Re: [FT] Agility

At 8:19 PM -0400 3/5/05, Laserlight wrote:
>How many of you vac heads would like to see a ship's Turn ability be
>uncoupled from its Thrust rating? For example, perhaps you could
>build:
>Freighter: Thrust  4 / Turn 1
>Courier: Thrust 7 / Turn 2
>Destroyer: Thrust 4 / Turn 5 (note that Turn is greater than Thrust on
>this one)

I think it's a good idea, mostly for ships which are fast
in straight lines but can't turn. I wouldn't expect any
ships to have a turn rating higher than main thrust.

>And if you like the idea, what house rules would you suggest?

Nothing as detailed as JL Hilal but...

Standard drive: each 5% mass buys 1 level, which can be
used for 1 MU of acceleration, and 1 MU of deacceleration
OR turning 1 course facing. Points value still mass x 2.

The division between deacceleration and turning must be
specified at ship design time: the default is half
rounded down for turning, rest on deacceleration. In any
turn the combined accelerations/turns/deaccelerations
cannot exceed the total level of the drive.

(We'd probably need a rule "a ship must have at least 1
level of deacceleration" to keep munchkins at bay.)

The existing ships would all accelerate and turn as they
do now, but would have only half the "braking power" to
slow down. I'm used to spaceships having the big nozzles
all facing backwards anyway, so I wouldn't mind the loss
of existing capability.

A typical Drive-4 ship has Thrust 4 / Turn 2 / Brake 2.
In your examples, the courier would have standard Thrust
7 / Turn 2 / Brake 5. The destroyer isn't possible, the
nearest would be Thrust 4 / Turn 3 / Brake 1.

Advanced drive: as per current Savasku and Kravak, each 5%
costs mass x 3. Division between deacceleration and
turning can be changed at any time rather than being
fixed. All the current ships with advanced drives would
work exactly as they do now. Your example destroyer can
almost be built, with drive Thrust 4 / Turn 4 / Brake 4.

And the consumer/inferior drive: each level costs mass x 1,
needs 2 levels to accelerate or deaccelerate by 1 MU, or
to turn 1 course facing. Plus a special rule for thrust-1
inferior drives: write an order to change velocity or course
by 1, move ship unchanged on this turn, on the following
turn the change takes effect. No additional order may be
written until the previoius one has taken effect, ie you can
only change every second turn at best.

	cheers,
	Hugh