Force Speed vs. Hyperacceleration

[Chris Parr]

Okay, so I was watching the Flash fighting with Zoom, and it got me to thinking about the speedsters in Trek and Wars and who would win in a fight.

So in the red corner, we have a Scalosian, or perhaps someone who's drunk the water or synthesized it somehow. Anyway, he's hyper accelerated, moving and thinking thousands of times faster than normal.

And in the blue corner we have the Jedi, who can use the Force to move and think at blurring speeds—at least fast enough to defeat an android with super speed as seen in "Shadows of The Empire" when Luke defeats the assassin droid Guri.

So now I'm just wondering—can the hyper accelerated Federation agent sneak past the Jedi's defenses? Will Jedi speed prevail and chop the Federation agent in two despite his speed? Will Jedi precognition even work at those speeds? Remember we're talking about hours compressed into seconds here at least. Fast enough that the Jedi would appear frozen in time to the Federation agent. Would the Jedi get a "bad feeling"? And would there be time to react? Would the Jedi reflexively shift into speed mode to match the hyper accelerated Federation agent? Could the Jedi use the Force to match or even exceed the hyper accelerated Federation agent's speed?

I guess what I'm trying to ask here is, who is faster?

[biostem]

The Jedi's speed seems to be more about precognition than actual faster movements. While, yes, a Jedi can fling themselves about at fairly high speed, it doesn't seem to be the kind of precise "turn on a dime" type of maneuvering that we see someone like the Flash engage in.

[Lord Revan]

wasn't it pretty much said in TPM that Jedi have no better reaction speeds them humans, they just see and thus react to things before they happen thus seemingly having fast reaction speeds.

[biostem]

wasn't it pretty much said in TPM that Jedi have no better reaction speeds them humans, they just see and thus react to things before they happen thus seemingly having fast reaction speeds.

In general, yes, but there's also the scene where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan seemingly dart away from the Droidekas extremely quickly - which I think is just them utilizing how they do those force-leaps, only in the horizontal.

[APlayerHater]

Hm, but would a force user be able to choke/immobilize someone moving at super speed... If you used precognition to know exactly where they were going to be, and then you choked the life out of them, that 'could' work. I guess it depends on whether the Trek speedster's respiration has been super-speeded as well, in which case they might appear to just drop dead in a fraction of a second for us laypersons who move at normal speed.

[Chris Parr]

But would precognition work? Sure, it's great for split second stuff, but when a speedster is moving so fast that everything is frozen to him and that split second can feel like hours, what then? As Yoda said, "Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future."

[APlayerHater]

Regardless of speed, you could argue that you could still predict the person would be there before they got there, because the amount of time in the future is still the same, no matter how fast your opponent is moving they are still going to be in a certain place at a certain time. The force seemed to give Luke an advantage is making a split second 1 in a million shot on a tiny exhaust port he was passing by, so if you can time an event that's happening soon you might be able to nab your speedster in a choke. You can predict what's going to happen on the other side of the galaxy, factoring in people moving through hyperspace to get from point a to point b, so maybe it's possible.

If someone dumped a super speedster right in front of you, without you having a chance to "have foreseen it" hours in advance, you might be screwed. Otherwise, other than when it's very briefly and strangely utilized in TPM with very bad awkward special effects, force speed is something I really only know from the videogames. Depending on which videogame we're talking about either it's bullet time from Jedi Knight 2/3 and you can run circles around people and cut them up before they have any time to react, or you get the KOTOR version, where you get double movement speed +4 AC and 2 extra attacks per round.

Now, assuming a combat round is 6 seconds, during which both combatants get to attack based on the BAB, let's assume Luke is a level 15 Jedi Knight and Vader is a level 20 Jedi Master. Luke gets 3 attacks per 6 seconds and Vader gets 4. Now, if Luke has Master Speed that gives him an additional 100% movement speed and another 2 attacks, bringing it up to 5 attacks per round for 6 rounds. -So both movement rate and ability to act effectively have been boosted, with the 2 new attacks occurring at full BAB rather than receiving a penalty due to multiple attacks in 1 round.

-We can maybe assume that if super speed would be advantageous in the situation they're in, the Jedi would have used it. I know Obi never used it to get past those shield walls in TPM, and Anakin never used it to dodge all those mechanical arms in AOTC, so either George Lucas forgot about it (100% likely, either that or it's a The Flash situation, where if you actually let your characters use their super speed without being idiots your character is literally unbeatable) or maybe their movements are highly limited while going super fast, and Obi didn't want to accidentally zoom through the shields and then fall down that pit/splatter himself against a shield due to bad timing.

In fights we can maybe assume that your opponent could predict where you would be anyway, so super speed wouldn't be an advantage. Yoda might be using it in his battles, since he appears to be a rickety old geezer most of the time, so maybe speed is just part of them passively augmenting their bodies with super agility and super durability, as they apparently do at all times.

[Chris Parr]

Okay, I'll concede the speed plus precognition gives the Jedi a serious advantage.

[APlayerHater]

But if these Trek speedsters can really move so fast everything else goes to a stand still, I'd say the force users are probably screwed unless they set up a sort of "force choke trap" ahead of time by knowing exactly where someone was going to be and when. Otherwise, they haven't been shown to move at extreme speeds with any kind of control.