- Edited
Space is a brawl and a throwdown, a bar fight on ice. Here are some command tricks to help you grow your skills and adapt your strategies.
Grappling
To grapple another ship, set an attack move and make the distance as close as possible. You can set distance by right click and dragging off of the target ship or holding shift and moving the silhouette as close as possible.
Why would you do this?
Armadillo Clinging
To take away the enemy's ability to focus fire on parts of your ship. This is essential to "armadillo" or "tunnel" builds which fire through a narrow tunnel while clinging to their target.
Example of a clinging ship. Much more effective at zero range because the enemy can't focus all of their guns on the ions. Plenty of forward thrust to keep contact.
Rotation Control
To prevent the enemy from turning. If they have rail guns on the front and you ram their side or rear, they have to get away from you to turn their guns on your. You can also use rotation control to use an enemy ship as a "shield" against other enemy ships.
Your ability to control rotation depends largely on the geometries of the two ships. For example, if a wide ship rams the side of a long ship, it has a big advantage at rotation control. A ship that is more or less circular is the most resistant to rotation control (but also the worst at controlling rotation!)
It also depends greatly on amount of thrust and placement. Thrusters placed with high leverage give you more rotational thrust and thus better control over rotation while ramming.
Example of a ship with good rotation control against other flat ships. Note that the forward thrust and boosters are out on the sides where they have great leverage.
Position Control
To push them where you want them. The "sumo" strategy is pushing your enemy out of the ring.
You can get an advantage by pushing ships away from their allies, isolating them to fight them alone. For example, if a fast ship can catch a smaller ship and push it away quickly, it can pick an easier fight and take less damage before turning back to fight the rest. It's kind of like being an eagle, really. Is there anything an eagle can't catch?
![Is there anything an eagle can't catch?][1]
You can also save your allied ships by pushing enemy ships away. If a flanker is behind you, having a different ship ram it out of the way can save you having to try to spin or shake them off.
Tackling
A handy trick for making successful ramming attacks at high speed is setting a force move "through" the target, switching to a standard zero-range grappling attack when contact is made. This is perfect for isolating ships or reducing your vulnerability to fire on the approach.
The bottom ship is using a force move to keep up its speed while approaching the target.
Examples of Ramming Play
Tournament Oct 2018, Tartarus vs. Oneye. A sumo ship makes contact with the side of a railgun ship and pushes it away.
Tournament Oct 2018, Kieffer5101 vs. RogerAintRight. An example of clinging with matching geometry.
Tournament Aug 2018, Kieffer5101 vs. Oneye. An example of controlling the rotation of a railgun barge with fast ships.
