too bad ships in their last gasp of life , can't ram other ships thus taking them out...
I'm kinda glad that they can't. That may be fun for the person who is getting his butt beat but put yourself in the place of the person that is winning. It would suck to outmaneuver, outsmart, and outclass your opponet and STILL have the skirmish result in a draw (you killed his ships but he rammed and killed yours too).
Alternatively, perhaps you can capture and reverse engineer some pieces of an opponent's tech, although that may be grossly over balancing without some form of artificial limitations.
Yea, that kind of thing sounds cool but you're right, it would present some serious balance issues. Say your in a 4 way ffa and the person you end up fighting first is the same race as you. You therefore have no opportunity to capture alien technology. Meanwhile players 3 and 4 are fighting each other and are of different races. They would be getting alien tech from each other. So when player 3 kills player 4 and comes after you he will have an advantage.