RelayeR put it best: "Should it be changed for optimum game play? *THAT* is the question."

Combining her comment with mgl_mouser's reference to cap ships, I think it is pretty clear what Sercos are going to say about Itanis warp killing the Serco frigate: "That's not optimum game play!"

Seriously, while it is a "feature" of the game today, there would have to be some tweaks to the game to balance it if warp killing is left in. Otherwise every ship turns into an uber-avalon, which defeates the purpose of a (very powerful) capital ship.

As amusing as it is to cause a pair of queens to spin and bump into eachother, destroying any escorts too close to their queens, my vote is to make everything invulnerable to the warp. It's simple. I like simple. 'Simple' tends to cause less problems later.

There's an easy fix for this and it actually used to be implemented. I'm still scratching my head as to why it was taken out.

Have a 3-5 second countdown timer before warping during which you could not maneuver or fire.

exactly how do you warp on demand ?

if you already have a destination set, you can simply hit activate to warp in-system when you hit 3000m away from nearest large object.

I think the devs might already have taken care of this. Though, I've not seen a specific announcement about it.

Yesterday, I was playing the "rag queen" scenario: warp into a sector with a couple of hive queens, backrolling a Ragnarok to unload excess weigth (108 missiles ARE heavy) and warping out.

I noticed when I warped out that either the rag had taken a different heading, or that all objects (bots) within the sector dissapeared from the sector: when you get the external view prior to jump, all there was in sight were backdrop stars.

Also, in a Valk, I've noticed some "jerkyness" when warping out. As if the camera outside a fraction of a sec before the ship finished changing heading.

I think it's more fair this way.

(And no, I wasn't attempting to warp-kill the queen--I might have been too far for that I beleive).

mgl_mouser, if you were backrolling you would have warped away from the queen. You warp in the direction you're traveling, not the direction you're facing.

I've done a little testing myself after the 1.1.8.3 update it doesn't appear that they take any damage (or very little). When warping, I hit the queen and when I came back she didn't seem to have taken any extra damage (I shot her a few times, so it wasn't a very scientific test). I tried 5 or 6 times.

I've noticed that the queen hasn't been taking "warpkill" damage lately... but it's still so fun to smash into her and watch her go spinning....

I think it would be kinda neat just to pull the person out of warp if they hit something. It looks to see if the ship would collide with something within a second, and then just pulls the ship out of warp.

its fun to do it while you're drunk (a few will remember when we were all gathered in odia p-1 to watch a duel, i kept ramming the allied proms - no damage, but funny - then i made the mistake of hitting someone from another team and had to reimburse em for their ship :P

Prom WarpRamming... damn was i drunk... ;)

- Dave -

Klox: yep: you're right.

After spending half a million credits in missiles of all sorts, I've finally achieved the 10 queen kills (actually did 11).

So having achieved the medeal and the goody that comes with it, I've decided to up the ante and try killing a queen with a tripple Gauss Mk2 config in a Valk Rune. Not a specially-heavy ship.

In theory, the triple Gauss Mk2 config yields 3600 of dammage. It takes time at that rate to zap a queen. I found that turboing head-on and shooting lands quite a few shot, given the size of the beasts. A quick last-second turn and warp out gives me a few more chances to hit the queen before having to go for a paint job.

A couple of times though, some guardian or overseer would hit me just before warping out, and I've hit the queen head on and actually rickocheted on two other bots, killing them instantly.

The queen actually took a lot of dammage for it.

I was intact.

It just doesn't feel right.

Either the system should not let me warp, or I should get a lot of dammage for this.

Edit:

After some thoughts into it, there should be a dammage distribution on this. Take these 3 ships:

Ship A has 6000 armor points
Ship B has 3000 armor points
Ship C has 9000 armor points

If A warp-rams B, then B should be destroyed, but A should suffer B's 3000 armor points.

If A warp-rams C, then A would explode and C would be left with only 3000 points left.

If A rams C, and then C rams B, then you're left with a bunch of debries and cargo floating in space.

(Ship D, having watched the whole situation from afar, turbos in and leaves with the loot.)

As I said. I noticed that direct damage from hitting the queen on warping doesn't seem to do any damage. Believe me... I tried it on... oh... 7 queens a couple nights ago? All damage to queens (and surrounding vessels) came from indirect damage as either the queen or the escorts smashed into each other.

A loaded centaur jumping from about 700m used to be able to kill, or severely damage the queen. I'm not noticing that damage anymore.