or people going in to a certain death by orders of thier superiors in war.

 

So in short. Would people really sacrifice thier crew and the ship if they could couse a greater damage to the enemy in the name of honour/revange or religion. Well I m quite certain that in extreme situations they would.

[Ghroznak]

EDIT:  Where this gets tricky is where there is an obvious ship size differential...eg, A Victory runs over a Privateer.  We all know what's going to happen.  and the Victory is not likely to sink.  How would you treat that ram?  Fair game..."cuz bigger ship"?

 

If I am in open world, and a Privateer engages me while I am in a Victory, and he then proceeds to place his ship in front of me... then I put sails to full and run him over.

 

Seriously, if you can simply run him over and thereby avoid him putting holes in your ship or start a whole prolonged stern-camping session... why wouldn't you?

 

The risk and damage to your Victory is minimal... and the outcome is -1 problem to worry about.

 

It's pretty much a given what's going to happen, regardless if that's how they did things back then or not, or how frequent or infrequent ramming was used as a tactic. It's a game and in a game you choose the option that provides the least risk to yourself, takes the least amount of time and at the same time achieves your goal.

 

Little risk + Avoids time consuming stern camping + get rid of the Privateer = Ramming is a solid decision.

 

Simple math.

Edited February 17, 2015 by Ghroznak

[Kao1808]

I believe ramming (and collisions) should definitely stay in game. It is and was physically possible so why not.

 

It just has to be made less attractive as a tactic. The stern is one of the ships weak spots so if the ships are of equal size it should do substantially more damage to the rammer then the one being rammed. Also if a ship has taken a lot of damage it should be more difficult to ram as a last resort.

 

In the open world it could perhaps have a bad impact on your reputation as a captain and make it more difficult to get a (good) crew if you are known to be ramming a lot. If the other captain has a bad reputation this could then also make you more cautious of getting close to his ship to soon.

[Alex Connor]

Fair point, and that is always the problem in any game or simulation. You are not actually standing on the deck of that brig with the Santissima bearing down on you. If you were then human instinct would dictate the encounter far more. In a game it is about the math of the encounter.

Quite simply, sinking should be the worst possible outcome of a fight and be punished harshly. Perma-death of a character is probably too harsh, but you should be set back considerably. IE, sink and you lose all (or almost all) your trained and skilled officers and crew, have to start over with raw recruits.

 

Building a good crew should be an important part of PvP success, and if you surrender (even in boarding) then you would get to keep that crew via prisoner exchange. So if you are outmatched and the fight is hopeless, there's good incentive to surrender rather than throwing away lives.

 

Combine that with making sure the rammer always takes more damage unless they are considerably bigger (even then, you might hole your hull and be stuck with a significant leak for the rest of the fight), and making sinking ships full of water difficult to manoeuver and slow, ramming will all but disappear.

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

I believe ramming (and collisions) should definitely stay in game. It is and was physically possible so why not.[/size]

 [/size]

It just has to be made less attractive as a tactic. The stern is one of the ships weak spots so if the ships are of equal size it should do substantially more damage to the rammer then the one being rammed. Also if a ship has taken a lot of damage it should be more difficult to ram as a last resort.[/size]

 

In the open world it could perhaps have a bad impact on your reputation as a captain and make it more difficult to get a (good) crew if you are known to be ramming a lot. I[/size]f the other captain has a bad reputation this could then also make you more cautious of getting close to his ship to soon.[/size]

I'm not sure I follow you sir. Nobody is backing over a ship to ram it, and the bow structure itself is one of the stronger spots on the ship with regard to applying force to another object. It's reinforced and pointy - two very nice things when you're talking the physics of ramming another object.

[Kao1808]

Well I normally ram backwards   

 

Of course I meant the bow   

 

I always was under the impression that sailing war ships were immensely powerful on the sides, but very weak on the bow and stern?

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

Well I normally ram backwards   

 

Of course I meant the bow   

 

I always was under the impression that sailing war ships were immensely powerful on the sides, but very weak on the bow and stern?

 

hehe, I figured, but had to poke some fun.  

 

I was also under the impression that shots to the bow were more desirable than shots to the sides.  That said, a cannonball is very different than the wooden sides of another ship.  The prow is quite narrow, which increases the PSI of the impact, the keel, and the longitudinal axis of the ship will reinforce that impact point and share the load to a degree, and in return, it is applying all of that pressure to the sides of planking, reinforced by bent (or grown that way) wood.  It is my opinion that, with regards to most ships, a bow hitting the side of another ship will do more damage to the side of the ship than to the bow.  Now, that doesn't mean you won't spring leaks and have a bashed up bow, but I think the damage, all other things being equal, will be higher in the ramming rammed ship than in the rammed ramming ship.

