[TrashMan]

I said heavily damaged or crippled...and in a sensible universe, it probably would be.

In FS2 however, it's damage is minimal or none at all (repulse kileld before ramming)

[Scotty]

And Koth attempting to ram the Colossus - a real world, where ships don't have hitpoints, having a billon tons slam into you WOULD hurt..very, very much. the collie wouldn't survive.

I beg to differ, you did say destroy.

[TrashMan]

A bit of an overstatement on my part.
While such a scenario might be possible, the complete destruction of Colossuss is not likely.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I thought that the Repulse would just bounce off the Colossus or something, since it was travelling at only 15 m/s.

[ChronoReverse]

I thought that the Repulse would just bounce off the Colossus or something, since it was travelling at only 15 m/s.

Unlikely.  At such huge scales structures are no longer really objects that could bounce as a singular entity.  It would take supremely tough materials (even beyond the the posited strength of Colossus' armor and impact structure) or a much lower velocity than 15m/s for such a bounce to occur.  It's almost certain at least one of the two would be crushed where I've been arguing that because of the known toughness (as opposed to overall damage it can absorb) of the Colossus, the Repulse is likely to be the only one to be wholly smashed.

In any case, the absolute worse case scenario is just the bow section of the Colossus would be gone.  The Colossus is simply so large that even if it fully collapsed in the face of the Repulse, it can't be fully destroyed (the collapsing of both ships would eat up a lot of the energy).  The damage wouldn't likely stop it from completing its mission with the urgency to end it Command had.

[deathfun]

Well then, that clarifies much on my side then Trashman.

I do agree the Collie would sustain in a real situation quite a bit of damage, but I sustain my point that the damage is relative.

Minimal, in comparison to the sheer size of the ship, is a damaged forward section missing a chunk of it's hull
Major would be damage that exceeds the forward section and finds it's way closer to the first neck

But as a side note, the explosive power of the Repulse would not be as concentrated as an Aten.
Imagine a bomb hitting something. Now imagine the same bomb, only placed 200m by use of a long pole, hitting an object. Which has more explosive power?

(not saying the Aten had the same explosive power as the Repulse, just talking about concentration as a factor to damage)

[ChronoReverse]

The Aten was stuffed with explosives; there's no direct way to compare the damage of collision.

[stuart133]

With the Aten full of explosives you would get close to the explosive power of the Repulse's reactor exploding. (I think)

Also the front end contains some (2?) BGreens so it is more of a loss that just structural damage.

[Colonol Dekker]

Oriona dont have reactors... They have FUSION PILE GENERATORS!!!!!!!

[deathfun]

The Aten was stuffed with explosives; there's no direct way to compare the damage of collision.

I was referring to his post where he mentioned the Orion having a stockpile of munitions aboard

[Scotty]

I think we can safely assume that the Repulse wasn't stocked with explosives, since he didn't want to meet the Collosus in the first place.

[ChronoReverse]

He could be thinking about the munitions onboard for the fightercraft.  Still, that's entirely different from a ship stuffed with explosives for the sole purpose of more kamikaze damage.

[Aardwolf]

I liked ST:R's take on kamikaze ramming. Don't just set throttle to max, activate the goddamn subspace drive and get going like 200 m/s straight into them!

Too bad Koth (and, by extension, ) didn't have that idea, or didn't decide to use it.

[deathfun]

Come to think of it, why wouldn't Koth also fire all possible batteries while ramming into the Collie?

Extra damage is extra damage no matter how it's put

[General Battuta]

He did, I'm pretty sure. Wasn't the Repulse firing?

[eliex]

It was. However, what I think deathfun was trying to say was why didn't Koth overload every possible weapon (ignoring safety regulations) against the Colossus in effort to do as much damage before dying.

[TrashMan]

Because the devs didn't think of it at that time? Because Koth didn't think of it?

Maybe he was dumping all power into engines (but FS2 does a piss poor job of showing that in capships. Really, we need a way to SEXP ETS settings for capships).

Either way you have the Repulses mass + reactor + all the ordinance and fuel on board + beams to soften up the impact point. That's a lot of bang.

IIRC, doesn't hte collie have 4 beams on the front? No, wait...

[Androgeos Exeunt]

"The crew of the Rampart watches for three minutes as the Repulse rams the Colossus with excessive slowness..."

[TrashMan]

Irony..there were bugs where you found yourself flying a capship.

I once flew an Orion. And you can still adjust ETS setting and dump power into engines for a speed increase. We should be able to script that.

[General Battuta]

That's awesome.