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[Girlinhat]

For lulz.  It gives a small x2 by your rank, just to show you've done it.

Modern Warfare did something similar, where resetting your rank would give you more slots to save preset weapon loudouts.  It's rather smart actually.  Instead of adding new content for higher levels, you just encourage them to repeat old content.  Because the low-tech game is still fun, honestly.

[Elfeater]

Huh I made a crappy little ship I fell in love with... It has a lot of firepower for such a cheap ship, only $2000

[Wayward Device]

After falling in love with ramships, engaging in ramship jousting and even a grand melee (2 vs 2 ramships in an 4 vs 4 battle) I'm sorely tempted to try and start a ramship guild. No restrictions other than you must kill your foes with kinetic force.

Before I go on I must mention that, yes, the words ramship and ram will appear again in this post. Brace yourselves.

Now, the way I see it there are a number of simple divisions that may be made among ramships classes. The first and most basic is heavy or light. Since you need to be squeezing every ounce of hurt you can, the choice must first be made as to whether you will do this with mass or speed. Both offer advantages in different situations. For a speed build, I favor a Springtail covered in double armor just a few pixels over the frame with a six (4 $130's with 2 $120's for the nosecone), three rudders evenly spaced along the spine, an advanced maneuver at the back and as many jets engines as I can afford. This little devil can break 1800 mph in the right conditions and at anything above 1500 will hit a carrier for 2-3% damage, actually push it enough to collide with obstacles... and fly away to do it all again. My record is six hits before having to rearm, taking it from 87% to 73%. Also managed to slam a carrier into one of those black pyramids. Only 1% damage, but it freaked some people out a little.

With massive ramships streamlining is still important, but no matter what you do they are going to be cumbersome as fuck. A simple solution seems to be to remove all but ram armor, but this leaves you extremely vulnerable when coupled with the aforementioned awful handling.

Earlier today I saw someone successfully crush another player with a armored grabby arms + burn jets. Today was a good day.

I also made a knight with movable shield and movable burn rocket axe and an almost indestructible burn rocket powered saw blade, but I can't kill so much as a crate with either.

So uhhh... is all you do in this shooting other ships until they die?

I'd think a game like this would benefit a lot from multiple mission parameters.

You'd think, but it's really very interesting.  Since you can design a ship from the ground up, you really never know what to expect.  If the enemy is sporting railguns, then some armor will deflect them pretty well and let you barrel through their fire.  If the enemy's got explosive rounds that destroy armor, then you want speed and agility.  If the enemy's got missiles to chase you, then you want flares and some amount of protection.  Which seems simple, "just counter X with Y" but then you have to design your Y for their specific X.  50mm cannons hurt but you can evade.  50mm cannons in sequential fire are MUCH more likely to hit.

And at the end, the game has a free demo.  Why not try it?

     

Shame on you Girlinhat! How could you forget to mention the wonderful possibilities of ramming ships (either ramships, or normal, non-ram ships) with ramships!

[Shadowlord]

Elfeater:

I find broadsides work well for (relatively) fast ships:

[Girlinhat]

Shadow - I hope you've got a robosight on that.  I find firing off-angle to be very difficult.

On ramships - there's one fundamental problem.  Once you reach a certain speed, physics says "fuck this" and doesn't count, and you clip through the target with barely any damage.  Luckily kinetics work on two principles, mass and speed.  Going above ~1,500 risks clipping, upwards of 2,000 and especially higher, it becomes very difficult to actually hit the enemy as you phase through them.  So you keep your speed probably in the 1,000 range and add more armor - the higher weight adds more kinetics behind your impact.  Unfortunately this is mostly nerfed by enemy armor.  I had a match where I used a gun platform ship and one guy (Wayward Device) was trying to use a ramship against me.  He would bounce off my armor almost harmlessly, and it'd take 2-3 hits to break one armor shard, at which time I'd turn and let him hit the other 3.  Ramships are even less effective against carriers.

I've heard that the explosive packs work wonders, but I've never been able to use them properly.  I think the trick is how you mount them, since they explode when they take damage, you have to mount them in a position that they'd be damaged by the impact, but not shot as you approach.  My method would probably be to mount the explosives onto the ramming armor, but position them such that they cannot be shot.  The idea here is that when you slam into the enemy, it would destroy your armor, which would also destroy all attached pieces and trigger them to explode.  Because of armor rating, the "swept back" would be weaker than the "I beam" so the swept model would probably be preferred, to make sure it crumples on contact.

[ThtblovesDF]

Resetting can be compared to Alien-swarm style resetting - no benefit beside looks.

Ramships - I always go for a certain amount of

Turbo Jet
A small amount of Liquid Rocket Engine (The fast booster things) - turned on by a hit on Q - they only serve to get over 300 mp/h, so the Turbojet gets started.
Same amount of cash that was put into TurboJets in Liquid rocket Engines - Turned on by hitting E

I have to tell you, the sound when I hit E, the Roaring of the Rockets, then the instant jump to 1500/2000 mph as you slam into the enemy - mhmm lovely.

As for Rockets, I've seen some people use very sleak designs (long, smooth, like (), which are extremely fast, but do "glitch" as you said.),
but I prefer to use the large, Druid Platform, with a ram, like this ->   o]       

I've used my turret-arm Tech to enhance this before, giving a cute crab like
  /
o]
  \

Extremely Deadly - but very hard to get in range with all arms still attached - and you do catch every single bullet.


