What the %$#*& IS agility anyway?

> Let me summarize how I see things:
>
> 1.  The MOST acceleration you can get is 6-g.  Period.
> 		(Rules)

What acceleration did the Apollo rockets achieve?

...

> 4.  Agility is a figure you use (somehow) to determine who has
> 		"initiative" in a space combat (I think?) or you use to
> 		deterrmine how easy it is for your ship to make `sudden'
> 		changes in speed or direction. (Rules I think)

The first of those is probably from "High Guard", in which Agility also acts
to hinder incoming fire from meson guns and particle accelerators. (The roll
to hit gets the target's Agility subtracted from it.)

> 5.  Agility is a number between 1 and 6, inclusive.  (Rules)

Between 0 and 6.  A ship might not have a manoeuvre drive, e.g. X-boats.

> One of the following two is (I believe) the proper way to interpret
> the rules.  Which one?

"High Guard" calculates a ship's agility by dividing its available power by its
tonnage.  "Available" means power which isn't needed for weapons, computers,
etc.  Which means that some ships can have 0 agility, even if they have working
manoeuvre drives.  A type S scout ship with a pair of lasers is one example.

There is also "emergency agility".  To work this out, divide the ship's power
by its mass.  Forget weapons, computers, etc. - this is an emergency, we want
to _move_!  However, the emergency agility may not exceed the ship's manoeuvre
rating.

That's the quick'n'dirty way.  Assuming the ship doesn't have a big enough
power supply to drive all weapons, computers and manoeuvre drives at once,
I allow calculations to be made on how much power is given to weapons, how
much to manoeuvre, etc.  The agility is then calculated as usual.  Allocating
power like this gives the engineer PC something to do.

> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Technical comment - related but not directly to the above...
>
> The effect of either of the above scenarios is the same.
> Space battles become `running battles' or set-piece battles.  Even
> at the maximum short-term 12-g limit of the second method, you could
> not actually maneuver fast enough to escape the guns behind you;
> those guns can rotate much more slowly and still track.

This is something I never liked.  All weapons are in turrets.  A ship ought
to be able to have fixed weapons.  Either the same weapons, but taking much
less space; or bigger weapons in the same space.  In particular, a fighter
ought to be able to take a big missile on a fixed mount, instead of those
small 50kg things in its turret.  That way, it might be able to do some harm
to a decent sized ship.

 "Keyboard? How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt			     |	JANET:  [email removed]
 UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian     |  ARPA:   [email removed]

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