Another Amusing Thought on Steel Compounding

[Trusk'our he/him]

Yes, Compounding Steel is broken. Several times over, I would say.

But I just had a quick thought as to how a steel Compounder is even more busted than before (because of course they are).

Normally, a Compounder Compounds their Metalmind, making more attribute than they need in the moment, so they store it to tap later.

They could instead choose to just use the attribute when burned by simply not storing it in the first place, which means that a steel Compounder can boost their tapping by activity adding more physical speed while they fight.

But, since they can also Compound their metals faster when tapping/Compounding speed, wouldn't the process of Compounding while using those stores create a feedback loop, making them faster and faster?

The only limitation is the size of their Steelminds, but as seen with Pewter dragging, this is a relatively easy thing to fix (just eat more steel nuggets). A double steel Twinborn just carrying around a fat sack of Steelmind nuggets to beat over the heads of their enemies while Compounding insane amounts of speed would be hilariously powerful. 

(Yes, there's a practical limit to how fast they can be without other powers, but they can maintain ridiculous speeds for a long time by essentially pewter dragging)

Edit: wait a minute- since burning a Steelmind makes you faster and more powerful at burning it, wouldn't Unkeyed Steelminds do this too?

This might actually make it less powerful though, as you'd get less and less relative time to use your heightened speed, as you'd blow through your Steelmind(s) in a similar way that duralumin Flaring does.

So, maybe only a true Compounder who can also store the excess attribute to slow down their Allomancy would be all that effective. Hmm.

Edited August 14, 2024 by Trusk'our

[Treamayne]

27 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

But, since they can also Compound their metals faster when tapping/Compounding speed, wouldn't the process of Compounding while using those stores create a feedback loop, making them faster and faster?

I do not think that 1+2=5. When compounding, you are burning a metalmind, and storing that attribute. If you are not storing that burned attribute, you are also not tapping a metalmind. So, you burn a metalmind and start using the speed being released. That speed means you are burning slightly faster, releasing more speed - which you will have to store (at least partially) before it kills you. But you can't store and tap the same attribute at the same time. So, you store 80% of your speed for 1 hour (going too low also kills you) to have a metal mind charges with +80% speed for 1 hour duration (or compressed as +160%, +240, etc.) Burnign that metalmind results in +800% speed for 1 hour (at the Era 1 proposed 10x multiplier) - which is a deadly amount of speed (which is why you would need to be storing at least some of it, if not all). But once the metal is burned, you will need to swallow a burn a new Steelmind (likey one just made with the excess) to keep going. Not sure how you get a feedback loop from this process - just a slightly faster compounding schema for when burning Steel for speed increases the rate of burning steel for speed. 

[Trusk'our he/him]

28 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

I do not think that 1+2=5. When compounding, you are burning a metalmind, and storing that attribute. If you are not storing that burned attribute, you are also not tapping a metalmind. So, you burn a metalmind and start using the speed being released. That speed means you are burning slightly faster, releasing more speed - which you will have to store (at least partially) before it kills you. But you can't store and tap the same attribute at the same time. So, you store 80% of your speed for 1 hour (going too low also kills you) to have a metal mind charges with +80% speed for 1 hour duration (or compressed as +160%, +240, etc.) Burnign that metalmind results in +800% speed for 1 hour (at the Era 1 proposed 10x multiplier) - which is a deadly amount of speed (which is why you would need to be storing at least some of it, if not all). But once the metal is burned, you will need to swallow a burn a new Steelmind (likey one just made with the excess) to keep going. Not sure how you get a feedback loop from this process - just a slightly faster compounding schema for when burning Steel for speed increases the rate of burning steel for speed. 

(You're right, this doesn't give you a feedback loop in the same sense as nicrosil does; you aren't increasing the total Investiture for the process, just compressing it more over a shorter time frame. 

Basically, my thinking is that if you don't store while Burning, it speeds up the process of burning, which makes you faster, which makes you burn through your Steelminds faster.

