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MASS EFFECT—Commander Shepard's Bullshit Speed Scaling

Jaften

Joke Battles
Content Moderator
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TL;DR— Shepard's posted speed right now is way off as the velocity of the Cain's projectile in-game is not a reliable reference point due to arbitrary game mechanics, so we should change it to something more reasonable.

"Speed: At least Supersonic+ (capable of moving at a significant fraction of the speed of the slug fired by the M-920 Cai [stated as possessing a muzzle velocity of 5,000 m/s]); Hypersonic+ via Adrenaline Rush/Biotic Charge (able to move at comparable/superior speeds to the M-920 Cain's slug)"

...Was this calculated from the Cain's projectile speed in gameplay? Because said projectile obviously doesn't actually travel at 5 km/s in real time, due to gameplay-lore segregation. The Cain's projectile appears to move between 10―20 m/s, based on how fast it travels over the distances in-game (the vast majority of confrontations in-game take place within a distance of 50 m, most closer than 25 m). If the projectile were to actually move at 5 km/s and Shepard is merely perceiving of it as being slow, that would mean everything Shepard perceives of in-game is much faster than they would appear to be, which raises a lot of questions about the physics of the Mass Effect universe—such as the speed of sound and acceleration due to gravity, which would have to be magnitudes greater than the standards to appear normal as they do in-game. The speed of sound in 15┬░C dry air at sea level is defined as 340.27 m/s. In order for a sound wave to be able to travel at approximately the same perceived rate as it would in standard temperature and pressure for an average human perception given Shepard's hypothetical perception rate, the speed of sound in air would need to be over 85,000 m/s (the element with the highest speed of sound, carbon, rates at about 18,350 m/s). The standard acceleration due to gravity is defined as 9.8065 m/s┬▓. In order for an object to be able to fall (in vaccuum) at approximately the same perceived rate as it would in standard gravity for an average human perception given Shepard's hypothetical perception rate, the acceleration due to gravity would need to be over 612,000 m/s┬▓ (the acceleration of a 9├ù19mm bullet is about 300,000 m/s┬▓) and the object's velocity after falling 2 m would be over 1500 m/s (the muzzle velocity of the 120mm M829A3 armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot round is 1555 m/s). As it is safe to say most would agree that these are fairly absurd conclusions, I believe that we should revise Shepard's speed so that it is based on more reasonable assumptions, such as Peak Human or Super Human, until more reliable evidence to the contrary is found.

Mind you, I've no problems with claiming that Shepard has Peak/Super Human to Transonic/Supersonic (Mach 0.9-2.5) reactions, especially when using Adrenaline Rush (with Peak Human base reactions, using Adrenaline Rush would allow them time to react to something moving towards them at 340.27 m/s starting from a distance of over 22―26 m away), but claiming anything greater than Supersonic (Mach 2.5) would require some reliable evidence to convince me.
 
KaenDragneel123 said:
Not good enough. In fact, it's just as bad.

Jaften said:
...Was this calculated from the Cain's projectile speed in gameplay? Because said projectile obviously doesn't actually travel at 5 km/s in real time, due to gameplay-lore segregation.
It's still scaled off of the obviously unreliable gameplay performance of the Cain.

Jaften said:
Shepard's posted speed right now is way off as the velocity of the Cain's projectile in-game is not a reliable reference point due to arbitrary game mechanics
Just because you like the idea of supersonic Mass Effect characters doesn't mean it's correct.
 
Fiction doesn't play nice with relativity like that. It's not something we consider here, where some characters can move FTL, throw around far more force than momentum would allow and generally crap on a bunch of other rules that matter.

Basically, what you are suggesting is to ignore all speed feats by all characters in non extremely explicit science fiction stories, of which maybe one or two qualify as being lore intensive enough. That's ridiculous and means that we basically can't put down any stats at all.

Also, some of the speeds are found from a Mass Effect movie or something like that, look up ChaosTheory on Narutoforums if you are really interested in it.

So yea, I formally oppose this.
 
It's just developers don't know about real phys. The same applied to HALO where 8000 tons ships can fire several 600 ton projectiles.
 
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