Re: [VV] Agility

> From: "Roger Burton West"

>> I have often felt that there should be an evasion level based on
thrust from the main drive that isn't otherwise used for manoeuvres - so
you can dodge about a lot, _or_ race for where you want to be... <<

> That's what I had in mind initially, but should it really be tied to
MD?  I'm thinking that a 747 is faster from A to B than a Fokker D7, but
not as agile. <

Perhaps, but it's not that simple. For a start, using aircraft as an
analogy is not a good idea because their agility is tied up with
aerodynamics, and guess what -- no air (or other fluid of significant
density) in space. So agility is tied up with the ability to accelerate
in one or more wanted directions, either on command or randomly (as a
form of evasive manoeuvring), and that's what the MD rating quantifies.

Given that a CT with Thrust 4 and an SDN with Thrust 4 behave exactly
the same way in terms of acceleration, turning, etc., it would seem that
MD "thrust" rates acceleration, thrust-to-weight ratio or something like
that -- in which case, provided that a) there are sufficient thrusters
on the ship to push it, and b) the ship structure can stand the jolts,
there's no reason why size should matter in this case. What is important
is ship structural strength, so to provide levels of agility, the
evasion level could be tied to the number of damage boxes the ship has
in relation to its Mass; this sort of brings back the
Fragile/Weak/Average/Strong/Whatever structural classes that Jon ditched
in FB2, but it could be done on a percentage basis or something similar.
That way, if you want your SDN to be able to zip all over the place when
fired at, it can, but you'll be sacrificing something else for the
capability, just as is done now with other systems.

Phil
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