What stats affect a ship's manuveraublity? Is it mass and thrust, mass and spin torque, or just mass?

What I'm really after here is how fast the aiming crosshair catches up with the mouselook crosshair (i.e. how fast the ship actually changes facing). I've been told it's spin torque, but it seems to me spin torque only affects how fast a ship rolls (when the e and q [by default] buttons are pressed).

Additionally, is it the same stat(s) that affect how quickly a ship dodges?

Perhaps some experienced user would even be kind enough to provide me with a list of everything the different ship stats do (i.e. thrust: affects only forward acceleration, not sideways dodging. Spin torque: only affects roll speed, not change of ship facing, aiming etc).

EDIT: There really should be an extended entry in the Vendetta Manual on ships physics and flight mechanics. If someone can give me an extensive rundown, I'll add it to the VO Wiki.

Also, remember that there is key ramping and "controlresponse" settings to consider.

[edit] AND, we're upside-down![/edit]

yeah its some complicated thing that is actually quite realistic. oh and relayer ITS NOT UPSIDE DOWN!!!

It IS upside down. You just haven't been able to embrace that fact yet.

Mass, thrust, and max speed are what affect linear movement (strafing), while for turning & rolling spin torque takes the place of thrust. Turning while strafing would use all of the stats.

As I understand it, the max speed & how it affects acceleration is the only real difference from Newtonian physics.

Thrust = mass * accel

and

Torque = I * angular accel

are the two basic equations governing ship motion. "I" means "moment of inertia" which depends on the shape of the ship, for a simple point orbiting a circle it's equal to mR^2 but for extensive bodies like the ships we fly you need to use calculus to get the moment of inertia. A rod shaped ship like the Prom should have a much higher moment of inertia than a puck shaped ship like the Valk.

One of the things affecting maneuverability which you aren't told about in the station menu is the spin damping constant on each ship, which is effectively the maximum turn rate (turn rate = spin torque/axial damping).

Why axial damping instead of spin damping? The spin damping is different for each axis - the shape of the ship determines its inertia along each rotational axis, and the spin damping is sometimes set to the ragged edge where increasing it would make the engine numerically unstable. This is why the Centurion IBG rolls so fast - its roll-axis profile is so thin that it can't possibly slow down the roll axis through damping without making it numerically unstable at our physics simulation rate.

So yes, aside from mass, there's the inertia profile of the ship which is solely determined by the shape of the ship, and the torque from the ship's "probably flywheel-based torque generator", and the damping constant on the ship's "probably magical angular stabilizer". A ragnarok, for instance, is a large flat ship which can turn left/right more easily than up/down or rolling, but its spin damping might be set so high that you can't really tell the difference.

I don't think we publish "maximum turn rate" figures but doing so would highlight what's going on a bit better.