Agility, as I understand it is the ablity of a craft to maneuver out of
harms way.
I think we are in agreement that agility does not refer to the ability
to rotate a ship. After all, doing so is not going to help the defender
very much. Given that starship combat rounds are 20 minutes, I think that
any ship ought to be able to turn itself around in that time limit...
Therefore agility must have something to do with the craft's ability to
alter its heading. This means maneuver drive. If you are fighting with
another ship at a range of 2 light seconds, it will take 4 seconds for
the target information to be acted upon:
Radar bounces off target
(2 seconds)
Firing ship picks up location of target and fires
(2 seconds)
Laser beams from firing ship reach area of target ship
Total time: 4 seconds.
That gives you four seconds for your ship to move to a new location.
So to the firing ship there is a certain area around the target ship
where it could potentially be. The size of that area (and hence the
uncertainty of it's location) is going to be directly proportional to
the maneuver drive capability of the target ship.
This is why I think agility is the actual performance of the maneuver drive.
High Guard certainly seemed to work that way. And I believe that it was
the intention of the authors of MegaTrav to use a system that worked.
So, in my book, Agility=maneuver drive (there are times when there is not
sufficient power for the maneuver drive and the maneuver drive is reduced
accordingly, this is why agility is sometimes (often) lower than the
maneuver drive number.
I think that we are basically in agreement with Adrian Hurt when we propose
that the numerator of the agility equation contains the power needed by
the maneuver drive to funtion plus "extra" power if there is any.
(maybe I'm not reading him right but I think that is what we are both saying)
He has pointed out that a good, well thought out design ought to have Zero
excess power. I agree. But if your power plant is too small to power
up the ol' power hungry laser turret, then you can do so by stealing power
meant for the maneuver drive. (Double dipping) This is the case for many
'standard' ships that didn't originally have lasers mounted on them...
{hint: Think of converting book 2 designs to high guard}
Agility in Aircraft.
Spacecraft must rely on their maneuver drives to increase the area of
uncertainty around them on the target scopes of their attackers...
Aircraft, in addition to their engines, have their wings. An aircraft
can use the wings to turn at much higher rates than a grav vehicle or
spacecraft. Thus their agilities should be higher. (Please note that
an aircraft will only be able to do so in an atmosphere. An Aircraft
funtioning in vacuum will only have its engines to push itself around
with)
The upper limit of the human body to withstand G's is around 9 G's.
Thus the upper limit of an aircraft's ability to turn is 9 G's. This
is considerably higher than a grav vehicle's ability to turn. This
is why I think a fixed wing aircraft should have an upper limit of
agility at 9, until such time as inertial compensators can be brought to
solve the problem.
Aircraft/Spacecraft combat. If the combat is to take place in the
air at ranges within a few hundred kilometers, then I think that I would
use the air to air rules as set out in COACC.
In Space or at ranges were visual contact is impossible (normal
space combat ranges) I would use the space combat rules.
Air to air is much closer and should be much quicker. That is where you
will want to know what the ROF of a Beam laser turret is.
Scott Kellogg
The one real advantage a grav vehicle has over a fixed wing ship is that
the grav vehicle can brake with the full thrust of it's engines. An
aircraft can turn at faster rates, but it can't quite brake like that.
(unless you are flying a fly-by-wire Su-27 and feel like pulling
the Pugachev's cobra maneuver... {Pulling the nose back so that the angle
of attack is greater than 90 degrees...})
Scotto