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Voidus

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Everything posted by Voidus

  1. Voidus
    Except it's not consistent, that's my point, if it was consistent it comes with consequences like accidentally ripping legs off, if I handwave the consequences away then it's just largely inconsistent, applying different rules to different things with no clear guidelines except that it's for the plot which opens up the possibility for further inconsistencies down the line. The alternative is a system that is complex and consistent but ultimately at the smallest level of how precisely the momentum of each particles momentum is mapped to each other particles is handwaved, that exact mechanism is unlikely to have any effect on her powers or the storyline, her accidentally suffocating or ripping someones leg off will definitely affect the story.
  2. Voidus
    Warbreaker's a little odd that way, most people are more or less agreed about the other books, WoR usually comes out as most people's favourite, Elantris is usually at the bottom end of the list, Warbreaker has the most variability I think, lots of different opinions on it.
  3. Voidus
    Prof 17 Obliteration 17 Dawnslight 14
  4. Voidus
    Handwaving by its nature of being non-specific in its explanation provides less boundaries and limitations for a powerset, so more freedom. Which is also why I dislike it, it makes for lazy writing if you can just adjust your explanations on the fly, which is why I love Brandons magic systems so much since there's very little handwaving involved. I think there may be confusion here, the envelope was my word yes, because I'm talking about something completely different to your suggestion, it was another idea I had a while ago to balance her power that I was just mentioning to show that there are going to be problems however it's solved. As things stand MVs power affects every particle in an object simultaneously, the 'envelope' thing was a potential solution to get around heat issues by having her only able to affect 2d planes which she then wraps around an object, only halting the momentum of particles which are in contact with the plane (Essentially it would be an immovable force-field) which would obviously crush anything inside the field if it was already moving too fast, since it would be like hitting concrete.
  5. Voidus
    Well that would round out MVs day nicely, she got taken by a creepy older guy, discovered the existence of Nighthound after meeting dinosaurs, fell off a flying building, got arrested, nearly shot, lost her sister and now her sorta-kinda-boyfriend goes sociopathic and insane
  6. Voidus
    Can Neverthere and Numnums come along for the trip?
  7. Voidus
    Nice post 18th, kudos on killing your character in what might just be a new record for quickest death after introduction
  8. Voidus
    Didn't he kill Steelheart in one of our AUs?
  9. Voidus
    If that's what everyone would prefer then I suppose I will, but I think it's better all around if her powers are mostly clear and predictable but at a very complicated level there's some unexpectedness rather than the basics of her powers being handwaved resulting in a complete inability to predict what would, could or should happen when she uses them. Obviously I'd try not to abuse it but if I'm given largely creative license for how her powers work on the fly due to handwaving there's guaranteed to be some confusion. Two reasons: one, no air could enter, 2 lungs can't expand if theres no room to expand into, once they've hit the envelope they couldn't expand anymore. Deceleration at the border isn't the problem, in fact it makes it worse if its instantaneous, that's why cars have crumple zones, to extend the deceleration to reduce trauma. If it stops instantly at the border then the momentum of her organs will crush themselves against her skin.
  10. Voidus
    Because I'm an obsessive science nerd who is incapable of letting go? Also because how exactly her power works influences what exactly she can do with it, both through clever manipulation and through unintentional side effects. That being said I could just choose the effects I want and handwave the science behind it but yeah... Obsessive.
  11. Voidus
    Because the simple handwaves are the more frustrating ones? If someone says that gravity on earth can suddenly go sideways because it just can so therefore they can have antigrav in their novel (extreme example) and someone else says that tachyonic particles imaginary mass is expressible through a slightly different variant than is theoretically true so that they can use lightspeed in their sci fi novel I'm more inclined to accept the latter, more complex handwaving is less noticeably handwaving. Being able to suffocate people and having to suffocate people are two different things, the former I can control with behaviour to keep her power leveled, MVs not exactly imaginative with her power so while it's posible for her to do it she isn't likely to think of it on her own, if it's a passive effect of using her power on other people then she's going to discover that she can suffocate them pretty quickly. No, using the average momentum just causes her to passively rip peoples limbs off but at least its not able to penetrate PIs so it is slightly better than most, the squishing people thing comes from using an envelope around the object instead of the whole object, when she tries to catch falling people with that they'd get squished against the envelope, it's not something you suggested just another potential solution I've previously thought of then dismissed.
