Agility.....

>Ok, High Guard functioned like this:  A ship with power plant-2 and
>maneuver drive-2 automatically becomes agility=2.  In order to have
>a functioning maneuver drive, you had to have a power plant factor
>equal to the maneuver drive thus a ship with the above plants will
>always be agility=2 when not powering lasers (energy wpns etc). A
>hit to the power plant reduces the agility of the ship by that amount.

I believe it was more a function of m-drive. A minimum P-plant 2 was needed to
run a maneuver-2. Most ships usually had much higher P-plants.

>Now, when a High Guard ship attempts to escape, the ship relies on
>agility to do so, not maneuver drive.  So a 3-G ship with agility=3
>can escape from a 6-G ship with agility=1.
Two points. First the High Guard sytem was far more abstract than the MT
abstraction. Secondly. Agility and M-drive was almost synonymous in High Guard
which is not true any more (to belabor the point).

>Rationalization:  The 6G ship's power plant is being drained away
>from the maneuver drive and it is not putting out 6-G's, it is putting
>out only 1G.

Not necessarily. I believe what it meant was an abstract way of representing
evasiveness. Besides if the 6-G P-plant is only putting out 1-G, why not just get
a 1-G drive and use the space for s-thing else.


>In view of the MegaTrav design rules this does not translate unless
>we do the following:

Why does it have to translate? I think part of our problem is an attempt to High
Guardize, Megatraveeler starship combat system. I wish GDW had totally redone the
system and left no references to High Guard. Basically for all practical
purposes, Megatraveller is an entirely new game from Traveller. In many ways even
the universe is quite different.

>Agility may not exceed maneuver drive rating.
>(No more agility=6 1-G drive ships...)

So??? Were there ever any such ships? High Guard certainly disallowed it and so
does MT.

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various eqns deleted
>Note that if a ship is powering weapons the "excess" power can be negative
>thus subtracting from the ship's ability to maneuver.  This is what Rob
>refers to as "Double Dipping".

What you still haven't made clear is how your agility explanation is more
rational. Are the M-drives of a 6-G agility 3 ship pulling actually 9-G
acceleration!!! These eqns are just as arbitrary as the one in MT.


>His opinion is that we should use the loaded weight for the above
>calculations and I concur.  How often are ships flying around with
>no fuel and no cargo?

But since there are anti grav modules on board, does the loaded weight really
matter?? I think it was more a question of mass and inertia then weight. However
I do tend to agree with this as it will make all agilities more sensible, just
as adding the mass of armor has.

>He also suggests that the 5.4 in the above
>be 10 as would occur in his thrust based maneuver drive calculations
>(for grav based not thruster based vehicles).  That is, in a small
>vehicle using standard grav propulsion, such as a 10 ton fighter, the
>acceleration is the thrust divided by the loaded weight, and the
>thrust is conveniently equivalent to the power input to the grav
>units in MW multiplied by 10.

Why 10?? It is still arbitrary. I would prefer 5, as I personally think that all
ships are too over agile anyway.

>Translation:  Algebra into English:
>When a ship does not have power for all its weapons, it may divert
>power from the maneuver drive.  Diverting power will reduce the
>output of the drive.  It is possible to overload the engines, but
>that may result in damaging them.  The time allowed for overloading
>them for large increases in performance is considerably less one
>starship combat round.

Most starships according to Starship Ops manual use overdrives for short periods
routinely to get off planets. Why can't this overdrive ability be considered a
ship's "agility" in combat. It would explain why it is useful in combat. A 6-G
ship all of a sudden pulling 24-G(even for 30 sec) can screw up any one's aim
especially at stellar distances. Assume a 6-G agility 6 ship making 24-G bursts
or 6-G lateral thrusts for 30 sec every 5 minutes can be about 50km from its
predicted location.


>On a different note:

>Aircraft Agility
>In my opinion, aircraft agilities are far too low.

>Consider: A disp=40 6-G grav fighter: Agility=6, vs.
          F-14 Tomcat: Agility=6
>In a turn, A Tomcat uses its wings and lifting surfaces to pull
>a high G turn at approximately 9 G's

>The Grav fighter (assuming it has wings) has 1/3 the wing area of a
>jet fighter and is many many many times it's weight.  (In 101 vehicles
>there is a Zho grav sled that weighs close to 180 tons, a displacement
>of 2, and wings? It weighs close to what a B-52 does and is smaller
>than a Cessna and they expect to get lift?)  It can get little if any
>lift and must rely on it's grav units to turn it.  These as we said
>before are only 6G's.

>Result:  In a fast turning Dogfight the Tomcat can run rings around
>the Grav fighter.  Of course the Tomcat has no inertial comps and so
>the pilot takes a beating on the inside, but he will always be able
>to get the advantage of the grav fighter.

Again the question is whether starcraft "agility" has any meaning beyond MT
combat. A grav fighter agility 6 can produce SUSTAINED 6-G turns for 20 min. If
you take my above explanation it can pull up to 24-G for short periods with no
discomfort to its passenger. A Tomcat pilot doing 6-G turns for 20 minutes....!!!

I think COACC is terrible in its most interesting and useful part - the air-space
interface combat involving aircraft and space craft. It is not clearly detailed
and really makes no sense. It makes no real effort to explain any such combat
even though it claims to be basically about this concentrating more on air-air
and air-ground combat. In many ways it is a parallel set of rules to the starship
combat rules.

>Conclusion:  I believe that aircraft agility should not be limited to 6,
>but 9 (the physical limit of a pilot).  At TL 10, when inertial
>compensators are used the agility could go even higher.

I presume you mean for COACC. If you intend to give space fighters involved in
MT starship combat agility 9 then there is a major problem. An Agility 9 TL15
fighter(<100t) with Model 9 comp will be impossible to hit except by a spinal PA.
An agility 11 fighter will be totally impossible to hit.


>Scott Kellogg

Ameer