The other design i tried was a "Turtle" where it didn't care what side you use to ram.
 _

While using this, with a turret + rockets can lead to a fun "Oh hey, he is slow and has no guns, pew pew, oh god he is flying right at me! - it just didn't do much damage when it actually rammed and was generally hard to employ, while taking very little punishment.


If there was a piece that lets you detached parts, the options would be endless. You could fire your Ram sled at people ... with GUNS ON IT!
(Deployable turrets and so on of course)


**+Edit

I started working on a design, much like you suggested, cat. I am however using a arm, to put the suicide charges far infront of me... so far I've only found out that:

a) you should not bind your turret controls to the same button as your rocket boost (whops)
b) you should turn auto-return off, on the turret.
c) AoE is pretty large, keep em at a distance.


**++Edit:

Clearly, planning to surive the suicide charge may have been a silly plan, any arm long enough (or armor) to let you stay unharmed, would also destroy any mobility (/server).
I liked the idea of having a tanky-platform and letting the charges go off one after the other, salvo style, destroying everything around you, faster then you are destroyed... but alas, the aoe is to big.

[ThtblovesDF]

Anyone else found that the Anti-Rocket CPU just.... doesn't work?
The Turret Slaver also just works on occasion when it feels like it, kinda bugs me a lot.


The Angry Dwarfen Fist.... it works surprisingly well and there is nothing you can't hit and survive (if you hit it with any of the 12 front armor pieces, that is)



Also, why the hell does turning a flare gun sideways cost you up to 100 mp/h of your max speed?

[Sonlirain]

Played the demo.
Used lightest ship and crammed 4 50 mm guns on it.
Proceeded to kill bots because there was no serwer with playable lag AND players.

Then again i didn't get to the point i could edit any ship in meaningful/cool ways

[ThtblovesDF]

Played the demo.
Used lightest ship and crammed 4 50 mm guns on it.
Proceeded to kill bots because there was no serwer with playable lag AND players.

Then again i didn't get to the point i could edit any ship in meaningful/cool ways

Kill carriers, they are worth 120 T

Also: Deployable shields!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Wayward Device]

A little more on ramming.

While it's true that armored ships are really, really hard to ramkill, this is where massive ramships really shine. Their mass, especially if you use the Mythos, can add power to a hit that you just don't get with speed. Incidentally,  I remember that battle Girlinhat, you had one of those armored triple rail annoyers and I was flying one of my first ramship designs. The best bit was when I saw that you were parked right next to a pyramid and I thought to myself "right, one iif to say "Oh, your interstellar pyramid bodyslam coming right up", carefully maneuvered to get a good run up, checked my targeting and floored it. Hit 2k, on target, really pleased with myself, miss by a hairs width and collide with the pyramid. The impact takes my ram and the spin makes me lose the rest, but somehow I survived with a rudder, a jet and my Beast frame. Of course I am spinning like a bastard right next to Girlinhat. Then, as if to say "Oh, you're not dead yet, let me correct that for you", she fired a single rail burst and finished the job.

In fact, spin is one of the most deadly and unpredictable results of ramming. If you hit something heavier at high speed you're momentum will carry you forward a bit into your target as you start to spin, making you hit with the other parts of your ship. I haven't noticed the clip through at high speeds when hitting anything other than a carrier, but that's mostly since I started using the Springtail with extend ram that I detailed before.

At the end of the day, ramming isn't the most effective way of getting kills, but for me at least, its the most fun.     

EDIT: @THtb: I've got a design like that but with only four plates making an arrowhead at the end and rudders on every spar. Fast, accurate and crashes servers . I really hope that network optimizations continue so that we can enjoy Gimbal at its full potential. 

[ThtblovesDF]

Yeah, I can't take any of my toys (especially this one) on a server, a shame really!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Elfeater]

Elfeater:

I find broadsides work well for (relatively) fast ships:

Hey mind if I try that ship? I like mine but I am open to suggestions.

[Levi]

I don't really know what I'm doing yet, but missiles seem useful.    I've got 3 light missiles on my fast ship and I just zoom up to an enemy, fire everything, and then zoom back to the carrier to reload.  I can't wait till I unlock magazines(which I assume allow me to carry more ammo?).

[Shadowlord]

Elfeater:

I find broadsides work well for (relatively) fast ships:

Hey mind if I try that ship? I like mine but I am open to suggestions.

Feel free. (Also, it's actually a slow ship, but fast compared to other level 0 ships I was fighting)

If it were much faster, it would be hard to aim the broadsides (without a robo-sight, and even then I don't find them very useful unless using turrets).

[Girlinhat]

I don't really know what I'm doing yet, but missiles seem useful.    I've got 3 light missiles on my fast ship and I just zoom up to an enemy, fire everything, and then zoom back to the carrier to reload.  I can't wait till I unlock magazines(which I assume allow me to carry more ammo?).

There are, sadly, no missile magazines.  There's also a limit of 6 missile weapons per ship, which includes missiles, LR missiles, torpedoes, bombs, mines, and presumably Bison, though costing like $950 each you can only fit 5 on an extremely cheap hull.  There's also a limit of 4 flare launchers per ship, and it's worth noting that flares can be set to "drop" or "shoot" and that flares can stick onto anything they hit, allowing you to "tag a target" that would otherwise use flares to evade missiles.