Category speeds

So as stated in the last announcement staff is revising some things including the races. Two of these things are strength and speed. Questions have been asked before with no clear answer so it's about time we clear it all up. What we have so far is our best guess of speeds for category f through a vampires, and their equivalents. We would like to know what people think of this. Comments welcome.

Cat F 20-70 mph/ 30-113 kmh, Usain Bolt's top speed is roughly 30 mph

Cat D 70-120 mph/ 113- 193 kmh

Cat C 120-170 mph/ 193- 274 kmh

Cat B 170-220 mph/ 274-354 kmh

Cat A 220-270 mph/ 354-435 kmh, Fastest car in the world Hennessey Venom GT's top speed is 270 mph/ 435 kmh, 0-60 in 2.5 seconds

I feel like limiting vampire movement to MPH is only going to downplay and misrepresent their actual speed, as it's been demonstrated plenty of times in the manga/ova that their speed is clearly determined by the reflexes of the person they are engaged against. This alone makes it extremely difficult to pinpoint and almost pointless to do in an overall sense. It just makes things more tedious.

I'll give an example. The only reason the Cheddar Priest was able to "Flash step" (disappeared from Seras's view and reappeared behind her without her noticing, until he grabbed her) is because Seras, at that point, only had human reflexes, and thus could not follow him. If the Cheddar Priest tried that with, oh, say, Anderson, he'd get a bayonet through the skull because Anderson has the reflexes to casually track someone of that level.  So, if we're going to make speeds for vampires, we shouldn't use specific numbers, we should use words.

The Cheddar Priest is commonly believed to be a Cat F, so it would be best to say that Cat.F's can move so fast that untrained Human reflexes can't even process it unless they've had specific training, like Iscariot, to make up for it. Additionally, Millennium vampires, commonly believed on this forum to be around D level, casually kept up with Integra's speeding Rolls Royce with Walter driving with absolutely no trouble once soever in terms of speed. This means, that on a physical level, vampires can casually keep up with speeding vehicles regardless of their category, as D is one of the lowest on the list and did so with no effort.

To cut this short, giving supernatural speeds based on MPH's is ridiculous, as fighting vampires in hellsing is all a matter of reflex in the hellsing world.

Also, there seems to be a misconception about vampires dodging bullets in the hellsing universe, so I want to clear that up after rewatching the OVA's. Vampires do not dodge bullets because they are faster than the bullets themselves, they're not moving at anywhere near the same speeds, as that would mean they're breaking the sound barrier and that simply isn't the case. Vampires simply use their reflexes to move themselves out of the path of the bullet by side stepping, in a sense. It's like dodging a baseball thrown at you with a speed of 99mph. You don't need to move 99mph yourself to dodge, you simply need to react fast enough to simply move a small amount out of it's path and it'll fly by you harmlessly.

This is why Pip resorted to claymore mines in the fields, as it negated that advantage by sending out widespread pellets instead of a single projectile. You can't move out of the path of a shotgun blast when you're twenty feet away because the pellets spread out and fill up all available pathways you could have possibly used against a normal firearm that fired one bullet. This is to clear up the misconception that vampires move as fast as bullets, as that's not the case since vampires outside of alucard have been hit by them before, but only if the person shooting at them had the reflexes to pull off such an accomplishment.

First of all thank you for your opinion. I think we are all aware of how quickly some of these examples moved, but a flash step is not exactly the best way to measure either.

Not to mention the model of the Rolls Royce Phantom Integra had would have been made in 1990, and there were no other models made in between 1990 and 2003. The top speed of the Phantom VI was 180 km/h or 112 mph. According to our measurements that means of course the category D vampires of millennium would have been able to keep up with the car quite easily especially if she's having to slow down just enough to turn without flipping over the car which she comes close to at one point.

Having to only use words to describe the speed of these categories actually would do us an injustice. As I have stated in the above people have asked me, or staff in general how fast is something. We have had to come up on the spot with an estimate of something similar. The problem with this is it causes inconsistencies. Among not only members, but staff members as well. Which then causes confusion. This is something we would like to avoid in the future so people can have a general idea of how fast something can travel.

Again this is a measurement of how fast something can move, or travel. Not a measurement of reflexes.

I can understand the inconsistencies, but I think all of those can be chalked up to poor wording used during the description of race abilities. There are no explanations as to what "sublime" supernatural strength is, or "medium" supernatural reflexes are. We simply label them that and walk away. This could easily be fixed by adding on to it, and as an example:

Sublime Supernatural Strength: Can casually overpower typical humans with ease and tear flesh apart without issue.

Medium Supernatural Reflexes: Can easily track vampires of the same and lower categories, and by proxy, predict bullet paths and respond accordingly.

This is just a simple way of fixing that problem with inconsistencies. It can easily be solved by looking at Millennium vampires. They're classified as a category D, and if they can keep up with a speeding Rolls Royce, while jumping over rooftops and avoiding all of the crap that's typically placed on said rooftops (AC's, vents, clotheslines, etc), then that means almost every category of vampire can keep up with speeding vehicles.

However, a problem arises by simply throwing out random guesses as to what vampires ranked above Millenniums could keep up with, as it's simply popular vote and far from canon if we take that route. The speed of supernatural races haven't been an issue for as long as I've been apart of the forum, which has been some three years, and everyone has been, more or less, perfectly fine with how speed was measured because we always looked back at the source material. Drifting away from that source material is, in my opinion, a horrible way to go.

