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A modification to the Speed page/standards (STAFF ONLY)

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AKM sama

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I've talked to many staff members about this topic and decided to make a thread to address the issue. I'll get right to the point.

Our speed page states this under flight speed:
The speed at which a character or object flies a certain distance, like going from the earth to the sun for example.

High flight speed logically requires similar reaction speed in order to manoeuvre when approaching different objects.

However, certain franchises, such as Marvel Comics (and DC Comics or Image Comics, which follow the same conventions), make a great distinction between regular movement speed and flight speed.

As such, we have generally assumed that the characters' regular reaction or combat speeds are roughly equivalent to their flight speeds unless this is clearly contradicted.

As for the bolded part, it's not always correct. Most of these flight speeds come from people traveling in space from one planet to another or across the universe. And the universe is... kinda empty. Only 0.0000000000000000000042 percent of the universe contains any matter. As such, if a character has a feat of flying across galaxies to go to another planet, there is an incredibly small chance that he will run into any planets or stars.

Not to mention, a star can be seen from very very far away (the most distant individual star visible to the unaided eye is a little over 4000 light years away) so the character already knows what's coming in front of him. And by chance the character is heading towards it, he has plenty of time to slow down and adjust a little bit to avoid that star system by a long shot. Many characters like that already have enhanced senses which makes it even easier for them to see something coming up (probability of which is low since space is almost empty).

Basically, flying through space is just like flying an aircraft in a way. You hardly encounter any obstacles so you don't have to manoeuvre. And in case you encounter something, there is plenty of time for you to decelerate (slow down) or make a slight adjustment in advance. In long distance space travels, you will almost never have to worry about taking sharp turns and maneuvering at your top speed.

For a clearer perspective, let's assume a highly unlikely scenario (credit for this goes to @DMUA):

A character is somehow blind enough to not notice a star system or planets from afar, and he ends up coming close to crashing into a planet, but by the time he's within the orbit of it's moon, he notices because it's an entire planet and turns to the side before he hits.

That's around 382,500,000 meters of leeway. Let's say he's flying 1,000,000 times the speed of light.

382,500,000 divided by 2.9979e+14 is a reaction time of 0.00000127589 seconds, Massively Hypersonic+ reaction time.





Keeping all that in mind, I propose that flight speed should not automatically scale to reaction and combat speeds, since the argument we provide as a reason is not factually correct. We should only determine combat speed and reactions from the flight speed feats when we have enough evidence for it. And I think that is already the practice in some verses as far as I know, but due to the current text in the speed page, some other verses do not follow it. We are inconsistent in this regard. The text in the speed page needs to be updated and the matter should be finalized.
 
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Keeping all that in mind, I propose that flight speed should not automatically scale to reaction and combat speeds, since the argument we provide as a reason is not factually correct. We should only determine combat speed and reactions from the flight speed feats when we have enough evidence for it. And I think that is already the practice in some verses as far as I know, but due to the current text in the speed page, some other verses do not follow it. The text needs to be updated.

This makes sense to me.
 
Not scaling spaceflight speed to reaction speed per default makes sense, yeah.

To add a quote from an article regarding flying through asteroid belts:
New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern explained: “Fortunately, the asteroid belt is so huge that, despite its large population of small bodies, the chance of running into one is almost vanishingly small – far less than one in a billion. That means if you want to come close enough to an asteroid to make detailed studies of it, you have to aim for one.”
 
Would you be willing to try to think of the best ways that we can adjust our instructions pages according to what has been suggested in this thread DontTalk?
 
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What about being able to perceive being able to stop at an exact spot you want and being capable of halting yourself where you need to go after travelling through such speed? Wouldn’t that count for reaction and combat speed?
 
I agree with the OP.
What about being able to perceive being able to stop at an exact spot you want and being capable of halting yourself where you need to go after travelling through such speed? Wouldn’t that count for reaction and combat speed?
Short answer is it depends on context.

Long answer, there's many ways that a feat like that could be done, with different implications for reaction speed and perception. They could perceive their destination from such a distance away that a normal human could react to and process it. Hell, they could have their entire flight path planned from the start with some sort of cosmic awareness, not needing to react at all during the journey. Or they could actually react soon before they land, in which case their reaction speed is still heavily nerfed. As AKM pointed out in the OP, a character 1 million times FTL could end up only getting MHS+ reactions with some pretty reasonable assumptions.

If their reactions are calculated separately from their flight speed like this, I wouldn't have an issue with using it.
 
If the character doesn’t have some divine awareness of where the location is and ends up being able to perceive the location mid flight and stops right on the mark, like say, they notice a planet of interest mid flight and they stop right where the planet is, would that scale since they were able to perceive the planet mid flight and can catch themselves without straying far off course?
 
