Ramming in Space Dock?

[Phoenix]

Steve, I was going over the ramming hull rules for the Achillies class and I couldn't locate the rules on starship ramming in the Space Dock book. The only reference mentioned in under the ramming hull entry- it reads is follows "A ship with a Ramming Hull is considered two Size categories larger for purposed of calculating ramming damage"

So what is the normal damage for ramming? or did I just miss the rule (it is a big book )

[Steve Long]

The ramming rules are on page 108.

Steve Long

[Phoenix]

Thank you Sir, your a gent'

Phoenix...

[Kronok]

Dear Steve Long and fellow Narrators,

How would you handle the following two scenarios?

1) Federation Ship is ramming a Cardassian Ship. Cardassian Ship’s shields are down, Feds have full shields.
2) Federation Ship is ramming a Cardassian Ship. Both ships have full shields, but Federation Ship matches shield harmonics/frequency.

[Steve Long]

The status of shields -- up or down, re-polarized, altered harmonic, nutating frequency, whatever -- doesn't change the ramming rules. The regular rules apply.

I suppose, if you wanted, you could come up with some sort of maneuver in which the targeted ship repolarized (or whatever) its shields to match those of the attacker, so that instead of being hit, it bounced away like a croquet ball. That, of course, could in itself cause pretty significant harm to the ship, and to anything/anyone in it. But as a last-ditch option, it might be better than taking ramming damage.

Steve Long

[Publius]

That is good for me. The situation Kronok mentioned is one that came up in our game in the adventure before last.

The Players were attempting to slow down a Cardassian Vessel which had entered the system. It was bearing down on their ship, the USS Cerberus, which had been sabotaged and was in the process of getting back online. The players were in a shuttlecraft and needed to slow down the Carddie ship for a good two minutes or so to give a chance for the Cerberus' systems to get back online.

They approached the Cardassians and while conducting evasive manuvers to keep from getting hit did absolutely no effective damage to the Carddies. The Science Officer managed to crack the shield harmonics of the Cardassian vessel but just as he did so the shuttle was hit by the Cardassian and effectively sent into a tail spin with major damage to their long-range sensors and phasers as the hull mounted pallets got baked (okay this damage part is where I'll admit that I may have fudged a little bit for dramatic purposes, but only here, all of the other die rolls were completely above-board, some excellent piloting, targeting and scanning by the PCs and some really crappy rolls by the Carddies).

The Cardassians, rather than stop or turn around and nuke the shuttlecraft, which they knew was simply a diversion, continued ahead with the intent of taking the Cerberus out. The players regained control of their vessel, and spun around: phasers and long range sensors dead. The Carddies were nearly within firing range of the Cerberus and still ignoring the shuttlecraft (a mere shuttle with no phasers their systems told them). When the players finally managed to 'catch up' to the Carddie vessel, their shields were back online and they conducted a minor collision action, aiming themselves directly at the bridge of the Cardassian vessel. The PC piloting the ship poured all of his remaining Courage points into this action, but pulled off a solid roll as well and managed to score a clear hit on the bridge.

The ramming damage, while not completely destroying the Cardassian bridge, did manage to take out three critical control systems: Science, Engineering and Helm. The Cardassian vessel was not taken out by any means, but I felt that the damage which the Cardassian vessel had sustained made them incapable of getting to the Cerberus before it was back in fighting form. Thus once control was regained the Cardassians took off (a renegade commander in a Post-DW setting, he has no backup and thus is unwilling to push his resources). The Players were essentially dead in space, sparks flying, minor damage to crewmembers main drives completely out and sputtering life support etc., but they were subsequently picked up by their grateful comrades.

[Capt.Hunter]

Actually, this raises a point from the TNG ep "The Hunted", where Roga Danar rams his ship into the Big-E but bounces off the shields! I'm guessing it was intentional, but how did he do it?

[Steve Long]

According to my notes, "Roga Danar uses a massive buildup of power to the thrusters to “skip” off of the Enterprise-D’s shields."

The salient points here are, I think:

1. He was only using thrusters, not even impulse.
2. He wasn't trying to ram the Enterprise-D -- he was deliberately trying to "skip" off of it.

Steve Long

[tonyg]

Sounds like a dramtic success on his Tactics skill, combined Moderate-Challenging shipboard systems skill test,