RACE!

[wildbuc117 he/him]

In a race between a steel twinborn and an edgedancer (in a straight line with the same amount of investiture) who would win?  Mind that edgedancers can also slick themselves against wind resistance.  Maybe the better question is who can go faster and go further?

[Spoolofwhool]

A straight, perfectly level racetrack? I'd bet on the steelrunner every time. The Edgedancer wouldn't be able to get up to speeds in the first place in order to compare. 

Down a level slope, I might be more inclined to bet on the Edgedancer, since they would be able to accelerate to a higher speed, assuming the race is long enough. 

[+robardin he/him]

From Lift's POVs, we see that Edgedancers can "unslick" in small slices to gain friction to kick off/accelerate further while gliding.

From Marasi's POV in the Bands of Mourning, when she tapped a fully loaded steelmind in a burst to grab the vials of Allomantic metal off of the guards' belts, she does it so fast that falling snow "hung motionless in the air" as she grabbed all the vials, "several from each guard, and drank them... letting her move at a speed so fast that when she lifted her hand, she could briefly see the pocket of vacuum left behind" (which she could see, presumably, due to tapping zinc).

That's wicked fast. And with compounded steel, you could have that Feruchemical explosion going non-stop.

So yeah. The upper limit of F-steel speed of physical motion would be from air resistance, and for an Edgedancer or Dustbringer, it's how much speed they can build up with little or no loss to air resistance. The more friction is needed to move at all - like on a level surface, or a shorter distance - the more advantage that is to the Feruchemist. It would take quite a distance, or a really steep incline, for the Edgedancer to have the edge (hah). The extreme example being a straight freefall - the Edgedancer could slick away all air resistance, while the Steelrunner could do nothing but eventually fall to terminal velocity.

You know where an Edgedancer would have a clear advantage in a standard human race format? In the water. I bet Michael Phelps would rather have the Surge of Abrasion than F-steel, because he would only need to "unslick" some parts of his body intermittently as he kicked/stroked into the water to gain momentum, then could fully unslick to lose almost none of it to go forward. In contrast, a Steelrunner could move his arms and legs faster and faster, but would quickly exhaust himself pushing against the water (not having some form of pewter to help out).
 

Edited January 10, 2017 by robardin

[Yata he/him]

Yesterday I was with a friend in a pub and I proposed him this racing-dilemma. He is a physicist and I imagined he may see this problem better.

To him the Steelrunner wins ALWAYS because over a certain speed the sliding Edgedancer can't add new force/speed without restrain his own speed with the friction of the body part used to "accelerate"

[Spoolofwhool]

22 minutes ago, wildbuc117 said:

Hmmm, this brings up a really good point.  So I researched how fast a human needed to travel before body parts started... ugh... tearing apart.  About 1000 mph.  Since this is not a LR type person (aka all metals such as gold compounders that could continually heal themselves) I think this would be about the max speed depending on the makeup of people that can ingest metal lol.  So I'm beginning to think that a steel compounder could easily beat an edgedancer, depending on the rate at which investiture is used by them.  I think the speed at which investiture is used by these two types will probably be the question I ask Mr. Sanderson next time he comes to the US SE.

Regular or twinborn steel/steel steelrunners also have a max speed, before friction would start hurting them. On the other hand, an Edgedancer who doesn't feel friction would have a much higher max speed, plus would be physically augmented with stormlight in order to resist any strain on the body as well. So in the long run, I don't see how an Edgedancer couldn't reach a higher speed than a steelrunner.

[Oversleep]

Given infinite Investiture, Steel Compounders are limited by friction and wind resistance - they have upper speed limit but can keep at it. Edgedancers are limited by their initial speed (the moment they use Abrasion they won't slow down and keep going steadily).

So in scenario with infinite Investiture the winner would be Steel Compounder.

Also, the same amount of Investiture is unfortunately meanless as we don't know how the same amount of Investiture translates into different systems and then there's the question of efficiency rates.

[QuantumSpren]

A steel twinborn? If they can compound then they win hands down. They could probably win with F steel alone, with compounding it's just unfair.

