Grrl Power #1453 – Sword master speed run
The sword I designed for Max isn’t the one she chose when she visited Cora’s Starforge. That one can accept channeled power to increase its cutting ability. This one is the more defensive mana eater that had been discussed briefly. It’s a bearing sword, which is a ridiculously sized ceremonial sword that usually looks like a 7-foot long greatsword of claymore. I’m not sure I have the proportions quite right, and they traditionally have a much larger cross guard as well. I am attempting to build it in Blender, so I can place it with a consistent design in the comic, but I’m sure at least some of you are aware of my failed attempts to learn the program previously. Still… it’s a sword, not the rifling on the inside of a barrel or something relatively complex, so maybe I’ll be able to figure it out?
Maxima is a surprisingly competent marital artist. Nowhere near Math’s level, but early on, she became determined to not only rely on always being faster and stronger than her opponents, and learned a bunch of martial arts fundamentals, joint locks, jujitsu holds and redirect-your-opponent’s-strength/momentum stuff like Aikido. What she really needs is someone to teach her how a martial art that is designed for someone with super strength/speed/armor.
I think most of the Marvel movies are pretty good, especially up through Avengers: Endgame – actually, I think most of them are amazing and a lot of people have gotten spoiled/jaded on what a good superhero movie is, which is a little weird, because most of the time Marvel was doing their thing, Zack Snyder was making sure people didn’t forget what bad superhero movies looked like.
Anyway, my point is that as much as I enjoy those movies, there’s still a lot that can be nitpick. For instance, in Endgame when Thanos was standing over Thor, pressing Stormbreaker down into his chest, well, Thor can toss tanks around. Thanos doesn’t weigh that much, and doesn’t have any sort of rooting or gravity powers, and in fact, neither of them weigh an extraordinary amount. Maybe more than a similarly sized human, but still, like, maybe 1,000 pounds? (Okay, 985 according to a quick search) So an actual super fight between the two of them would obviously look very different. With strength like that, punching someone simply isn’t your best move. I think I’ve talked about this before, but high strength doesn’t necessarily convey high damage with a punch. A punch is about the mass of the fist hitting you, and the speed at which it hits. Yes, the strength behind the fist is important, but only in that it will mitigate the speed from dipping when the mass of the fist (and arm) intersects your skull. Obviously given the choice between getting punched by a powerlifter or a pro boxer or a Karate champ, I’d rather not get hit by either one, but you can start to see my point. Strength doesn’t scale infinitely into punch damage. That graph levels off fairly quickly I think.
Think of it this way. A guy puts a boxing glove on the end of a broomstick and jousts at you from on top of a moped. The average punch clocks in at about 25 mph, so yeah, that’s going to sting when it hits. Now consider the same setup, except the boxing glove jouster thingy is mounted on the front of a car, which, again, comes at you at 25 mph. That will probably hurt more, not because there’s more kinetic energy in the hit, but there’s more inertia behind it. Now imagine you’re standing on a pier, and the boxing glove thing is attached (at face level) to the front of a battleship, which hits you at 25 mph. No one would expect your head to explode because there’s “so much strength” behind the punch. I don’t think there’d really be any difference between that hit and the one from the car.
The calculus changes completely if you have someone pinned against a building or a mountain, then the hits go from kinetic transfer to crushing damage. But, if you have them pinned against the ground, the 300 pound guy who can bench a tank punching down at someone without somehow bracing himself is going to launch himself into the air like he’s doing a Hulk super leap.
So a martial art that really takes super powers into account would have to be extremely flexible and situationally aware. A fight between the Hulk and Superman or Maxima, realistically… well, realistically, why would either one of them engage him in a melee fight? Supes and Max both have ranged options. But they also have near Hulk level super strength (at least until the Hulk gets especially angry) and super speed, which means the Hulk’s punches, if he ever could connect, would realistically just knock either one back a dozen feet until their flight overcame it, while they could both deliver tungsten-rod-from-orbit levels of hits.
All of this is to say, Maxima does have some of the fundamentals of footwork and spacing down, so when learning to fight with a sword she’s not starting from absolute scratch. But… not all that far off, either.
Finally, here we go! I took the suggestion that I just use an existing panel for a starting point, thinking it would save time… I guess it technically did, but a 5 character vote incentive just isn’t the way to go.
Patreon, of course, has actual topless version.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Sincerely thinking of sending a message to Sellsword Arts asking them if it’s possible to learn swordsmanship at superhuman speeds.
I wasn’t aware that Maxima could Maximize her ability to learn as well; I thought this only applied to her abilities?
The entirety of her is sped up, including her mind, when she’s actively using her speed.
