Walt I worry that instantly activated blink favors kiting too strongly, and lacks effective counterplay (other than having your own blink-optimized ship).
Recent kiters have spent lots of money on omnidirectional thrust, because the ability to strafe effectively is key to avoiding your opponent and the ring. Non-kiters don't benefit nearly as much from lateral thrust. Blinking works omnidirectionally, and IMO will thus be inherently stronger on kiters than most other ship types. Kiters are usually also quite small, which makes it easier to get high FTL efficiency. These issues I think are inherent to all types of blink, and wouldn't be helped much by charge time/cast time.
But I do think that charge time/cast time would help a lot with other kiting issues. With instant blink, as a kiter approaches the ring it can pre-charge FTL, then activate blink at the perfect moment to avoid the ring and buy breathing room to reposition. But the antikiter can't anticipate and react to the kiter's blink - because then the kiter will just cancel the FTL and not teleport at all. Even if I bring a blink-optimized ship and blink into the kiter, the kiter will have their dedicated FTLs charged and can blink away instantly, and will have their drives recharged before I do. So the only way for a single ship to catch an instant blinking kiter would be to force it to blink first, then blink directly on top of it before it can accelerate away.
On the other hand, with charge time/cast time blink the antikiter is at less of a disadvantage. First off, perfect kiting will be much harder when you have to plan for a variable charge time/cast time, instead of preparing FTL beforehand and activating it on demand. Also, once the kiter activates FTL the antikiter has additional options - either damage the kiter before it blinks, or camp the blink exit point (which cannot be canceled by the kiter). While a kiter with instant blink can always teleport somewhere the antikiter isn't, a kiter with charge time/cast time blink is vulnerable in both locations (and has to keep both locations out of the ring).
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Aside from kiting, I also think that instant blink lacks counterplay. Even if you know that I'm going to blink behind you, there's very little you can do about it. If you turn around, I just won't blink. If you move, I'll blink to a different spot. It would just come down to having a ship designed to tank my shots while you turn around - again and again until one of us dies.
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I really like the idea of making tractor beams affect blinking/FTL! It'll add another dimension to both tractor beams and blink drives. Though I would still like blink counterplay that doesn't require a specific part.
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Walt I think FTL ramming is probably not something I want to allow, for balance reasons. (Not to mention I have no idea how to actually code that.)
Personally, I think that blink ramming should definitely be a thing if it's codeable. Not really for balance, but because it exists in the majority of science fiction universes, and because it would allow for some really creative uses of blink (like blinking into/out of an enclosed shipyard). While it would take some serious forethought to not be OP, I think it's definitely balanceable.