  12. Voidus
    The problem is that real world physics don't work the way Epic physics do so there's going to be a certain level of conjecture, Kinetic energy and momentum are both related measurements (Ek is 1/2*velocity*momentum or momentum^2/2*mass) though I do try not to mix the two up I might fail occasionally so if I have then I apologize. That works for the average momentum over the entire object yes, but that's the thing, in real life we tend to deal with averages like that but on the nanoscale it really makes a difference, heat is essentially just randomized kinetic energy (And hence, randomized momentum of individual particles), and either MVs power applies at the nano-scale or else it causes a whole mess of problems. Limb movements don't move the whole body though, that's my point, taking a step doesn't move your whole body, it just moves most of it (Hence moving the average, which is the problem with using just the average momentum) To give an example, suppose the person was mid stride while MV froze them, their average momentum is around 120 (100kg * 1.2 m/s), their foot however is completely stationary on the ground. If you now take the average momentum, divide it up by weight and create an opposite momentum (500 in the opposite direction) then most of the body will be in various stages of stopping but lets suppose it works out and the entire rest of the body stops as it should, now her power reaches the foot, determines it makes up 1/20th of the bodies mass and so applies a - 25 kg.m/s momentum to the foot, which now moves backwards, tearing itself from the rest of the body which now can't move. The problem is that without using abstracts there's no way to differentiate between the movement of blood or air in the body and the movement of a limb. Now I could change it so that her power just envelops an object, not affecting its internal mechanisms but just stopping it from moving once it hits the border, but then that allows her to squish people without too much difficulty, would require me to retcon her entire power usage and would still allow her to suffocate people completely by accident if she uses her powers for any extended period. It's a problem that I've been wrestling with for the better part of 6 months now and I still can't come up with an answer that satisfies me so I do know that it's not perfect, I'm just trying to determine the best way to keep her from becoming an instant one hit ko on pretty much everyone.
  13. Voidus
    Round 2: Prof 20 Obliteration 20 Dawnslight 20
  14. Voidus
    There's no such thing as an 'object' in an abstract objective sense, an 'object' is a purely speculative entity assigned by us. Also I never said that her reference frame was a single object so I'm not sure why you're saying its inconsistent, in fact multiple times I've said my current idea for reference frames was a kind of idealized version of any living entity, which is certainly not an object and its a different reference frame for a non-living entity. I understand trying to make sense of the powers but I feel like picking on something like that is needlessly distracting from the actual issue. It's not accounting for them to be separate objects, but if she were to only take into account momentum shared across every particle in the object then again her power becomes useless since given the random nature of heat energy no two particles are going to have the same momentum, let alone all of them, which is further complicated by even macroscopic scale subobjects not sharing momentum universally, air resistance for instance would affect each part of the body differently, noticeably not by much and it would balance out to be the same since they then drag on each other but enough that it would affect the power, again causing near instant death on anyone she affected with her abilities. Or walking for example, your foot remains stationary while walking, pushing the rest of your body forward, although at different rates, so every part of the body is moving at a different momentum, how could that then be treated as one object without rendering her powers completely meaningless? She'd be able to 'freeze' people except they'd still be able to walk, talk, point a gun and shoot her if need be. It would pretty much only be useful against fliers who move their entire body in unison. The point of using the earth as a reference is its relatively homogenous temperature, unlike the human body, so it doesn't need to sync up, it would just impart each particle with a certain amount of random kinetic energy equivalent to that heat. The maths involved for that isn't particularly difficult, simple mass conversions to determine the relative increase in energy since the energy is random it would only affect heat not overall movement.
