Assembly Hall

I've seen the idea of ramming damage in a sort of vague way floating around, and I've thought it too. Watching one of the EVE trailers where a Nyx smashes through some sort of station wall reminded me of it just now...

Wouldn't it be awesome/OP (depending on your opinion) if capitals could, if under enough pressure, ram other capitals for damage? I gave it some thought, and came up with this:

Skill - Kamikaze
If a capital pilot has reached a critically low level of hitpoints (e.g. 10% armor remaining, or just into structure), the skill would give them a right-click option to "kamikaze" into a target. The rightclick would align them to a target, start a 15s warmup period of the engines, after which all locks on it would be broken, and then fly at a velocity determined by the pilot's skill (135% of max velocity for level 1, 160% for level 2, 200% for level 3, 245% for level 4, 275% for level 5) into the target. The damage would be determined by the momentum of the object (mass * velocity) divided by the kinetic resistance of the enemy's shield and, if breached, the enemy's armor. However, due to my calculations showing that a capital hitting another capital creates billions of damage, the damage will be determined by 1/20,000th of mass * velocity.

Take, for example, a Thanatos.

The Thanatos pilot is going down, his tank has failed and there's an enemy Nyx flying directly ahead of him. The Thanatos has a mass of 1,163,250,000 kg, which divided by 20,000 makes it 58,162kg, and this pilot has Kamikaze at level 3. Therefore, his base velocity of 75m/s becomes 150m/s. This amounts to a momentum of 17,448,750,000 kgm/s. Theoretically, the enemy nyx pilot has an 80% kinetic resist on his shield. This would cause 1,744,860 damage to the Nyx's shield and would destroy the Thanatos. Furthermore, in order to stop gratuitous suicide capitals, the impact would also kill the capsuleer, resulting in no chance of escape.

This is just a theory that went through my head earlier. I'd like suggestions on either how to improve/balance it further, or rational explanations as to why it's complete bollocks.

(P.S. It's capitals only, but not for supercaps. 'Cause that'd make them even more retardedly OP.)

Imagines a freighter "suiciding" into another one in high-sec.

Once more, this will only become available once a capital has taken a serious amount of damage from another ship, or group of ships

It'd also be cool, once the ships are interlocked after a ram, to be able to have a company of DUST mercs board the other ship and capture it!

I can just hear a CFC carrier pilot on Comms to a DUSTbunny: "Stand by to repel boarders!!!"

Easily worked around. Get corpmates and/or friends to bring your right to the limit... then go and wreak mayhem.

It'd also be cool, once the ships are interlocked after a ram, to be able to have a company of DUST mercs board the other ship and capture it!

I can just hear a CFC carrier pilot on Comms to a DUSTbunny: "Stand by to repel boarders!!!"

But caps are really slow, so if you're not at knife fight range, you're completely immune to this...

The rightclick would align them to a target, start a 15s warmup period of the engines, after which all locks on it would be broken, and then fly at a velocity determined by the pilot's skill (135% of max velocity for level 1, 160% for level 2, 200% for level 3, 245% for level 4, 275% for level 5) into the target.

If you jump dreads in at 30, it'll take 100 seconds for a thanatos moving 300m/s to hit you.

Assuming all skills to V, it will take 45 seconds for ONE seiged moros to destroy said thanatos, assuming it is in structure and running a DCII.


Also, having it be impossible to stop said thanatos from ramming would be rather overpowered, don't you think?