Originally posted by fangirl101
so when a police officer shoots out a tire of a car going 50 to 60 miles an hour you mean to tell me speed>>skill? speed is only >>> skill if the skilled person doesn't have the reflexes to react to the speed of thier opponent.
Ignoring what was already mentioned about this. We're talking about a car which has the maneuverability of rock compared to a human. Cars can go really fast in ONE direction. It can't change directions very fast at all. In terms of the movements of the gun when trying to shoot out a tire, the car is barely moving. most of the time its moving further away in a straight line which is just the target getting smaller. If the car is moving perpendicular to the shooter you still have a car going at a constant velocity which is relatively easy to predict. If you put this in a hand to hand fight analogy that'd be like a car thats 1 foot away from you going 60mph around you in a circle. So like 15 revolutions per second around you. Even if it's going at a constant speed you have to just be lucky to shoot out a tire (ie. constantly shoot in it's direction and hope it runs into your shot.)
Now add onto that a car that can CHANGE directions at 60 mph. it can be coming right at you at 60 mph then sidestep u and come running at 60 mph at your back in like 1/10 of a second. And now imagine the car constantly doing that every second. That would be an analogy for speed vs skill.
Speed for comic characters doesn't just mean you can run in a straight line really fast (This is travel speed which most ppl here agree is totally different for a lot of characters compared to their fighting speed). If you can fight at a higher speed that means your reaction times are faster, your ability to change directions are faster. It's basically the other guy going in slow motion.
If theres a top line martial artist that can only move 5 times slower than I can, I'm pretty sure even I can beat them. The average human reaction time to visual stimuli is like 0.2 secs. So that'd be a full second of "I can do whatever I want" and he won't even be able to react. I don't care what your skill is, if I can punch you before you can twitch (add to this me punching when I see you start to blink at 5x slower rates), I'm winning this fight. I'm of course ignoring the speed you get when training as a martial artist. You do increase your reaction times and speed of punches by a good amount when you train but this thread was straight speed vs skill.