Problems with ramming

Pablo · #1 October 8th, 2002, 10:21 AM

Maybe I've missed this somewhere but tried to search the forum and failed. The problem I'm having is with capturing enemy ships / ramming. Tested this with SEIV and SEIVGold - no luck.
I'm playing organics and have Org.Armor III + boarding paries on board. What I was thinking is to knock down enemy shields by ramming and then capture. Set my ships to break formation and strategy was board/ram. No luck

My ships ran away like chicken. Then I tried to fit shield depleaters. The same thing. Later I tried to play with no shield enemy ships and bingo! That was strange to me. Why my ships run away if the enemy has shields and do the work when there is no shield in sight. I tried the same with the strategy ram/ram and the result was the same. If no shields - everything's ok, otherwise - runaway.
Any ideas?

Marco · #2 October 8th, 2002, 10:40 AM

In your ship design there is any weapon (except for specials weapons as shields depleters)? May be the program don't recognize ramming as a valid tactic to lower shields and, if I remember correctly, unarmed ships revert to �run at corner� tactic by default.
Hope this can help.

Q · #3 October 8th, 2002, 10:50 AM

If you ram a ship either you or the enemy (or both) will be destroyed. Therefore after the ramming boarding does not make much sense IMO.

[ October 08, 2002, 09:52: Message edited by: Q ]

Pablo · #4 October 8th, 2002, 12:05 PM

If I ram with a ship full of Organic armor - the enemy is destroyed not me

But I'm planning to ram big ships with a lot of equipment and I think that by ramming them I will destroy shields and/or armor that is present on that ship because they are the first items to be hit all the time without skipping abilities. Well, maybe an engine or crew quarters or anything else may suffer but not all the ship. And after the first ramming attempt huge amount of damage is inflicted - the shields are down, the first strategy (capture ship) is valid and the ships are near each other. At least theoretically I think it should work fine. But the problem is that it is only theoretically...

geoschmo · #5 October 8th, 2002, 02:32 PM

Pablo, for me it works to give the ship the startegy to capture enemy ships: Primary startegy to board, secondary strategy to ram. If the enemey ship has no SDD and does have shields, and my ship has only organic armor and shield depleters it will attack, fire the sield depleters until the shields are gone, board the enemy ship, and then it will find another enemy ship and attempt to ram until the battle is over.

If the enemy ship has SDD though this strategy is suicide as my ship will simply hang out not doing anything, will not even attempt to do it's secondary strategy and ram. It also will not work if the enemy has shields and my ship has no shield depleters. In this case my ship again will do nothing, not even ettepmt to ram, until the enemy comes for me and destoys me.

Are you on 1.78? If not that is why you are having trouble getting boarding to work with shield depleters. There was a bug but it was fixed.

Geoschmo

Pablo · #6 October 8th, 2002, 04:03 PM

geo, I tested in v1.49 which as you said was bugged. Then I tested it in v1.78 + DNM v1.70 and it also failed to board/ram. I'm gonna test it with pure SEIV Gold v1.78 later today.

geoschmo · #7 October 8th, 2002, 04:30 PM

Pablo, Hmm, not sure what the issue is for you in 1.78. It works fine for me.

You said you do have the ship strategy set to "Capture Enemy Ships" right? And in the Capture Enemy Ship strategy the primary strat is board and you change the secondary to ram? Is that precisely what you are doing?

Geoschmo

[ October 08, 2002, 15:30: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Pablo · #8 October 8th, 2002, 04:35 PM

geo, that's exactly what I'm doing. Primary - capture, secondary - ram. Scenario: ram till the shields go down and switch to the first strategy.

Pablo · #9 October 8th, 2002, 04:58 PM

now the working hours are over and I'll do some more testing when I get home. Maybe I'll come up with what's causing the problem with the help of beer

Read you 2morrow

geoschmo · #10 October 8th, 2002, 05:43 PM

Oh, no it won't work that way. I thought you were using shield depleters. A ship with boarding as a strategy will attempt to drop the shields of an enemy ship using weapons, shields depleters or standard weapons. But it will not do so by ramming. You have to have a weapon to get the shields, the ship will then board, and after the boarding parties are used up it will switch to it's secondary stratgy and ram other enemy ships.