Essentially just a way to shift your limitations on Compounding steel (in the short term, again, because no extra Investiture is introduced to the system of Compounding) from your Steelmind's storage space to your metal stores and Allomancy's strength.)

Nevermind, disregard the above section entirely. 

As for how fast you can go, I think that you can get closer to Mach 5 before you completely burn up.

That said, you probably couldn't maintain a speed close to that for very long as you'd still accumulate heat over time, but 10x speed seems on the lower end for a Steelrunner in my opinion.

Edit: oh goodness, thinking about it more is actually starting to break my brain.

Okay, if you Compound 100% of an attribute (yes, you can't  store that much technically, but lets say you fill it up to that amount by storing at a lower percentage for longer) to get 10x the amount of Feruchemical speed, you can effectively turn 1 Steelmind nugget into 10 charged nuggets.

If you don't store one of those while actively burning, you are now at 2x speed, which allows you to Compounding and get 9 Steelmind nuggets, but in half the time. Now you burn one of those while not storing a tenth of it to make 9 more Steelmind nuggets in the remaining time to give you 18 Steelmind nuggets instead of the 10 you'd get without this hack.

Feruchemical compression loss prevents this from being an infinite loop, but to me it actually seems that you can effectively use more metal to make more Metalminds more quickly. 

Edited August 14, 2024 by Trusk'our

[Quantus he/him]

If Im following the train of thought here, Yes it is confirmed that F-Steel will increase the base rate that you can Burn metals, just like a Speed Bubble will.  So if the Goal is to Fill/Invest as Much Steel as possible in the shorted (outside/objective) time possible without Duralumin, then compounding F-Steel will let you do that.  

 

 

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ElephantEarwax

Would tapping Feruchemical speed cause you to burn metals faster as your whole body speeds up?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. I think it probably would. I don't know if we've gotten to that interaction yet, but it probably would. Good question. If it's speeding up... Yeah, I think it would. Good question. If you're in a speed bubble and doing it, it's totally going to do it, and there's some analogies there.

Starsight Release Party (Nov. 26, 2019)

 

 

[BIG_IG]

with the complication of compounding steel and creating a lot of heat, imagine if someone who could compound steel and was a firesoul ferring. they could go at mach 5 without being burned up

[Trusk'our he/him]

6 minutes ago, BIG_IG said:

with the complication of compounding steel and creating a lot of heat, imagine if someone who could compound steel and was a firesoul ferring. they could go at mach 5 without being burned up

Welcome to the Shard!

Yes, indeed, adding Firesoul Feruchemy to a steel Compounder would be quite potent.

You may want to introduce yourself on the introduction Forum to let us get to know you better 

Edited October 5, 2024 by Trusk'our

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

I feel like everyone always forgets during these discussions that steel Compounding directly shortens one's lifespan. Yes, steel Compounding is broken, but only in the same way that bendalloy is: it trades massive amounts of time in the immediate term at the cost of: you have to live the whole duration of accelerated time while everyone else just...moves, metabolizes, and grows normally. If you compress what you can do in 5 years of activity down into 1 millisecond, then you age 5 years while everyone else ages 1 millisecond. That's...a self-limiting curse for anyone not over the 5th heightening or otherwise artificially augmented.

Edit: if anything, the most broken thing about steel feruchemy in my mind is that, if one simply invested their money in the market, lived humbly, and stored steel daily without ever tapping it, they could live longer than anyone else and eventually be richer than God while doing it...lol. buuuuuuut...that just doesn't seem to be how the psychology of steel ferrings works...

Edited October 5, 2024 by hwiles

[Trusk'our he/him]

7 minutes ago, hwiles said:

I feel like everyone always forgets during these discussions that steel Compounding directly shortens one's lifespan. Yes, steel Compounding is broken, but only in the same way that bendalloy is: it trades massive amounts of time in the immediate term at the cost of: you have to live the whole duration of accelerated time while everyone else just...moves, metabolizes, and grows normally. If you compress what you can do in 5 years of activity down into 1 millisecond, then you age 5 years while everyone else ages 1 millisecond. That's...a self-limiting curse for anyone not over the 5th heightening or otherwise artificially augmented.

