Ship Agility Rating

Introduction

Because of the nature of space, almost all ships have the ability to be realigned, and without any impulse momentum. This is accomplished with thrusters. It is imperative for all ships to be able to change direction while at impulse, in order to direct a ship along a desired path. A ships agility is its capacity to change direction completely (full change of direction momentum, direction of Impulse) in regard to its current velocity and the length of time it takes to complete a full momentum change. It is unnecessary for a ship to make a complete stop and accelerate to change its directional impulse momentum.

Inertia

With all high speed velocities, Inertia compensation ( IC ) plays an important role, both for the agility of the ship, and for the safeguard of the crew. Inertia is most compensated through change of relative inertia. Relative inertia is modification of inertia between two separate entities. This is accomplished through multidimensional string manipulation, the same modification that allows for Faster-than-light flight. This manipulation allows the area of 'strings' which encompass and include the ship and its occupants to behave much less than the surrounding space.

IC technologies allow the ship to behave at extreme speeds that would normally be too great and rip the vessel apart. They are also responsible for allowing the ship greater agility, that is to change their directional impulse moment in a much shorter time. The effect is often called Inertial Anchoring, or String Anchoring.

Agility

There is a direct relationship between the ability to compensate inertia and change directional momentum. The more mass a ship has, the more compensation required to change Directional momentum within a given time period. This is Ship Agility. Ship agility is rated on a single scale regardless of ship mass. As a ship could be equipped with more IC, and thus raising the power requirement of the ship.

A ship in general has enough IC to compensate for the mass of the ship, its equipment and crew +15% total mass to execute a 360 degree turn at its full impulse without tearing the ship apart. The rating of a ships agility is how tight of a turn radius that 360 degree turn can be executed at a ships full impulse. The rating (rounded whole number) takes the radius of the 360 degree turn (in meters) and divides it by the top impulse speed (in decimal). The higher the number, the worse its rating.

Very few ships have an actual zero Radius turn, and are considered to have a 1 Agility Rating, the highest a vehicle can have.