by Pale Wolf » Thu Apr 07, 2011 6:41 pm
Well, so much for the 'today', but I got around to it!
Okay, first off, throw out the entire opening post. There are accurate points in it, but it's suited to one particular feel, and that is the 'I'm too lazy to think or study elementary physics to get things semi-right' feel. It's common, especially in martial arts manga, but I'm going to give actual physics and logic here.
The big problem with what he's proposed is that he simply has a bunch of different methods to achieve a similar goal, and then ranks them. This doesn't work. Each technique works differently, has different traits, can have thousands of different levels within the same technique, and can be combined with other techniques. I'll cover the various methods (that I can think of) more or less independently, discussing their traits and properties.
The first thing an aspiring 'accurate' writer needs to do is take a look at the 'one guy is fast, the other guy is strong' dichotomy you tend to see in martial arts manga/anime. For the most part, it's nonsense.
In terms of person-to-person combat, 90% of the damage comes from technique. The human body actually has a fair amount of force and energy in it, and martial arts training - the good martial arts training - is less about toughening up your body than it is learning how to use it. There's a saying, 'Learn techniques that can be powerful in the hands of an old, arthritic man, because you will be someday'. There's a massive difference in the amount of damage dealt by a punch you do with just your arm, and the damage dealt by a punch that, through very subtle movements of your body, you can put your entire body weight and three quarters of your muscle into, while making sure your movements don't leak off that energy that could be used to hurt the other guy. The second part of this also applies in ranged combat - shot placement. Where you hit is very important, because the human body is retardedly tough, people can and have survived gunshots to the head and getting hit by cars, and remained combat-effective. We only have so many absolutely-immediately-critical organs and vital spots, and most of them are protected by the ribcage (it ain't just a decoration) and skull (why yes, it is the hardest bone in your body - never punch someone in the face, finger bones delicate, skull bones strong). If you connect with the right places in the right way, you can take someone down fairly easily. Pure force-on-force bludgeoning is, in the end, going to come down to who has the higher pain tolerance, and you're both gonna get very hurt.
That said, we'll remove skill and technique from this equation. We'll assume they're at equal levels in all of our hypothetical people.
So, discounting skill, what contributes more to the damage you pump into the other guy? Speed, or strength?
Everyone who answered that, hit yourselves. It was a trick question. Speed is strength.
Now, some math. If you're afraid of numbers, don't worry, my explanations have been said to be pretty comprehensible, and I've only got three equations for you for now.
First, force equals mass times acceleration. Here's what I mean by 'speed is strength'. Acceleration is what adds to your speed - the longer that acceleration is maintained, the higher your speed will be (given the length of your limbs, there are obviously finite limits on this, and you don't want to be too far out or your technique will suffer, too much extension means you can't put as much of the energy you've built up into the opponent. Mass is, for the purposes of this discussion, basically equivalent to size - how much body you have to move. Force is, of course, how much power your body can pump out in a hurry.
What this means is that your strength, divided by your size, equals your speed. They are directly related, and dependent on one another. If you have more strength, for the same mass, you have more speed.
That said, if you have more mass, then you'll need more strength to hit the same speed. So is there actually a way to have one strong guy versus one fast guy?
Technically, yes. Practically, rarely. First of all, look at 'fast versus strong' characters. Most of them are about the same size. We're talking a 10% difference in mass at most. There may be differences in speed and strength, but not the orders of magnitude speed/strength differentials depicted in anime. Second... that mass is probably muscle mass - which means more force along with the more mass, which means even if they're bigger, they're the same speed. Or faster. You only see speed opposed to strength in orders-of-magnitude size differentials - Zangief, the Hulk, gigantic monsters, whatever. In technology, for instance, the fastest aircraft and most agile aircraft are actually quite large - the F-15, for instance, is a beast because for all that it's large, almost all that size is more wings and engines that make it move even faster, and the Su-27 is even bigger, and even more agile.
Second, momentum equals mass times velocity. To add to our list of definitions, velocity is speed (it's technically its vector quantity, adding a direction to the numerical value, but let's not get into that). Momentum is 'how much movement do you have?' It's basically how much force you've built up, and maintained over the trip to the target. Conservation of momentum means that the momentum of the system remains the same at all times.
