Minor Pikmin Upgrade

[LuckyEmile]

So, when reading through the Pikmin profiles, I found a little issue. It's nothing major, but a mistake many people fall for. It claims that because the Doomsday Apparatus was a kilogram weight, and it required 100 Purple Pikmin, one Purple Pikmin can lift 10 grams, and the other types can lift only 1.

You may think this is simple maths, however it was rightly pointed out on Pikipedia that this isn't the fairest of calculations, as other objects, which we know the weight of, show greater feats of strength, pointing out an AA battery (The Proton AA, in-game) in specific.

An AA Battery weights as much as 25 grams and requires 6 regular Pikmin. Straight away, that means a Purple Pikmin can lift 25 grams, and then some, which is over twice what we've got labelled here. To be more specific, let's calculate a normal Pikmin. We'll call him Steve (I don't have "Emile" in my username for nothing). So 6 Steves can lift 25 grams by working together, and assuming all Steves put in as much work as each other, as we assumed with the Doomsday Apparatus, this would mean Steve on his own can lift just over 4 grams on his own (4.16666 reccuring, to be exact)

So, Stever here, who has equal lifting strength to his fellow Red Pikmin, a Yellow Pikmin, a Blue Pikmin (although Blues can pick up and throw Purples), a White Pikmin, a Flying Pikmin, a Rock Pikmin and a Bulbmin (I'd make them all a topic, but it's a max of 4)...

So normal Pikmin can lift over 4 grams, not just a single gram.

As for Purple Pikmin, they can lift 10 times as much...

So Purple Pikmin can lift over 41 grams, not just 10 grams.

So, whilst not exactly a major change, I feel this should be noted, as Pikmin should be left with such poor lifting strength as a mere gram. So, yeah, a simple calculation just upped Pikmin Lifting Strength.

 

[Saikou_The_Lewd_King]

Well, one could argue that needing more people to lift is due to game mechanics/ the object simply being too big to be lifted by a small amount of them. So, this seems fair?

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Yeah, nothing too important here, but I suppose the description changes are reasonable.

Edit: This wikia says that Pikmin carry up to 20x their own body weight, and that Purple Pikmin can lift 10x greater than that. It also says that the maximum lifting capacity of a Pikmin is 5 grams, or 50 grams in Purple Pikmin's case.

 

[LuckyEmile]

Oh, that's kind of odd, considering this was the same wiki that had the "1 gram limit due to Doomsday Appartus" arguement. Hmm, not sure what the source is for their statements, so... until we find it, I guess we should use this blog?

EDIT: Oh wait, yeah, I see the source for the 5 grams, seems legitamate. Neat.

 

[ZacharyGrossman273]

I agree

 

[LuckyEmile]

shall I add them, or wait for more folks?

 

[ALRF]

RIP this thread.

Bumping it

Also nah, you have to wait for more input

 

[LuckyEmile]

got it! Waiting for more folks it is.

 

[ALRF]

RIP forgot to include my opinion.

This seems good to me

 

[LuckyEmile]

nice! so... 4 agree so far~!

 

[ALRF]

Eh, you can edit it

4 people agree is more than enough and i doubt you will get more input

 

[LuckyEmile]

Oh, cool!

 

[Lasatar]

Bit late here, but I'd like to point out that weight of objects is very inconsistent in the Pikmin series. For example, it takes 42 pikmin in total to carry a whole Watermelon, and even if we lowballed that to something like 5kg (pretty light for a Watermelon), it'd still result in each Pikmin being able to lift over 100 grams, and the purples being able to lift over a kilogram each. That same Watermelon still has inconsistencies, though, since it only takes 15 Pikmin to carry one half of the Watermelon, while the other fragments take 27 in total (and that's not even accounting for any parts of the Watermelon going missing).

Then we have stuff like carrying the other captains. It takes only a single Pikmin to heave Louie around in Pikmin 2, but in Pikmin 3, it takes five. And if we were to use that value from the Watermelon, you couldn't honestly convince me that Louie weighs over half a kilogram with his size, could you?

So, it's not really worth it to try and compare real world objects with those in the Pikmin universe, because they can't even keep consistency in their own game. A different method would probably be advisable.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

100 grams? Okay, that's actually pretty legit. So Pikmin should be able to lift 400x their own body weight, or 4000x in Purple Pikmin case.

 

[Lasatar]

I was actually saying that you can't really compare weights in the Pikminverse, since there are inconsistencies everywhere.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Oh okay, but which end would you probably agree more with? I know we generally go by high end feats unless the high end feat has something to make it a significant outlier. It's still 10-C and below average human lifting strength however you look at it. Then again, I don't really see 500 Pikmin lifting a normal human or even 50 Purple Pikmin doing that. Even with all 100 of your Pikmin being purple doesn't give you the strength to lift an object comparable in size to a large human.

So yeah, I'm leaning towards what the guidebook says about their lifting capacity, which is 5 grams for regular Pikmin and 50 grams for Purple Pikmin. Everything else should just be a game mechanic.

 

[LuckyEmile]

I'd probably agree with the 5 grams/50grams arguments too. Whilst yes, I can see how it is inconsistent, I guess it's a tad cruel to use the lowball we currently have (I... appeared not to have changed it), not to mention this has actually been debunked before anyway. So... I agree with DarkDragonMedeus on this for now.

 

[LuckyEmile]

Oh, by the way, lifting a human isn't really a thing. Just because you have the strength doesn't mean you can pull it off. Try lifting a human by hugging them, it works right? Now try lifting them by their feet (as in raising them up with your hands supporting them underneath), not really something you can do. And which approach would a Pikmin have to take? The way you carry something makes a difference, and Pikmin just tend to deal with stuff that can be lifted in a convenient way.