[Exalted]

I'm with the "depends on the racetrack" crowd, with the added condition of perfectly flat vs. not perfectly flat--steelrunners may be seriously impeded by sharp rocks, tree roots, and other tripping hazards, where as an Edgedancer could (if they have enough spare Stormlight for healing) hit those, fall on their face, and just keep sliding.

[StormyQueen she/her]

As other people have said, it would depend on the track. If it's a shorter track, I'd go steelrunner, as they'll be able to get up to speed quicker, but an Edgedancer, once up to speed will have an edge (see what I did there? Eyyyyy). Also if it is flat, the steelrunner would have an advantage, but I shouldn't think that things like roots and stones would make much of an impact because, I imagine, similar to pewter, that F steel enhances the brain so that they don't trip over stuff like that. So pretty much, shorter steel, longer track Edgedancer

[marsoupial they/them]

Steelrunner. They don't need to build up speed, plus they're really fast.

[emailanimal he/him]

For short distances even a Steel Ferring (w/o the compounding) can win simply off of their stored Speed supply. The shorter the distance, the faster they can run subject to relativistic effects and friction/resistance. Those however only appear at speeds that far exceed what an Edgedancer can accomplish. Edgedancers' trick is to not slow down once motion has started, so over a large enough distance, a Ferring will simply run out of metalmind-stored speed (a compounder won't), while an Edgedancer will continue unabated.

However the starting speeds of Edgedancers are not enhanced - they are what a human body can achieve. Faster speeds would require some outside interference (edgedancer jumping from a full-speed train, for examp

Edited January 10, 2017 by emailanimal

[Yata he/him]

Like other said before without strange problem the only matter is how long they have to run/slide.

There is a limit to the F-Steel's Speed (also with infinite charge in steelmind) before He burn himself or He reaches the terminal speed (thanks to the air resistance).

A Friction user (Edgedancer or Duskbringer) will have no upper limit but He need a lot of time to reaches the opponent's speed

So in a pure theoric scenario (with infinite amount of Investiture for both of them) the Steelrunner may stay first for a while (I don't know how much it is "a while") and then the Friction user will become first.

In a real scenario probably the Steelrunner may win for short race while a Friction-user may win marathon-like race.

[Oversleep]

36 minutes ago, Yata said:

There is a limit to the F-Steel's Speed (also with infinite charge in steelmind) before He burn himself or He reaches the terminal speed (thanks to the air resistance).

A Friction user (Edgedancer or Duskbringer) will have no upper limit but He need a lot of time to reaches the opponent's speed

So in a pure theoric scenario (with infinite amount of Investiture for both of them) the Steelrunner may stay first for a while (I don't know how much it is "a while") and then the Friction user will become first.

That's not quite how it is. Edgedancers won't keep on accelerating once they start sliding. They keep their initial speed so long as they have Stormlight to sustain Abrasion.

Meanwhile Steel Compounders have upper limit of speed and keep on using up Investiture to keep running.

The thing is, Steel Compounders are always limited by friction and wind resistance. But if an Edgedancer is sliding down a slope she will keep on accelerating as gravity affects them.

So on a race down a very, very long slope eventually Edgedancer is gonna get faster than a Steel Compounder and after a while she will catch up to him and then get ahead of him.

[Yata he/him]

22 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

That's not quite how it is. Edgedancers won't keep on accelerating once they start sliding. They keep their initial speed so long as they have Stormlight to sustain Abrasion.

I miss something.

The Edgedancer could add new pushes with the hands (for example) while he slid....Or is there some problem I didn't considerate ? The extra push would be not very much, but a bit a bit he increase his speed

[Oversleep]

8 minutes ago, robardin said:

From Marasi's POV in the Bands of Mourning, when she tapped a fully loaded steelmind in a burst to grab the vials of Allomantic metal off of the guards' belts, she does it so fast that falling snow "hung motionless in the air" as she grabbed all the vials, "several from each guard, and drank them... letting her move at a speed so fast that when she lifted her hand, she could briefly see the pocket of vacuum left behind" (which she could see, presumably, due to tapping zinc).

That's wicked fast. And with compounded steel, you could have that Feruchemical explosion going non-stop.