  15. Voidus
    Again, not sure what you're trying to get at by differentiating one object or its components, the object is made of the components so naturally it has to affect those too, there's no way to differentiate between motion of an atom from heat and motion from say falling through the air, so either it can't affect atoms at all which means it can't affect anything or it also has to affect heat. The electrons wouldn't move, positive ions in the air would be attracted to the negative charge to balance it out. As for whether she gets hit by the discharge it depends on what she does, as you say if she were to use a more distant shield it would work, or she could just take off the piece of clothing and back away a safe distance, not that she's likely too, if it actually happened she'd probably assume the lightning was dealt with and then crisp herself, but I'm more interested in getting the mechanics down at the moment, then I can balance her powers with behavior as needed to try to keep her within bounds.
  16. Voidus
    Prof 6 Conflux -1
  17. Voidus
    2 Conflux 6 Prof
  18. Voidus
    She's about to, I left it up to you for how that works out.
  19. Voidus
    9 Conflux - He hates dogs. 4 Instabam 5 Newton 5 Prof
  20. Voidus
    5 Steelheart 3 Firefight 12 Conflux 7 Instabam 6 Newton 9 Prof 20 Obliteration 20 Dawnslight
  21. Voidus
    Joe gets it, you need to take out the generals before you go for Steelheart guys! 5 Steelheart 5 Firefight 12 Conflux 9 Instabam 6 Newton 9 Prof 20 Obliteration 20 Dawnslight
  22. Voidus
    A Brony and a non-brony walked into 17th Shard. They discussed things in a civilized manner and respected each others views. This is why 17ths is the best.
  23. Voidus
    The prejudice against cookies is long standing but I urge you to reconsider, cookies are delicious. You know you want one. Welcome to the forums!
  24. Voidus
    7 Steelheart 4 Firefight 0 Nightwielder Sorry Nightwielder, needed to get a kill in though 16 Conflux 9 Instabam 4 Newton 9 Prof 20 Obliteration 20 Dawnslight
  25. Voidus
    Watching the battle of the elements ensuing between Rainmaker and the attacking Epic, Cornucopia wished strongly that she at least had a chair to lounge in. All this standing and fighting was incredibly boring, perhaps she could excuse herself under the grounds that she could restock her gardens? Find some more combative plants? No, Rainmaker had asked her to stay. Plus with this level of combat she'd need Rainmaker to provide sunlight if she were injured. A burst of flames nearby caught her attention, coming as it did from a different direction to the Epic Rainmaker was fighting. Another one? How many surprise Epics is this day going to throw at us? Are they part of the group who kidnapped Euphy? Too big a coincidence otherwise. Cornucopia hated fire Epics, hated them more than any other, all they did was destroy. To be expected of an Epic of course but fire Epics were indiscriminate, almost always causing more damage than they meant to, they were chaos incarnate. Time to introduce a little order then. Reaching out to her gardens Cornucopia found what she was looking for. Water. Liters and liters of water, stored in bottles that grew from her plants. Most fire Epics burned too hot to be doused with water, it evaporated before it could hit them. Fortunately however, steam would would help her conceal her next attack. Launching a thousand bottles of water was a difficult task. Launching a thousand bottles of water held by the limbs of plants over a hundred meters away at a target the same distance away in a different direction was exceptionally difficult. Sighing, Cornucopia took a firm hold of her plants, stretching her powers to the limit to control so many at once, she launched the water bottles, watching them soar through the air only to explode before they hit the Epic, spreading a cloud of scalding steam over him. In the cover she took one of the guns from her guards, throwing it as far as she could with her own hands, which proved to not be very far. Still it was close enough. The grass opened a hole in the ground beneath the gun, quickly burying it beneath dirt and root. Cornucopia focussed all her powers on it, forcing its months of growth to collapse into scarcely a minute. Cracks spread throughout the ground as the roots spread, people began to get pushed away as a single stalk reached for the sky, sprouting limbs as it reached the height of the people around it. On each limb an identical weapon, they all turned towards the Fire Epic in unison.
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