What this one means is that the momentum you will impart to your enemy (which means, how much he squishes if you've got sufficient energy to overcome the material strength of his flesh, or how much he gets knocked back if there isn't that amount of energy) is equal to the momentum possessed by your fist. Assuming it comes to a full stop, anyway, if it has enough energy it might just blow a hole through the guy and keep going.
What this means in terms of the speed/strength false dichotomy is... in terms of momentum, speed and mass are equal in value. More speed equals more squish. More mass equals more squish. (The math is a bit more complex than that, because speed as measured in meters per second needs to be equal to mass as measured in kilograms for maximum momentum, but for simplification let's just say the value of the two is equal. If the two are not equal, then you get more momentum out of more of whichever you have less of.)
Third, kinetic energy equals mass, times velocity, times velocity (again), divided by two. Energy is the... interesting... quantity of our fist->face system. Momentum does the squishing, but energy is required to overcome the material strength to force it to squish. It wouldn't be unfair to say the energy is the damage (though, too much of it and you might simply blow through and lose the rest of the energy on the air behind your target - which isn't entirely undesireable, but if you didn't hit a critical organ then it lessens the chances of enough damage getting dealt inside the body to put them down).
What this means is... well. Note how the equation was multiplied by mass once, but by velocity twice. This means twice the mass equals twice the damage. Twice the speed equals four times the damage. It continues on like that (in fact it gets worse - once you hit a velocity of 3 kilometers per second, the impact alone packs as much energy as its own weight in TNT). This means that speed does more damage than mass - in other words, that 'punch and crack the concrete' trick is going to be something you see from the small fast guy before the big slow guy (and the big fast guy does it before either of them). You can have a massive slow guy outdamage a small fast guy, but he's going to have to be orders of magnitude larger.
Note, most of this applies to 'conventional' speed. That is, high speed in accordance with known physics, because your body is just that fast. What all of this basically means is that if you've got conventional speed, your list of Required Secondary Powers is a mile long, and all the RSPs increase as your speed does. You need strength to generate the speed. You need perception fast enough to keep up with your body and not slam into walls when you're running. You need bones and muscles tough enough to withstand the high level of strength necessary to generate the speed, or your arm will develop compound fractures when you punch someone (and if you're running, enjoy your leg snapping in half when you try to get moving, and for that matter jumping because gravity doesn't actually have enough power to hold you to the ground to run). You need skin tough enough to withstand the drag of moving at higher speeds.
In essence, conventional speed means you're more powerful in every sector, and if you've got too much of it you're gonna run into wierd shit (ie jumping because your 'run' is too powerful for gravity, and at really high levels you start to run into time dilation - note for those who read Byak's post, time dilation is a product of motion, no you cannot just vibrate your muscles really fast and start warping time unless you add in some magical 'extend the temporal frame' ability at which point that's really just an excuse for time magic, potentially a good excuse, but still just an excuse).
So, for those who want speed that doesn't make their speedster also the strongest, toughest guy in the game. Let's look at some alternate types of speed.
First, we get what I'll call assisted speed. This is speed not generated by the body, but generated by something else - engines, in the case of aircraft, flight superpowers (whatever they may be), wheels, magnetic levitation, roller skates, whatever. This negates the running turning into jumping problem - running is dependent on gravity to negate the 'up' push involved in walking, but assisted speed simply generates the push straight in the direction you want to go. Time dilation remains (though to be honest, by the time time dilation becomes an issue, you're hitting 'fuck you' levels of power). Skin toughness remains - if you can't stand that speed, you can't go that fast.
You don't need the perception speed, but you want it if you're going to be in cramped areas while using this, because you're still gonna risk slamming into shit. Bone and muscle toughness aren't critical to the idea of this kind of speed - you're most definitely going to want them if you plan to slam into people at your full speed, but if you lack them you can still use the speed to get places and then whack them. The force you require to generate this speed is still available if you plan to slam into people at full speed, but if you don't have the toughness to use it without turning yourself into jelly, it's not available for hitting people.
New problems added in: this doesn't really assist striking speed or how fast you actually move your limbs. You can move from place to place, but you can't move as fast as a conventional speed type in one particular place. No Katchuu Tenshin Amaguriken for you, for instance.
New benefits: you require assisted speed to fly. Every other type is dependent on your muscles, and unless you have wings, your muscles can make you jump high, but they can't make you fly.
