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About size and its relation to speed

The_real_cal_howard

The_real_cal_howard

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With that one question about the dragon and the man, I had to bring this up. I feel like "via sheer size" stats should just be travel speed. We consider omnipresents (who by definition should be bigger) the same thing. And here's an analogy. There's an fly, and there's a whale. Both should have the same perception. But we currently have it otherwise. Will a whale dodge my punch when a fly can't?. I know for a fact that I can't blitz an ant. I wish I could explain more, but this is my entire case.
 
I feel like "through sheer size" shouldn't really be a thing anyway unless it shows it can move that fast. Using a blue whale as an example, the whale moves at 31 mph while a human can move at 27 mph, yet the whale is over 13x bigger than the human. Dragonflies can fly at 35 mph, yet they're obviously hundreds of times smaller than the whale.

But, ignoring my own personal thoughts, I agree with your point. A Kaiju doesn't really have super high reaction speed, it's just that the jets it swats are moving very little compared to their size.
 
Thing is, even titans are around the speed of horses and can be outmaneuvered by people like Mikasa
 
It's true that a big thing is fast just by its size, due to them being able to cover greater distances in shorter times.
 
@Matt

Using Eren as an example, Eren's speed is 513.63 m/s at his best feats. Assuming his arms are 0.4x his Titan height (he is very human looking aside from the face) his arms would be 6 meters long. At this length it would take 0.012 seconds to throw a punch, Subsonic Reactions going by our own page.

@Kaiser

OP is addressing reactions, which aren't affected by size anyway. As for what you're saying, you are right. Generally a larger being will cover more ground. However they also have exponentially more mass, which will be moved much slower.
 
He has a Supersonic feat in movement speed, but doging a punch from him only requires Subsonic reactions because of how large he is. That's what the calc was addressing.

There's also this article which argues that not only do houseflies have much higher reactions than us, but also that the bigger you are the slower your reactions should be. Stating in the first paragraph that:

"The smaller an animal is, and the faster its metabolic rate, the slower time passes for it, scientists found.

This means that across a wide range of species, time perception is directly related to size, with animals smaller than us seeing the world in slow motion."

Which means, if anything, we should assume larger things have slower reactions than us.
 
Not really. This is fiction. If a character has a feat, be it movement, combat, reaction or travel, we should always scale to his entire speed unless proven otherwise.

You are applying real life biology to fictional giants written by authors who don't think like you. Eren has a Supersonic feat that is Movement and Reaction? He is Supersonic.
 
@Matt

Except, even with fiction, that clearly isn't the case, as that calc proves. Godzilla may be able to swat supersonic jet fighters out of the air, but that hit still takes a human timescale to go through, meaning that there's nothing indicating his reactions are anything more than that.

I'm glad you brought up Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann @Reppuzan, because he too has Human level reactions.

Yes, his arm is moving at vastly MFTL+ speeds, but those punches still take some 0.2 or 0.1 seconds to cross that distance. A human can still react to that.
 
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann doesn't have "Human" reaction speed. He moves superhumanly fast even to his size.

Couldn't care less to your calcs. They prove nothing, only that you manipulate evidence and cherrypick examples to suit your needs of downplaying everything.
 
As long as LordXcano is still respected and falsely-believed to be of valuable input to these discussions, our Wikia will continuously be plagued by false equivalences, fallacies, distorted evidence, cherrypicking and a facáde of intellecualism all for the sake of downplaying.

So no, when I criticize Xcano's methods and opinions, I do it for the sake of VSBW as a whole.
 
Dragon is right, it's important to remain civil about this, but I'm more in agreement with Matthew on this one.
 
Yes, I would appreciate if everybody please calm down, and try to be civil towards each other.
 
Like I said we shouldn't do this here. I agree with Matt as well. But it may be better to discuss this on his blog or something.
 
That said, I do agree with Matthew's points, but there are much more polite ways of expressing them. LordXcano isn't a bad person. He just has a different way of thinking than you do.
 
I will say that I believe that STGLL should keep his speed. Throwing galaxies like shurikens and the like. and can keep up with characters who can dodge that What does concern me is characters like Marble Alien (Men in Black), who's only feat is flicking a universe. While impressive and is incredible travel speed, I am not sure if it should be combat.
 