I don't think any Steel Compounder could go that fast - Marasi had the Feruchemical gold keeping her whole. Moving so fast that you leave vacuum behind would tear standard Steelrunner apart.

[marsoupial they/them]

13 hours ago, I'm_a_Stick said:

i think Edgedancer,

the coinshots need some metal to push on and thats a disadvantage to them.

Coinshots are not a part of this? We're talking Steelrunners, Steel Feruchemists.

[wildbuc117 he/him]

46 minutes ago, robardin said:

You know where an Edgedancer would have a clear advantage in a standard human race format? In the water. I bet Michael Phelps would rather have the Surge of Abrasion than F-steel, because he would only need to "unslick" some parts of his body intermittently as he kicked/stroked into the water to gain momentum, then could fully unslick to lose almost none of it to go forward. In contrast, a Steelrunner could move his arms and legs faster and faster, but would quickly exhaust himself pushing against the water (not having some form of pewter to help out).
 

Now you have me hyped to see what happens when abrasion meets water.  I used to swim and know full well how that resistance is.

[Oversleep]

1 hour ago, bleeder said:

Coinshots are not a part of this? We're talking Steelrunners, Steel Feruchemists.

We're talking about double steel Twinborns here. So they actually are a part of this but they're just irrelevant.

[+robardin he/him]

2 hours ago, bleeder said:

Coinshots are not a part of this? We're talking Steelrunners, Steel Feruchemists.

Well the OP specified a steel Twinborn. So in addition to being able to store/tap Feruchemical speed in a steelmind, this person is also able to burn steel Allomantically to push (Coinshot), as well as able to burn steel Feruchemically for a 10x burst of speed.

So imagine wanting a quick takeoff from a dead stop in a 100m dash, all you need is a metal bar in the ground and VOOM. You're literally flying to the finish line!

But even without metal to push off from, there's hardly a disadvantage. A Steelrunner would likely get off to a faster start than an Edgedancer could, though a practiced Edgedancer (which Lift is not quite one yet) on level terrain could do a speed skating thing where one foot is frictionless on the ground while the other one is frictioned and kicking off, in alternating strokes, which I think would build up speed pretty quickly.

I think to answer the question in the OP we'd need some more context, like "in the Scadrial Summer Olympic Games of 400 AC (After Catacendre), who wins the 100m / 200m / 400m races, marathon, Triathlon, etc.?" Being that they're all on level ground, the shorter the distance, the more the Steelrunner has the advantage. Over longer distances, the physical exhaustion factor kicks in - our Steelrunner Ferring does not have F-gold or A- or F-pewter to sustain or to heal on the run - where the Edgedancer is moving along, and even accelerating, with very little effort.

 

[marsoupial they/them]

1 minute ago, robardin said:

Well the OP specified a steel Twinborn. So in addition to being able to store/tap Feruchemical speed in a steelmind, this person is also able to burn steel Allomantically to push (Coinshot), as well as able to burn steel Feruchemically for a 10x burst of speed.

So imagine wanting a quick takeoff from a dead stop in a 100m dash, all you need is a metal bar in the ground and VOOM. You're literally flying to the finish line!

But even without metal to push off from, there's hardly a disadvantage. A Steelrunner would likely get off to a faster start than an Edgedancer could, though a practiced Edgedancer (which Lift is not quite one yet) on level terrain could do a speed skating thing where one foot is frictionless on the ground while the other one is frictioned and kicking off, in alternating strokes, which I think would build up speed pretty quickly.

I think to answer the question in the OP we'd need some more context, like "in the Scadrial Summer Olympic Games of 400 AC (After Catacendre), who wins the 100m / 200m / 400m races, marathon, Triathlon, etc.?" Being that they're all on level ground, the shorter the distance, the more the Steelrunner has the advantage. Over longer distances, the physical exhaustion factor kicks in - our Steelrunner Ferring does not have F-gold or A- or F-pewter to sustain or to heal on the run - where the Edgedancer is moving along, and even accelerating, with very little effort.

 

I guess it really depends on how much the Twinborn has stored/inside? And how much Stormlight the Edgedancer has eaten/taken in?