Second: Screw You, Distance! Aka teleportation, or if you wanna get fancy, distance contraction or some other variety of spatial warping. Suffice to say, this type removes all required and implied secondary powers, and could add other abilities if you want them, or you can just say 'can only teleport mahself' and ditch 'em all.
Like assisted speed, it doesn't increase the rate at which you move your limbs. Most of the other implications are obvious enough, so I probably don't need to go into them.
Third: Let's Do The Time Warp Again. Time stop, or magical powers to accelerate time around you, slow time around the other guy (functionally the same). This one's... wierd. We don't really have a physical model for time manipulation, so it's hard to say precisely what happens. We know you move faster than the other guy. And only within your own existing range of movement, no flying for you.
Implicit secondary powers: perception sort of automatically accelerates, since you know, you're hauling your whole frame of reference with you.
And force... well. You are, in the bad guy's frame of reference, moving at like Mach 2. Which means you're going to hit just as hard as a conventional speedster moving at that rate. You retain the assisted speedster thing, though - if you hit that hard, can your body take it? That's one way to limit it, and another is to dictate that if you get too close, the bad guy enters your frame of reference and is only hit as hard as normal.
Required secondary powers: skin toughness is still there. In the air's frame of reference, you're moving at Mach 2, meaning the air's slamming into you at Mach 2, unless the writer pulls some jiggery to keep the character protected. I'd give suggestions and ideas, but I got three hours of sleep six hours ago, so yeah.
On the plus side, other than conventional this is the only type of speed that actually accelerates your body's movement within place, and not just from place to place.
Now, time stop... frankly, this kind of hurts my head. Your frame of reference is infinitely fast compared to the outside frame. Which means you hit the air at Mach Infinity, which means you need to withstand infinity joules of energy trying to pound your face into paste, you slam into the guy with infinite momentum... You're going to need to pull jiggery to make time stop work with physics, and while I'm sure such jiggery is possible, my mind's not quite in the usual shape to think on ideas for it.
As I said at the start, you can mix these in any proportion you desire. For instance Superman is both high conventional (ridiculously tough body) and high assisted (he flies, fast).
To shoot down some further points.
High speed doesn't damage your lifespan. That's retarded. Unless you're paying some kind of price in life energy, superspeed will cost you no more than a good workout does for a normal person.
God speed: Just say no. If you've got that much of a speed advantage over your opponent in conventional speed, it's Fuck You level.
Kyokeimyaku: Just say no. Perceptual speed and physical speed increase when you're in danger, yes. It's called an adrenaline rush. It also doesn't increase your pain sensitivity - in fact, it decreases it.
Gale step: NO. First of all, remember what I said at the start. You're ranking things. Almost every one of those 'types' of superspeed you talked about are all conventional physical speed (interestingly, those ones are also the ones that don't make me want to put a gun and a physics textbook to your head and make you choose). There is no difference between them. They're categories for different levels of the same thing - there is a 0.1 m/s difference between high not-god speed and low god speed.
Second, vacuum blades. It sounds cool, doesn't it? Just say no. What they call 'vacuum blades' are almost always air pressure blades. Vacuum - actual vacuum - is a lack of pressure. You're going to need such a low pressure that it's roughly analogous to outer space before you do any damage - 'damage' meaning some bruising, maybe (if you get really lucky) the air getting yoinked out of their lungs with enough force to damage a bit of the internals.
So... air pressure blades, then? No. The reason for this is that there's no way to keep it together without magic. Now yes, you'll generate pressure waves through movement - this is what a sonic boom is. However, that pressure wave doesn't stay together. The air particles are going to spread out, the particles they're slamming into are slowing them down and they're bouncing around in various directions, about half of them to the side. So your only shape for a pressure wave is an expanding cone. No blades. And unfortunately, the range is limited - because it's expanding, that also means the amount of power in it is rapidly becoming less concentrated (as well as decreasing, because of drag). Your punch is no longer hitting his throat - now that same amount of energy is distributed among his throat, head, upper torso (remember, body's armour), shoulders, completely wasted on the air over his shoulders... It drops off fast.
Hawking radiation, black holes, plasma: Wtf? They have nothing to do with speed in the context you're talking about.
There is no problem that cannot be solved through the proper application of immense levels of firepower.
- Finally promoted to Spammaster Indeterminate Rank as of June 18, by Stratagemini
<Stratagemini> My Titanium Anus Armour will repel all challengers!
Would you believe this is one of the more tame bits of dirt I've got for him?