My understanding, which is not encyclopedic by any stretch of the imagination is that Damaging on move object means you can damage by simply crushing or striking with it as per the rules:
That is also my understanding.
It is implied that you can throw things to cause damage with Move object by the implication that you can increase the damage of thrown objects without the Damaging effect as stated.
RAW:
Improvised Weapon or Throwing Mastery: You are particularly
adept at using objects as weapons with your power.
Each rank of either advantage increases the damage of
objects wielded or thrown using Move Object by 1.
You can! But these Advantages requires that
Move Object does damage. Right now, Solid States
Move Object power does not do damage. Not without the +1/rank
Damaging Extra. That's just the nature of the way the rules are written. I agree it's not narratively consistent. But it causes too many other problems if we change it.
This seems to indicate that you can not only throw objects but can wield weapons with Move Objects as a means of damaging 'indirectly'.
Damage from environmental conditions (ie, a ACME anvil mysteriously falling from the air to land on the bad guys head) is going to be a narrative thing, not a mechanical thing.
With Ronin Army forums now closed up, I had to go looking elsewhere for the rationale. I think this catches my POV pretty well:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mutan...mprovised_weapon_or/
Strength is made up of two effects, each costing 1 point per rank. The ability to move stuff (1/rank) and the Damage effect (also 1/rank).
Move Object is made up of the ability to move stuff (1/rank) plus the Ranged extra (1/rank).
Power-Lifting (Enhanced Strength (Limited: No Damage)) costs only 1 point per rank, because it's just Strength without the damage component. Or rather, it's just
lifting strength. Because it's not damaging, this power (Power-Lifting) could go well above rank-10, as it's not constrained by the PL limit.
From all this, I see it that
Move Object with the
Damaging extra is exactly the same as Strength with the Ranged extra. You can inflict damage by throwing things, punching things at range, squeezing things, breaking them, whatever you could do with Strength you can do with Move Object with the Damaging extra. Of course, the downside is that it costs another +1/rank.
Without the damaging Extra, you're limited to disarm, grab, and trip
attacks (or, really anything that you can make narratively that isn't a "do direct damage" type action.
Strategies to resolve this:
You've got
Move Object 10 (Precise, Subtle), as a 22pp power in an array with a 31pp point-cap.
Move Object 10 (Precise, Subtle,
Damaging) would cost you 32pp which would put you over the array limit by 1pp.
Move Object 9 (Precise, Subtle,
Damaging) would only cost you 29pp against the 31pp array limit, and would have a (to my mind) negligible impact on the scale of his power.
Of course, if you can find another way to shave off one more pp, you can drop that into either
Remote Sensing or
Move Object to make that the array-cap-definer, giving you the space to keep
Move Object at 10.