I have agreed with this for a long time; it's a different story if a character needs to swiftly move side to side to avoid objects or enemy projectiles while flying forward as Massively FTL+ speeds, or if two or more characters perform fancy U-Turns while maintaining flight speeds in some cases. But it should not be assumed by default spaceflight speed scales to combat speed.
 
If the character doesn’t have some divine awareness of where the location is and ends up being able to perceive the location mid flight and stops right on the mark, like say, they notice a planet of interest mid flight and they stop right where the planet is, would that scale since they were able to perceive the planet mid flight and can catch themselves without straying far off course?
It wouldn't scale to the full value. That would need to be calculated individually and may end up far lower.

Actually, I wonder if calculating that part individually would be considered calc stacking or not...
 
If the character doesn’t have some divine awareness of where the location is and ends up being able to perceive the location mid flight and stops right on the mark, like say, they notice a planet of interest mid flight and they stop right where the planet is, would that scale since they were able to perceive the planet mid flight and can catch themselves without straying far off course?
There is also the question of whether they slowed down when approaching their target. We often only know their average speed.
You don't try to park a car at 100 km/h, but slow down once you get close to your destination. In the same way, characters likely get slower before stopping right on the mark at some planet.
Would you be willing to try to think of the best ways that we can adjust our instructions pages according to what has been suggested in this thread DontTalk?
I suppose I can try to write something once the debate is over.
 
Yeah I've never really agreed with the automatic assumption of travel speed to combat speed.

Even if means that some universes like Star Wars require a massive speed overhaul, it's still a good idea to change our standards.

So I'm completely in agreement.
 
There is also the question of whether they slowed down when approaching their target. We often only know their average speed.

I’m talking about them moving as fast and they abruptly stop at a point of interest.
 
I heard about this before it went up. I absolutely agree.

'pologies for late replies today by the by, internet company decided I don't deserve functioning internet for today.
 
Out of curiosity, which verses?
Marvel likely.

I agree with AKM, always thought that characters should always have on the profile if mentioned/shown in their verse the difference between flight, running, combat speed as a lot of times only reaction is taken in even if they never show the same speed while traveling- example dodging light attacks but their running speed is mach 1000.
 
Marvel and DC comics most likely?
Like TTGL with the dimensional tiering changes, I don't think DC/Marvel actually aren't really effected by this. You have people like Silver Surfer do sick twist and turns while flying across galaxies or Superman having a fight while he slams someone through a star a galaxy away.

Though idk we may change how those series works.
 
@DontTalkDT

Given that this change seems to have been accepted, would you be willing to try to figure out where and how it should be implemented please?
 
Something something Wonder Woman's Shattered God shard blocking feat?
Or most giant robot fights?
 
@DontTalkDT

Given that this change seems to have been accepted, would you be willing to try to figure out where and how it should be implemented please?
Where to put it is a good question.
I suppose the Flight Speed passage on the speed page is the first thing that needs to be modified.
I would think it's best to reduce it to just the first sentence.

The explanations regarding scaling travel or flight speed to reactions are probably best dealt with in another note on the speed page, where it can be addressed together for both speed types.
As we are nearing 10 Notes, I wonder if it might be time to restructure the page regarding that a little.
Instead of a Notes section, we could have a "Explanations"-section or "Further Explanations"-section and each note becomes a subsection of that with a fitting headline to see what it is about.
You know, organizing things a little more and making it easier for new readers to get an overview and find what they look for on the page. By now the information down there is too important to treat it like just some minor note.

Anyway, for the note itself, how about:
If a character travels or flies very fast through a very empty terrain, in which it doesn't necessarily have to react to sudden obstacles, the speed in question is travel or flight speed, but not necessarily reaction speed. In order for it to also be reaction speed, and the speed in total hence applying to the character's combat speed, the character either must have demonstrated the ability to react to sudden obstacles while traveling at this speed, have a calculation made that supports the character having corresponding reaction speed/time or otherwise demonstrate having comparable reactions.
Simply being able to stop accurately at the target destination does typically not qualify, as it can be spotted from a large distance to make preparations to stop or the character could even slow down before reaching the destination, assuming we only know the average speed with which they moved.
The typical example of such cases of travel/flight speed that doesn't necessarily scale to reactions is space travel. As space is incredibly empty there are virtually no objects one has to navigate around between destinations. Just flying in a straight line from A to B would be safe. At the same time the typical destinations, such as stars and planets, are so large that they can easily be seen from millions of kilometers away. As a result a character would only need reactions equal to a miniscule fraction of their travel speed to perform a safe and precise landing on them.
 
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