Based on common sense, rather then actual knowledge i would guess, that ramming would work different for differently sized vehicles, as it does not seem all invovled factors scale easily, with if vehicles of the same size hit each other, they make less relative damage the smaller they are.
Matchbox cars barely damage each other, cars have minor damage, oil tankers sink each other.
For a ramming submarine and propably for some exotic surface ships as well, you could come up with a different design, where a ram is mounted like an outrigger, the actual submarine passes under the attacked ship, and the ram rips off at a predeterminated breaking point. That should keep the attacker from being damaged, and put some max damage on the ramming damage. No idea about specific values though and how realistic it actually is. Sticking mines to a ship that way, likely is more efficient. But i could imagine it as steam punk design.
Regarding Victoria-Camperdown, according to the wikipedia article, pretty much all the officers on both ships seem to have known, that the maneuver was stupid, but they thought, that the admiral, who ordered it, had something up his sleeve and thus it would make sense in the end. So it seems to have more to do with information distribution systems, then with sailing.
One mans groundfloor is an other mans earthmissle @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Johannes Trimmel @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
