Some remarks on Agility --
According to the Ref's Manual, agility is "the ability
to change your craft's orientation over time". It then gives a
rather poor example involving the _Queen_Mary_ and a rowboat.
The example is bad because water resists passage strongly, and
can be pushed against while space does neither. However, the
definition does look reasonable. In the Starship Operators'
Handbook, published by Digest Group and an official part of
Traveller, the operation of the manuver drive and agility are
discussed in detail.
The manuver drive is a collection of "thruster plates"
that push the ship (reactionlessly) in whatever direction it
wishes to accelerate. The key to agility is that the plates
are more effective in one direction (usally forward) than
others. Thus, like rockets, the ship has to change its
orientation to face in the direction it wishes to accellerate
in order to use its drives at full effectiveness. In order to
change its orientation, the "best" method according to the
Handbook is to rotate the ship around a central gyroscope
of superdense material spinning at several million rpm's.
The other method discussed is using attitude jets.
My understanding of how agility works is that a high
agility ship can change its facing very quickly (in a matter
of seconds) so it can change its direction of thrust.
This enables it to "jink" rapidly, throwing off fire since
at the ranges for space combat (~25,000 - 250,000+ km) the
speed of light delay becomes important. It doesn't matter
how large the absolute velocity of the ship is, because the
ship's future position can be calculated and aimed for
("leading" the target); the important part is the how quickly
it can change its vector. Any ship can vary its vector in the
direction it is pointing by pulsing the drives on and off, but
this gives only 1 degree of freedom. The ability to change the
direction of thrust quickly (by turning the ship) allows the
ship to jink in any direction, thus making it harder to hit.
How the ship converts its power to agility (using the
formulas given), and how much is needed for optimal dodging,
is a different question. I can try to check out the reasonablity
of the formulas if people are interested.
If anyone has questions, comments or corrections, let
me know.
W. Dow Rieder
alias Capt. Kagariilian Grant
When the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems
start to look like nails...
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