ATR/ETS Question

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

Composing a message to your body and having it carried to the nerves and muscles by your motor neurons is not a strictly perceptual thing, and has the physical effect of your body actually moving sooner.

I'm not an expert on physiology, but is the conduction of motor nerves really the rate-limiting step, here? Anyway, if you want to be a pedant about it, the brain processing is a physical effect, too, in the sense of physical things happening inside your body. Assuming biophysics has anything at all to do with it, which it wouldn't in a Supers game.

The point is that their limbs don't move any faster than anyone else's. They just start moving first.

Originally Posted by vitruvian

While it's true that none of this implies that your muscles will be able to pull harder and therefore send your body or extremities moving at any greater velocity once you get going, the net effect to an observer is still going to be that you reacted much more quickly.

Um, yes. Exactly. They react faster without moving faster, because they think faster. Which is exactly what is modeled. So what was the problem again?

Originally Posted by vitruvian

Also, really this reduced reaction time (perception + processing + sending messages to muscles) should logically allow you to control your movements with the same degree of precision when moving at the top speed/velocity allowed by your muscles as when moving slowly and deliberately, not the case for normal people.

How does THAT follow? When your limbs are moving at full speed, they have that much more momentum, which means your muscles will have to apply that much more force in order to change their direction.

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by gjc8

How does THAT follow? When your limbs are moving at full speed, they have that much more momentum, which means your muscles will have to apply that much more force in order to change their direction.

That's obviously not a problem, since regular characters with no special advantages can already do Rapid Strike, and they get a penalty to skill, not to damage or anything else that would indicate what's needed is more force. Just the ability to coordinate their blows.

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

Somebody without ETS would beat you to the punch (maybe literally) because even though you decided what technique to throw before they did, the business end of their weapon got there first.

Technically true, if their movement is enough faster than yours. The same could be said about somebody moving fast enough to beat somebody who was Waiting. It's not something GURPS models, in either case.

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

That's obviously not a problem, since regular characters with no special advantages can already do Rapid Strike, and they get a penalty to skill, not to damage or anything else that would indicate what's needed is more force. Just the ability to coordinate their blows.

ETS doesn't control how fast you move once you start moving, as has been said. What does? DX, in large part. You might notice the skills you need to effectively Rapid Strike are based on DX.

ATR, of course, also controls how fast you move. ATR doesn't make Rapid Strike per se easier, but it gives you more attacks by other means.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by gjc8

I'm not an expert on physiology, but is the conduction of motor nerves really the rate-limiting step, here? .

Behold, I type nerve transmission speed into Google and get the following page.....

http://www.painstudy.com/NonDrugRemedies/Pain/p10.htm

..... with a range of speeds but apparently forming a concensus of more than 300 feet per second.

So the actual tranission time for an action order is not likely to be more than 1/50th of a second even for a full body movement. Simple actions like pulling a trigger would be shorter of course.

When the Mythbusters tried to dodge a bullet (a paintball actually) they were getting times just under a half a second.

So the tranmission time is only c. 4% of that total or less with the remaining 96% divided among perception, decision-making and muscular miovement. I'd give the actual movement no more than half of that remaining time. Watching the high speed there was a very definite time lag before movement started.

So I'd say we have two amjor limiting factors and thsoe are the processes frst in the brain and then in the muscles with the nerves between them being only a minor factor.

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by gjc8

ETS doesn't control how fast you move once you start moving, as has been said. What does? DX, in large part. You might notice the skills you need to effectively Rapid Strike are based on DX.

ATR, of course, also controls how fast you move. ATR doesn't make Rapid Strike per se easier, but it gives you more attacks by other means.

Again, bog-standard characters can already move their limbs fast enough to Rapid Strike; the -6 penalty has nothing to do with not moving fast enough, you're already doing that, but as far as I can figure with coordination of your limbs when moving at your physical limits.

Since ETS would let you observe and react to the position of your limbs or weapon as though they were moving in slow motion, it seems like it should affect that penalty, although of course we all know it doesn't as a matter of RAW.

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

So the tranmission time is only c. 4% of that total or less with the remaining 96% divided among perception, decision-making and muscular miovement. I'd give the actual movement no more than half of that remaining time. Watching the high speed there was a very definite time lag before movement started.

So I'd say we have two amjor limiting factors and thsoe are the processes frst in the brain and then in the muscles with the nerves between them being only a minor factor.

True, but neither is it the case that perceptual and decision-making processes in the brain are one and the same. Whatever way you cut it, the statement that ETS is all perceptual is wrong.

[Gef]

Sorry I'm late to this thread. I proposed a house variant here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=34291

It's worked well in the moderate playtest I was able to give it. If I had written ETS, I'd have called it a limitation (Mental Only) on ATR, making it a levelled trait de facto, because the base advantage is levelled. I don't like the fact that you can't take extra concentrate or evaluate maneuvers with ETS, or that it is to time sense as "Total Kinetic Invulnerability" is to damage resistance. (4e wisely omits TKI.) However, I've been very happy with ATR (Mental Only) when I've used it in games, and I've also found that a package deal, while less aesthtically pleasing, is fair. That's because ATR includes thinking faster, too, in the last paragraph of its description. I allow players who want both (acting twice as fast, sensing infinitely fast) to buy ATR with a limitation that excludes those benefits that overlap with the ETS they plan to buy anyway.

GEF

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by vitruvian

Again, bog-standard characters can already move their limbs fast enough to Rapid Strike; the -6 penalty has nothing to do with not moving fast enough, you're already doing that, but as far as I can figure with coordination of your limbs when moving at your physical limits.

Since ETS would let you observe and react to the position of your limbs or weapon as though they were moving in slow motion, it seems like it should affect that penalty, although of course we all know it doesn't as a matter of RAW.

But they don't move them fast enough with precision and accuracy. There's a trade-off between speed of movement and control of that movement.

Higher DX means they have better precision and accuracy in their movements in the first place and/or they were moving faster in the first place, so the trade-off is not as severe for them.

Originally Posted by vitruvian

True, but neither is it the case that perceptual and decision-making processes in the brain are one and the same. Whatever way you cut it, the statement that ETS is all perceptual is wrong.

Good thing ETS says "you receive and process information dramatically faster than the human norm".

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by gjc8

But they don't move them fast enough with precision and accuracy. There's a trade-off between speed of movement and control of that movement.

Exactly. I'm saying that the same unlimited processing time that allows you to watch bullets or hummingbird wings or think for as long as you want about your next move would logically remove the need for that trade-off, and let you strike accurately at the top speed allowed by muscle and bone.

Originally Posted by gjc8

Higher DX means they have better precision and accuracy in their movements in the first place and/or they were moving faster in the first place, so the trade-off is not as severe for them.

And ETS should do as well or better than higher DX on the human scale, since from your perspective, you can't move your limbs any faster than a snail's crawl even at your physical limits.

Originally Posted by gjc8

Good thing ETS says "you receive and process information dramatically faster than the human norm".

Oh, I know. It's just that people tend to like to say that it's all perceptual and nothing else on threads like this one, and I like to correct them.

Gef's point about the disconnect between being able to think about things for subjective hours yet not being able to gain any of the benefits from additional turns of Concentrate maneuvers (e.g., Evaluate and similar things) is also well-taken.