[Exalted]

13 hours ago, CalypsoDreaming said:

I shouldn't think that things like roots and stones would make much of an impact because, I imagine, similar to pewter, that F steel enhances the brain so that they don't trip over stuff like that. So pretty much, shorter steel, longer track Edgedancer

I'm not quite sure about this, because we have F-zinc to enhance mental speed. Sazed's viewpoints about storing speed also don't seem like he's siphoning off mental power--he describes it as like moving through thick molasses, not as making himself clumsier or slower mentally.

[Spoolofwhool]

9 minutes ago, Exalted Dungeon Master said:

I'm not quite sure about this, because we have F-zinc to enhance mental speed. Sazed's viewpoints about storing speed also don't seem like he's siphoning off mental power--he describes it as like moving through thick molasses, not as making himself clumsier or slower mentally.

Most magics will give slight enhancements in other areas so that you can properly use them. Same as with atium giving you increased mental processing so you can adequately use the foresight, steelrunning gives you a slight boost so you don't just run into walls. You aren't storing the edge, it's just a feature of the magic.

[wildbuc117 he/him]

17 hours ago, Yata said:

Yesterday I was with a friend in a pub and I proposed him this racing-dilemma. He is a physicist and I imagined he may see this problem better.

To him the Steelrunner wins ALWAYS because over a certain speed the sliding Edgedancer can't add new force/speed without restrain his own speed with the friction of the body part used to "accelerate"

Hmmm, this brings up a really good point.  So I researched how fast a human needed to travel before body parts started... ugh... tearing apart.  About 1000 mph.  Since this is not a LR type person (aka all metals such as gold compounders that could continually heal themselves) I think this would be about the max speed depending on the makeup of people that can ingest metal lol.  So I'm beginning to think that a steel compounder could easily beat an edgedancer, depending on the rate at which investiture is used by them.  I think the speed at which investiture is used by these two types will probably be the question I ask Mr. Sanderson next time he comes to the US SE.

[Charlie.x.3000]

The issue is that the Edgedancer is completely limited by how fast he or she can push. While slick, the Edgedancer has to push off something to speed up. They can't push off faster than they are moving, they are slowing down. Example: if you are in a speed boat with an oar and you try to "row" while the boat is full speed going forward, you are going to find that "rowing" is actually slowing the boat down. (Also Edgedancers can't do skating on land; skating requires there to be no friction going forward but friction going to the side, this is why skaters push to the side and not directly backwards. By pushing to the side you can add speed despite the push being slower due to Pythagoras theorem. The hypotenuse is the new velocity, the longer side is the original speed, and the shortest side would be the pushing of the skater.)

[Yata he/him]

1 hour ago, Just another guyn said:

In addition, acording to mistborn book 1, there is no upper limit to how much speed a ferring could use at once if they have the ammount of speed stored. For a compounder, this wouldn't be a problem. Add to that that they can more or less fly, and investiture makes you immune to downsides that a regular person would experience if doing the same thing, so long as they are still using it, (atium brain enhancements,  pewter making it so you don't fall on your face, etc etc.)

Actually Steel Feruchemy protect you "only" (but it's a big thing) from the acceleration, you will burn if you go too fast.

[stonedshaman]

On Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 1:22 AM, Charlie.x.3000 said:

The issue is that the Edgedancer is completely limited by how fast he or she can push. While slick, the Edgedancer has to push off something to speed up. They can't push off faster than they are moving, they are slowing down. Example: if you are in a speed boat with an oar and you try to "row" while the boat is full speed going forward, you are going to find that "rowing" is actually slowing the boat down. (Also Edgedancers can't do skating on land; skating requires there to be no friction going forward but friction going to the side, this is why skaters push to the side and not directly backwards. By pushing to the side you can add speed despite the push being slower due to Pythagoras theorem. The hypotenuse is the new velocity, the longer side is the original speed, and the shortest side would be the pushing of the skater.)

What makes you belive that edge dancers can't "skate".  We've  seen with Lift that she can change her friction to different parts of her body as needed.  With practise an edge dancer would be able to switch the points of friction on there feet alternatively to create a "skating motion" as it were