I just happened to see your question here when I was browsing; sorry you didn't get an answer for a while.

I do not claim to know exactly what these lines mean, but i DO know how to make a ship more manueverable.

In Data/Ships/shiparch.ini, look through the ship-of-interest's entry until you see these lines:

steering_torque = (#), (#), (#)
angular_drag = (#), (#), (#)
rotation_inertia = (#), (#), (#)

These control how much your ship will turn when you move the mouse; the lower the numbers, the more manueverable. Look for the Patriot's entry (nickname = li_fighter) to see very agile stats; look for another ship's entry (say, co_elite2 / Titan for a VHF). Look at these and compare to try to get the stats that you want.

Another couple of things also come into play with turning:

~ the "mass = (#)" line. This sets how much your ship .. well, masses If you have a very high mass (say, 350 and higher) you might be able to actually turn your ship in a direction (so now you are looking in that direction), but your ship will continue on its previous path for a few seconds. Lower does the opposite; you can go from 0 to 200 + in about a second with a mass of 80 or so.

~ the "max_bank_angle = (#)" line. This allows your ship to move more or less of a distance from the center of the screen. I think 30 through about 38 are pretty decent numbers for LFs, 39 to 45-ish for HFs, and maybe higher for VHFs and freighters. The higher the bank angle is, the more your ship will drift from the center of the screen before actually beginning to turn.

~ the "strafe_force = (#)" line controls how much you can strafe left and right. The default number is 20,000 -- a very, very crappy strafe, practically nonexistant and useless (akin to trying to propel your ship with your own flatulence ). 40k to 60k are pretty nice, and anything over 80 or 90 will make you go faster strafing sideways than when you are flying forward The line under that one about strafe_power_usage contols how much Thruster energy your strafe will use when you use it. I think all ships can handle 40 to 55 alright, but bigger ships should use more, around 100 to 150, to make it more realistic. But what you change it to is obviously up to you

I hope this helps. Sorry if you knew these already and that it was a while before you heard a response.