In theory, if you continue to speed something up, it looks as if it has not moved. You also realize that if it continues to speed up, it will disappear from reality. It is called Theory Of Relativity. The energy required to pull such a feat off would be astounding, yet when described in mph, it simplifies it for everyone, lowers the chances of godmodding, and gives people an idea of how fast that really is. This is only speed and not reflexes. Reflexes require little to no energy to create some adjustments for one fluid movement. Not saying that some speed should be tweaked or not tweaked. This could very well be a great building block for something later. Yet for now, this would work well to resolve a simple, commonly asked question for all members.

Also trying to assign a ton of logic to anime/manga does not always work out. When it comes to rpgs, you have to trust your fellow rpers. Just throwing that out there.

I think this is a great start but we could use some objects of speed to compare these speeds to.

As far as i´m aware, the fastest car in the world is still the Thrust SSC, going at 1,018 kph, or 700~mph.

Also, a Rolls Royce like Integra drives is pretty darn fast at top speed, and the Millennium vampires had very little problem catching up to it. On the other hand, they were powerless to avoid the very slow moving Anderson, who used plot armor. Seras as a full blown vampire moved in something akin to a lightning, and even a car at top speed you can sort of see coming. Seras you didn´t see coming, she was moving so fast that she was defying gravity- probably using the shockwave she created underneath to run... which would be physically impossible for any being to survive intact.

What i mean to say is- Speed isn´t consistant in Hellsing, and the laws of physics that you`re trying to apply here don´t exist.

274* Top Gear UK.

Okay. So the car that Integra mentioned is actually one of the fastest production cars ever created. It's very difficult if not impossible to try to base any sort of vampiric speed on that at all. We're doing all of this to try and establish a base line for what is possible and I ask everyone to keep that in mind before this turns into an argument. We're not always going to agree and the source material has plenty of things that defy the laws of physics anyway. For fuck's sake, vampires can walk on walls and schrodinger's cat is an actual character. Michio Kaku could have a field day with half of the stuff that's even in the show.

Now, that being said, assigning mph values can work just fine as a base value of comparison which is exactly what Integra is trying to do. To be honest, in the years I've been here not once have I seen "meager" or "sublime" descriptors cause that much of a problem. When we provided an answer for people's questions about it, they were more than happy with the explanations provided so at this point, everyone can think of it as an explanation and if you have a reasonable alternative, we're happy to listen.

Now regarding a request that the Staff be more transparent, I would like to remind you that while we are more than willing to help and discuss things, disputes should be kept separate and civil for both Staff and regular members. If we are going to have discussions as well, there needs to be a happy medium on what's actually being discussed. It's because of this that if you would like, I will place a discussion board where you can weigh in on decisions made by the Staff after they've been approved and I will look through them if there are specific situations or questions that need to be addressed.

The change will be though that waiting for something to get approved while it's being discussed will no longer happen under unanimous vote by the Staff. We gave a try to your suggestion and were willing to attempt so please take that into consideration as well.

Seriously, i think its pointless to try and measure a vampires speed and set it as a baseline. It just makes the game more complicated and leaves more room for people to point and whine and alter the outcome of the fight.

And I get that. To put it in perspective, we're asking for a unified cap on what will be allowed. It's no different than the decision that alucard, hans and anderson levels are vastly unreachable by ocs. If it helps, we can attempt to start there and work our way down but more than likely, the result will still not likely be 2000 miles per hour or even the speed of sound which is 761. For a human being of any kind to reach that a speed is stretching the realms of possibility and disbelief. We're not trying to hurt creativity but we are asking for a little more accountability in that creativity which I think is a fair request. Is there any way for us to meet in the middle somewhere?

The middle ground will leave both parties ultimately unsatisfied as it is in essence, a cop out, but that being said, and I say it as neutrally as I could with just experience which I hope isn't right this time, and going past that, Michel's suggestions bear relevance in that it allows creativity whilst STILL allowing a guideline, as you staffers wanted in the first place, to actually measure something in place, WITHOUT killing creativity.

I am sure you'd agree with that point, despite it being a staff approved idea as opposed to a member approved one. The camps are different in that regard anyways.

My worry with mikes suggestion though is it has too many loopholes, and people will exploit those loopholes like they have in the past. People will godmod saying they can go as fast a fighter jet which is just not possible, or something else. Just because something is supernatural does not mean it doesn't have it's limits. Everything has a limit.

Yes mikes suggestion would require trust among the staff with the members of the forum. However, my trust is shaky from things done in the past by certain members. You know these members exploited any loophole they could, and it was extremely stressful. That last statement was my own opinion not the staffs. I don't know how the rest feel, and if they trust certain members better than me. If they do more power to them, and I'll just have to trust their judgment.

I am locking this topic. It is obvious to me that it has gotten too out of hand. This was a simple update. NOT a topic open for debate. If anything, I am asking you to trust us. We will constantly update you on what is going on. However, you need to trust us because we have the WHOLE MEMBER BASE well being in mind to make it fair for all, to make it easy to understand for all, and to make it realistic and/or logical/within reason.

Thank you.