[MATANZA]

It is my opinion that, with regards to most ships, a bow hitting the side of another ship will do more damage to the side of the ship than to the bow.  Now, that doesn't mean you won't spring leaks and have a bashed up bow, but I think the damage, all other things being equal, will be higher in the ramming ship than in the rammed ship.

Don't you mean the opposite?

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

Doh, I did mean the opposite.  Updating my post - I'm operating on less than an hour of sleep.    Thank you sir!

[DeRuyter]

Two points on this topic that are obscured by the rhetoric which bear mentioning:

 

1. Ramming vs. Collisions

 

Everyone simply says ram but really we are talking about two different actions. Collisions are part of battle and usually are accidental, two teammates near each other focused on firing, or misjudging going behind another ship, etc. It may be intentional when you want to board for example, but the goal is not to sink the enemy ship by this action.  Ramming is a deliberate action/tactic to severely damage/sink the enemy vessel. While it was used in other eras, ancient galley warfare, 16th c. galley warfare, or with the introduction of ironclads in the ACW, ramming was not used as a general naval tactic in the age of sail (not saying it was never tried in a specific circumstance).

 

2. Fouling or Entanglement

 

This is not modeled in game (yet?). In addition to the damage to the hull and rigging in many collisions the ships rigging entangled or fouled and both ships were stuck until they could be cut away. This happened in the Constitution v Guerriere fight with the end result the more of Guerriere's masts came down when the ships parted.  In addition debris is not modeled either so no one has to cut away the damaged rigging from their bow after a collision/ram.

 

Another point is that with the current repair system you can fix parts of the rigging that would require a shipyard to fix. Constitution collided with the President  and had to put in to port for a major reconstruction of her bow afterwards.

 

We see ramming because of the area style alpha battles we are playing now. I am not surprised given what I saw in WoT (jeez why didn't they teach us ramming in armor school!?!).  I am sure these tactics will change as the new damage model and OW comes online.

 

 

[MATANZA]

I've just had a head-on collision with friendly Cerberus in Bellona. Got nearly 20 leaks and sank while after.

[nornica]

Ramming is awesome, it helps picking the bad seed from a group of players.

Yesterday being a little drunk i accidentaly rammed one funny guy in pvp.. twice.

I was in a Trinco, he was in Cerb. I said sorry twice (not sure why, cause the smaller ship should have look where i was going and give me a place to sail) and was called "fucking retard", and the best line was "go back playing WoW".. (seriously who the hell play this thing anymore?)

Ramming happens, there are accidental rams, purpose rams, dick-move-front-SOL-demast rams, i-will-stop-in-front-of-a-friendly-line-it-is-a-good-place-to-start-shooting rams.


Purpose rams will probably disapear when new 4.0 model etc. will come in. But accidental rams wont, like accidental friendly fire, accidental spilling beer on a keyboard, sex with your ex. It happens, You feel bad about it, say sorry, and move on.
But if u act very rude on teamchat, about it, then You are just an asshole.

Ahoy.

Edited February 17, 2015 by nornica

[ripaton]

Nornica, I had a good laugh thanks and true.

[MATANZA]

i-will-stop-in-front-of-a-friendly-line-it-is-a-good-place-to-start-shooting rams.

 

Lol'd hard. It's one of the most annoying things right now.

[PrezesOi]

 i-will-stop-in-front-of-a-friendly-line-it-is-a-good-place-to-start-shooting 

 

 

This is a hidden game mode - "Single player: Sniper Challenge".

[Kaaru62]

sinking a Bellona with my ship wasn't good enough. during a Trafalgar battle today I actually capsized and sank a Santisima with a well placed ram from my Transcomalee.

[greybuscat]

Purpose rams will probably disapear when new 4.0 model etc. will come in. But accidental rams wont, like accidental friendly fire, accidental spilling beer on a keyboard, sex with your ex. It happens, You feel bad about it, say sorry, and move on.

 

 

This is what you call "sig worthy."

Edited February 18, 2015 by greybuscat

[Sarogus]

 If it is intentional its basically the teabag of Naval Action in my opinion.

 

 

Had a good laugh at this 

[Fun Odyssey]

Last night I deliberately rammed an opponent. After trading broadsides with an enemy ship who was passing me at close range, I decided to ram a ship which was closely trailing him just to present a small target and hopefully avoiding some of the damage from his broadside. I also figured out that since they were going to the opposite way the collision would turn my ship 180° and I could fire my other broadside as we were side by side.  Plan worked well and I managed to fire both of my broadsides at two different opponents instead of firing one broadside and eating two. The combat progressed us two trading few broadsides at point blank range both unwilling to board the other and then we disengaged and the battle went on.