Yes, but he brought his fallacious methods to the discussion, and as I disagree with his opinions I have a right to criticize them (Not him the person, his opinions on Vs.Debating).

I think that applying this real life logic of "Larger animals react in less time" to fiction, when it clearly isn't the case in the later, is fallacious and wrong. Instead, we should look over a case by case analysis. Like reasonable people, rather than enforcing a rule that will encompass everything, so that we will never have to deal with this kind of discussion in the future.

The later implies lazyness. Instead, we should always be analyzing and discussing.

Also keep in mind that most of fiction does not diferentiate between any kind of speed, and neither should we.
 
I agree about case-by-case analysis.
 
Fair enough. Technically, it does have a speed feat. But I'm talking about characters who's only feat is someone stating "X is as large as Alpha Centaurii (or however it's spelled)!"
 
LordXcano is right though, not saying anything about metabolic rate and reaction time as a biological process, but reaction speed has to do with the time you need to react to something.

So technically even if let's say characters A and B are thousands of km tall and A throwing a punch at B at supersonic speeds but the punch needs 2 seconds to reach him, B's reactions aren't supersonic.
 
Basically what Gwyn said, even discounting the real life basis for this.

For example, Legendary Godzilla can swing his tail at supersonic speeds at stated by WoG. However, they also state this is entirely because of how large he is. Sure he can swing at half the speed of a bullet, but he will never react to a bullet as his speed is a function of size alone.
 
I know, I agree it should be a case-by-case basis. But this still means that reactions wouldn't automatically scale to speed that's a function of size unless they show reactions on that level.

Using Gwyn's example, they would be, say, Massively Hypersonic with Unknown Reactions. If one of them dodges a bolt of lightning or whatever, then you can assume they have reactions equal to their size.

Heisei Godzilla would be an example of a large character who's reactions scale to their size, as he struck down an FTL object. However, Original Godzilla would not, as everything he hits down (or tries to) is still reactable to at regular speed when you're that size.
 
I, as well, agree with LordXcano on the case that giant characters can take rather long timeframes for the attacks between each other.

It is something I actually wanted to bring up myself sometime.


Not that this changes any ratings IMO. It still is MFTL+ combat speed for the STTGL if you ask me.

The only thing I would suggest to change is to encourage that additionally to combat speed, also the best reaction time feat is listed for such extremly large characters, in order to put things into perspective relative to their size.
 
The real cal howard said:
Fair enough. Technically, it does have a speed feat. But I'm talking about characters who's only feat is someone stating "X is as large as Alpha Centauri!"
Click to expand...
What about examples like this?
 
@Cal That's what I was talking about with the size thing in my first comment. Good example would be Gorrl the Living Galaxy , who, as far as the article would lead me to believe, has no feats yet is rated as MFTL+ because he is the size of a galaxy. Wouldn't it be better to have him as Unknown unless he's shown to be able to move normally?
 
I would suggest doing for them basically what we have for Amitabha currently. That is "possibly size calculated speed ranking" providing they have no other speed feats or statements that they have done certain things that one could use to quantify the speed based on size. It should of course be included that the "possibly" is concluded from size only.

Generally there is no guarantee that such a character is actually this fast, but then again experience wise it is commonly enough true to at least mention the possibility of it on the profile in my opinion.
 
I feel like even possibly is assuming too much. Let's use Amitabha for an example. I doubt he could punch 10^100 times in a second.
 
If a universe is less to Amitabha than what a planck length is to a universe, I sincerly doubt he'd be anything less than MFTL+.
 
That isn't what a speed ranking assumes though. Amitabha would be MFTL+ even if he punched just once since the creation of the universe.

For its reaction time we have no indication, though. So it is possible that it has a reaction time of a hundred years.

That are two differen things though IMO. It can most likely fight at MFTL+ speeds and hence ranking it as "possibly MFTL+" at combat speed is legitimate. But to put things into context it should be mentioned that its reaction time could be terrible for all we know.
 
Another analogy. I can't move my finger an atom's distance thousands of times in a second despite me dwarfing atoms like that.
 
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