There is some temporal effect while tapping physical speed, but it's slight.

I don't think drastically shortening one's lifespan is something it would normally do.

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Calderis

I recently got the opportunity to ask you a question about Feruchemical steel and if it was a temporal effect and you told me to define that better. When tapping steel, the mind of the Feruchemist is sped up and physics affects their actions normally. When storing, their mind is not slowed and the effect seems tortuously difficult to amass. Storing generally seems to be the more dangerous/difficult option in Feruchemy, so does [Feruchemical steel] alter a person's personal relationship to the flow of time, with the disconnect between the Physical and Cognitive as a drawback of storing?

Brandon Sanderson

I see what you're asking. The mind-altering effects of [Feruchemical steel] are similar to the slight strength you gain from [Feruchemical iron]--it is your Spiritual nature adapting to the new influx of an attribute that it's not really expecting, and siphoning some of that investiture to make you capable of actually using it. So there is a slight temporal effect here, but nothing as big as I think you're looking for.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

Just now, Trusk'our said:

There is some temporal effect while tapping physical speed, but it's slight.

I don't think drastically shortening one's lifespan is something it would normally do.

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https://wob.coppermind.net/events/361-skyward-pre-release-ama/#e11520

Calderis

I recently got the opportunity to ask you a question about Feruchemical steel and if it was a temporal effect and you told me to define that better. When tapping steel, the mind of the Feruchemist is sped up and physics affects their actions normally. When storing, their mind is not slowed and the effect seems tortuously difficult to amass. Storing generally seems to be the more dangerous/difficult option in Feruchemy, so does [Feruchemical steel] alter a person's personal relationship to the flow of time, with the disconnect between the Physical and Cognitive as a drawback of storing?

Brandon Sanderson

I see what you're asking. The mind-altering effects of [Feruchemical steel] are similar to the slight strength you gain from [Feruchemical iron]--it is your Spiritual nature adapting to the new influx of an attribute that it's not really expecting, and siphoning some of that investiture to make you capable of actually using it. So there is a slight temporal effect here, but nothing as big as I think you're looking for.

For normal steel feruchemy, yes, I 100% believe this is valid: you get back out almost exactly what you put in, IE: a normal steel ferring should have a perfectly normal bell-curve life expectancy.

However! Just like Compounding youth allows one to essentially achieve immortality, drawing insane amounts of speed allows one to experience time differently.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I see a very serious and aggregious mechanical miss if a steel compounder could live a normal lifespan while tapping 200% speed every second of every day. Feruchemy is crazy powerful, and generally protects against accidental death but...it doesn't self correct for users' own poor choices in a grand sense, just in an immediate short-term control sense.

If I ever get to a signing event I'll ask for confirmation and report back though.

[Trusk'our he/him]

35 minutes ago, hwiles said:

For normal steel feruchemy, yes, I 100% believe this is valid: you get back out almost exactly what you put in, IE: a normal steel ferring should have a perfectly normal bell-curve life expectancy.

However! Just like Compounding youth allows one to essentially achieve immortality, drawing insane amounts of speed allows one to experience time differently.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I see a very serious and aggregious mechanical miss if a steel compounder could live a normal lifespan while tapping 200% speed every second of every day. Feruchemy is crazy powerful, and generally protects against accidental death but...it doesn't self correct for users' own poor choices in a grand sense, just in an immediate short-term control sense.

If I ever get to a signing event I'll ask for confirmation and report back though.

That's fair, and truly we don't know for certain yet. It could go either way.

Now, I suppose Savantism's side effects could be an explanation for rapid aging should it occur as well- your Spiritweb negatively adapting itself to a different flow of time. It would certainly make for a powerful discouragement of Compounding steel.