 

Me turning 90° sharply took away a lot of my forward momentum, and I didn’t expect the maneuver to be a suicide move nor did I expect to sink the other guy, It was just a way to turn my boat around quickly to fire my other broadside to match  the damage output of my adversaries in that situation.

 

I didn’t think I was committing a major naval combat sin, I was just making the best out of a bad situation.

[Braenner]

A little like two aircraft or ww2 battleships ramming each other. 

Hmm.. as I remember ramming was popular in ww2 when destroyer catch u-boot on the surface and was too close for gunnery..

[Iñigo Montoya]

Collisions= fine.

Accidental ram= fine.

Ramming as a consistent and continuated tactic= gaming the game.

 

I can only hope for a reputation system that punishes reckless captains by making recruiting impossible to them. Who would sail with such a Commander?

[William the Drake]

As the admins have stated, the point of sea trials is to gather data on all combat aspects of the game. This most definitely includes the data to be gathered from ramming. 

 

The current mass system is just one bug that ramming has found (e.g. a brig can do far to much damage to a frigate when ramming it for game balance or realism)

 

I foresee that the ship loss mechanic will drastically reduce the amount of ramming in game, as it usually condemns both ships to a watery fate. 

 

Now the stigma that ramming has garnered seriously confuses me, and disturbs me. Perhaps coming from PotBS where collisions only served to knock a ship off its track with an anticlimactic "bump" and was simply annoying, I thoroughly enjoyed the possible tactical aspects that ramming has in Naval Action in comparison. 

 

I see this becoming not unlike the CoD grenade launchers, shortly named "noob tubes" for there ability to rack up kills with ease at safe distances. So much so to the point that players would leave matches with anyone playing with GLs or hosts would kick them. They garnered no respect of empathy. 

 

 

The case (or even vice versa) should definitely not be the case for Naval Action. Ramming has serious tactical potential to simply played off as "Bad, so we don't do it at all"

[kalnaren]

Ramming in the 17th and 18th centuries was rare among fleet vessels (though some harbour defense boats may still have had rams). Ramming in NA is rampant because there's a single, sole objective: Sink the enemy ships, and no consequences for having your ship sunk. The singular objective encourages this type of behaviour.

 

The more traditional goal was to force the enemy ship to strike its colours and take it as a prize. As such causing extensive waterline damage wasn't desirable if it could be avoided. Not to mention the potential damage to your own ship. Right now in NA, we play a battle, and that's it. In real life a ship still had to make it back to port with whatever damage it had with only basic repairs.. potentially in harsh weather (several of the ships captured at Trafalgar -including the Santisima Trinidad- were lost in the subsequent storm).  Not to mention the kind of morale it would take for a crew to ram a ship significantly larger than their own, which is something else that isn't modeled in NA.

 

When this game goes into open world and players actually stand to lose something, and assuming they have to make it back to port after a battle, I think you'll see ramming drop off.

 

 

 

Now the stigma that ramming has garnered seriously confuses me, and disturbs me. Perhaps coming from PotBS where collisions only served to knock a ship off its track with an anticlimactic "bump" and was simply annoying, I thoroughly enjoyed the possible tactical aspects that ramming has in Naval Action in comparison. 

 

A few games I've been in there have been some well executed rams. It actually takes some skill to ram two ships at once and damage both of them.

 

I haven't played any Trafalgar battles yet, but from my observations in the smaller battles people spend far too much time on the gun deck and not enough time looking at all the ships around them. I've had way more damage from accidental collisions with friendlies in a tightly packed formation than I have from enemies trying to ram me. Avoiding enemies in most ships isn't that much of a chore.. you just have to think ahead. Sometimes it's unavoidable but a chunk of people seem to be playing this game like a twitch FPS.

Edited February 20, 2015 by kalnaren

[MATANZA]

Ramming as far as I am aware is fairly unrealistic. 

Ships got entangled by accident but do not ever seem to have rammed on purpose. The damage to both ships would be devestating and hardly worth the effort.

I think the structural damage of two SOLs colliding would mean that both ships would be taken out of battle and the loss of life potentially devestating.

A little like two aircraft or ww2 battleships ramming each other. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_ramming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando_Elbe

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_ram

Edited February 20, 2015 by MATANZA

[kalnaren]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_ramming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando_Elbe

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_ram

To be fair, those are all special circumstances of which none exist in the time period Naval Action takes place.

Edited February 20, 2015 by kalnaren