Here is a draft idea for making Agility work better. I will do more with dogfights, but not today... pardon any typos. It's only a draft.
Agility
A vehicle’s Agility is an indication of how responsive it is to a driver’s commands and how well it can manoeuvre. A high Agility vehicle can change direction quickly and react almost as an extension of the driver’s arms or other limbs. A low Agility vehicle is ponderous, taking a long time to turn or responding slowly to control changes.
High Agility
A vehicle with high Agility is more forgiving than one with low Agility, but this does not turn a novice into an expert. For vehicle operating tasks, a vehicle’s Agility is a positive DM, but only to the limit of success or to the limit of ability. Agility will act as a DM to avoid failure for most reasonable tasks but will only benefit success to the extent of an operator’s skill.
If an operator has skill and attribute DMs equal or above a vehicle’s agility, then the operator can always take full advantage of a vehicle’s Agility as a positive DM.
If Agility exceeds an operator’s DMs (skill and usually DEX) for operating a vehicle, it provides its full bonus to tasks Difficult (10+) or easier to avoid failure but will only provide as much Agility as the operator’s DMs for the level of success.
For example, Greg has a skill of 1 and no DEX bonus and is attempting a Difficult manoeuvre with an Agility+4 vehicle. He rolls a 7. His DM is +1, leaving him short of success by 2, but the Agility +4 vehicle gains him up to +4 towards a marginal success of 10 using +2 from Agility. Any additional Agility bonus is lost. Had he rolled a 9, he would have received +1 for his DM and still received +1 from the part of Agility he could use, giving him an 11 and Effect +1. If the task had been Very Difficult, he would have received no Agility bonus at all to succeed if he could not succeed by skill and DEX alone, but he still would have received +1 if he had succeeded.
As another example, Beth has a combined skill and DEX DM of +4. Beth will always be able to use the full Agility +4 on the vehicle’s tasks, effectively getting DM+8 on any task check, regardless of success or difficulty. She is quite likely to make Exception Success results, taking full advantage of the capabilities of the vehicle.
Low Agility
A vehicle with low Agility is not automatically more difficult to manage, otherwise a large ship with Agility-6 would be almost impossible to operate even at the simplest level. Instead, it is ponderous. For any task with a duration, negative Agility acts as positive DM to task duration, though positive Effect can be used to counteract this.
For tasks with a fixed duration of on round, the operator can choose to take Agility as a negative DM to completion or use one Minor Action per round to avoid the penalty. In this instance it is permissible to use three Minor Actions in a round to eliminate three negative DMs. It is not possible to gain a positive DM by using more actions.
For example, Beth is stuck with a vehicle with Agility -3. A Task requiring 1D rounds will take 1D+3 rounds by default. Beth succeeds in her task check with a positive Effect +4 and rolls 4 for duration, modified to 7. She can choose to keep the positive Effect or apply up to 3 of her Effect to counteract the extra time needed to complete the task, reducing it back down to 4 rounds duration. If she had failed her roll, the entire 1D+3 duration would elapse before she could try again.
As another example, in combat Beth’s movement manoeuvre requires a task check. The time is not specified, so it is assumed to occur within that round. Instead of risking failure with DM-3 to the roll, she uses three Minor Action to completely use up her actions for the round to eliminate the -3, and next round she can roll the task check without a penalty.
Turning
A high Agility vehicle can possibly turn about completely in a round, even at high speed. A low agility vehicle will ponderously shift direction, perhaps taking many rounds to complete a wide turn. The speed at which a vehicle can turn is dependant on Agility. Agility determines the number of degrees a vehicle can turn in a round. If using a hex or square grid system, this can be approximated to the nearest hex or square side each turn.
The basic turn rate of a vehicle is 60° degrees per combat round. This is the effective rate for vehicles of Agility 1, 0 and -1. Beyond this range, the numbers becomes better or worse, as indicated in the Turning Table, which also proves a guide over how many turns a vehicle takes to make a 180° turn.
Turning Table
| Agility | Rate per round | Rounds to 180° |
| 6 | 360° | 0.5 |
| 5 | 300° | 0.6 |
| 4 | 240° | 0.75 |
| 3 | 180° | 1 |
| 2 | 120° | 1.5 |
| 1, 0,-1 | 60° | 3 |
| -2 | 45° | 4 |
| -3 | 36° | 5 |
| -4 | 30° | 6 |
| -5 | 25.7° | 7 |
| -6 | 22.5° | 8 |
Turning Faster: To increase the turn rate of a vehicle, the operator can attempt a Difficult (10+) driving check. This task check does not have an Agility bonus to succeed. On success, the vehicle can turn at a rate equal to a vehicle with one greater agility for that round. Prior to rolling the check, the operator could choose to make a Very Difficult (12+) check to make the vehicle turn at an Agility two levels higher. Exceptional Failures are likely to result in a crash.
Optional Rule: Making rapid turns at high speed places excess g-force strain on the vehicle and perhaps its occupants. The amount of g-force experienced by a vehicle is equal to its Speed Band divided by the number of rounds it takes to make a 180 degree turn. For a very agile supersonic vehicle, this may be disastrous. Grav plating can counteract up to 2g, but few non-spacecraft vehicles have inertial compensators installed. Personnel effects of high g-forces is described in the
High Guard G-LOC section on pages 46-47. Many vehicles may not survive high-g manoeuvres. A vehicle can withstand up to its TL in g-forces, +1 if Agile and +1 if an AFV and +2 if it has functional grav plates. Beyond that it will suffer a number of Critical Hits equal to the amount by which it exceeded its g-limits, each round it continues its high-g turn.
Dogfights
Agility always matters in dogfights – more detailed rules TBD
