So, Serious Question Time...

[ThePerpetual]

What do we consider to be the speed of lightning (actual lightning) on this wiki? We need some sort of standard number to go by, the answer may significantly change many, many characters' speed on this wiki. On my end, it is particularly important for a calculation I am doing as part of my Matrix clean-up. May we please come to a definitive conclusion?

 

[The_Everlasting]

The speed of lightning, from what I most often see, is 224,000 miles per hour, which is around Mach 294.

I remember those edits you were going to make, how much would they boost the series and why would they be boosted that much?

 

[AllanSaiyan]

The speed of lightning, from what I most often see, is 224,000 miles per hour, which is around Mach 294.
I remember those edits you were going to make, how much would they boost the series and why would they be boosted that much?

Kid goku dodge natural lightning what would that be in term of speed?

 

[Saikou_The_Lewd_King]

I have seen pretty strange case of Lighting timers being MHS+, like Kratos.

 

[The_Everlasting]

I believe that was caused from the pages being migrated over from the OBD, where they have no distinctions between having and not having the + (Like Mach 500 characters can be Massively Hypersonic+), simply to distinguish lower and middle bounds, with an "At least" for the upper bounds.

 

[ThePerpetual]

Because it was brought up that lightning moves at 4.4x10^5 m/s, which came out to Mach 1282.799. If that was true, lightning-timers everywhere become significantly faster.

 

[Antvasima]

See here:

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Lightning_dodging_feats

 

[ThePerpetual]

Thank you, @Antvasima. Does this mean I should be revisiting a lot of characters' speed feats using this standard?

 

[The_Everlasting]

I believe that also depends on wether the lightning is cloud-to-ground or not, as proximity plays an important role.

 

[Antvasima]

@ThePerpetual No problem, and yes, I suppose so. Although I will be on vacation for two weeks almost without Internet access, so you will have to ask the other admins for any help.

@The Everlasting Agreed.

 

[ThePerpetual]

Well, of course, it would have to be actual lightning, I would imagine. I'm just saying, if we use 4.4x10^5 m/s as standard on this wiki, then I'm almost certain that there are plenty of inconsistencies in the standards we use for speed feats. And that's a not good thing.

Edit: @Everlasting I shall. Thanks again.

 

[The_Everlasting]

To elaborate more, if the character dodges lightning when it's close to them, then they're MHS, but if they dodge when the lightning first launches itself from the cloud (Couldn't think of a better way to phrase that) then they're much slower due to having much more distance, but I think that can still apply to reactions.

 

[ThePerpetual]

Wouldn't it also depend on from how far away they were when they first noticed and first started moving?

 

[ThePerpetual]

@Everlasting Sorry I neglected to answer you earlier regarding the Matrix upgrades. They only apply to Neo and Agent Smith, and I'm not sure how mucfh they boost it by... but I do know that they boost the two. By like, quite a bit. I've been getting crazy values thus far, stuff into the Mountain Level range, but I'm currently double-checking myself to be certain that it's all legitimate, since there are so many facets and steps to it, and one error could mean that the entire thing is off a bit.

 

[The_Everlasting]

What was the exact feat? Specific elaboration should help me figure out if your question means anything or not.

 

[ThePerpetual]

Well, it means something because now, every lightning-timing feat calculated on this site might come out to a different value. For instance, Guts and Dante are lightning-speed exactly, and this feat which is currently used for about every Legend of Zelda character of note ever assumes 150,000 (1.5x10^5) m/sec for lightning speed, when our standard is apparently three times that, about. These are only some examples.

 

[The_Everlasting]

According to this site, the speed of lightning tends to vary, but the average is 224,000 miler per hour, which is around 100,000 m/s and Mach 294.

 

[ThePerpetual]

Hmmm. Doesn't that contradict what our own lightning dodging page says, however? At any rate, the last example is explicitly sky-to-ground lightning, so it at least would definitely be subject to this change.

 

[The_Everlasting]

I think the problem is that lightning, unlike light or sound, has no absolutely defined speed. The speed of lightning can entirely vary on things like weather or other atmospheric conditions.

 

[ThePerpetual]

I still believe we should be consistent with our own standards. If we list something as an average, we should judge feats based on that, not based on an external source, unless we list ourselves as a site as agreeing with it.

 

[The_Everlasting]

I'm not saying we shouldn't, but I'm saying not all calcs will comply with an exact measured speed of lightning (Especially since it doesn't technically exist), but I myself always went with Mach 294/224,000 MPH.

 

[ThePerpetual]

I have, as well. The thing is, though, at least for sky-to-ground lightning (if not other natural lightning), we need to be consistent. Otherwise, it's decidedly arbitrary and unfair to some characters to not be evaluated properly by the standards that we ourselves have set for judging them.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, we based our numbers on Wikipedia, and the Harvard University site, which said that the average speed was 440000 m/s.

 

[ThePerpetual]

@Antvasima So which should I use for lightning, then? Is 4.4x10^5 m/s our standard for all "real" lightning, or only for sky-to-ground specifically?

 

[Antvasima]

Sku-to-ground is what was mentioned in the page. I asked DontTalk to write it, so you can ask him about the issue.

 

[DontTalk]

Sooo.... The reason why lightning is stated with a bunch of different speeds around the internet is that it all is empirical data. As far as I have read lightning is actually not very well researched and there isn´t a clear theory on how fast it moves.

That means for Cloud to Ground lightning 4.4×105 m/s should be used.

But for non cloud-to-ground lightning we may have to make the regulations stricter, as we can not guarantee for its speed if it has other values then cloud-to-ground lightning. So it should likely be only used for such characters if they actually did cause cloud-to-ground lightning once, so that we can reasonably assume that the lightning they use has similar specifications. But I am curious for opinions on that.

 

[The_Everlasting]

So, this may not be too good of an idea, but I say for non-cloud-to-ground lightning we use 100,000 m/s, as that's the most common speed I see.

 

[ThePerpetual]

@Everlasting To be entirely honest, I trust Harvard over a 12-year-old news report.

 

[The_Everlasting]

Never did check the source, I just see 100,000 m/s used everywhere.