If we focus on just repetition and muscle memory, then she could practice a particular sword strike, with proper form, a thousand times in, well, let’s say a minute (I don’t know specifically how fast she could do that). In the beginner’s forms I was taught, there are 8 basic strikes. She could do a full day’s worth of extreme training in eight minutes in that scenario, without muscle fatigue, and move on to doing a kata a thousand times in, say, 2-3 minutes.
In one hour, she would be able to physically do more repetition based practice than most people would be able to do in an entire week.
Here, she also sparring at speed, which means every exchange she makes is experience with making that exchange. Same thing as with the solo exercises.
It does seem to me like it would be boring AF, but Maxima has a lot more focus than me and a goal that would help give her the drive to keep doing it.
I agree with your logic, but the problem is she only has three days until the next fight. Most fighters aren’t doing hard core learn-something-new physical training those last three days. They are finished learning new stuff and are working on recovery and mental preparation. If she spends all three days training she’ll arrive at the fight mentally and physically drained (assuming rules of reality and no superpower hand waving).
Which is a nitpick about this tournament in general. Assuming this is the next day after sleeping off the healing potion, four days between fights is ridiculously short. First, doing all 64 elimination rounds at the same time would be a massive waste of broadcast revenue; those should take weeks to get through. Then they’d want to give the winners of the last few fights sufficient time to recover so the winners of the first fights don’t have a huge advantage, which gets to my second point. It’s highly probably that the “winner” in some or most fights would be severely injured. Missing limbs, full mana drain, broken ribs. Even in a universe with magic healing potions, only four days is not near enough to recover from near-death injuries and research your new opponents.
I guess the question is: can she rest in super speed?
Goku’s law? They trained for 319 days and then just rested outside it for 9 to 10 before fighting Cell. If Max is getting effectively 3 months of non-stop training in at her speeds she merely needs to stop an hour before check in to fully suit up. Primarily because it takes a funkton of time to check and re-check nano outfits for any flaws. Also she needs to figure out where to put that sword and how… Bets on where she grabs it from now please. All in quatloos. No other bets accepted. You have until next page!
Learning is just neural pathways being created and then reinforced over and over.
Since Maxima can see bullets in motion, recognize them, then move to respond to them, clearly her neural structures are operating at rates far exceeding that speed, so there’s no reason to assume she can’t basically get a knock off version of the hyperbaric time chamber from DBZ.
If the trainer and the sparing partner is in the same range of superhuman speed , I don’t see the problem.
Sellsword don’t really seem to take powers into consideration (unless its star wars), if you listen to their reverse grip and duel wield videos
Well they do when they the segment “Does Your Anime Swordsman suck?”
Clark would be on board… David… not so much lol
The answer is “yes”… If you’ve also got superhuman reflexes.
The speed at which stuff happens and balances out at equal cpability… And don’t forget David himself is a Speed Goblin… His entire style of fighting is *based* on being fast.. Which is nice for HEMA, but less useful if people are properly armoured..
Tappy-hits for Points don’t stop that “slow” swing of that axe coming your way as your opponent keeps pressing in…
Although to be fair… David *also* is very vocal about “right technique at the right moment”.. so …
Mind.. the bottom panel also shows what happens if you don’t also have superhuman protection when you do that…
There’s a Slap Disarm and an actual low Shin-hit in there… Both the result of classic Dumb Mistakes in grip/pacing/distancing.. ( and the reason “Why Practice With Boffers” for full-speed sparring…)
Seems Max understimated the amount of armor she needed for her speed session, because that shin hit obviously hurt like hell… as it should… ;)
When you’re sparring at speed, shin hits *suuuuuck*. Owies. I got sympathetic shin pain looking at that.
Just imagine if you could combine this with the Hyperbolic Time Chamber?
Wouldn’t the analogy be closer related to putting a stronger engine so the punch gets faster because there’s more power behind it. The stronger you are you’re basically just throwing your fist at the other person as hard as you can so it’s a max speed increase over a small distance. Someone with regular strength punching you at 25 mph vs someone with super strength punching you at 250mph.
Cinetic energy
in metric units
CE= 1/2 m v²
CE in joules
m in kilograms
v in m/s
25 m/s is 90 km/h or a little less than 60 mph
Kinetic energy, and correct formula.
Mass: Stronger fighters generally have more massive arms, and a well-trained fighter can punch in a way that incorporates the mass of their shoulder and upper body into the blow. This is applicable to the boxing glove attached to different things analogy.
Velocity: Stronger fighters can accelerate that mass to a higher impact velocity. So the analogy of different masses hitting at the same speed is only part of the equation, and the speed part is squared. Max has both super speed and super strength.
I forget the name, but I saw a show a long time ago that compared the fighting ability of a wide range of top-level martial artists. Scientifically measuring attributes like punch/kick quickness, reach, impact damage, defensive techniques, etc. The American Boxer won the “most powerful punch” category by a wide margin.
I think I may have seen that same video. If I recall, they included 3d rederings of the body to explain the physics behind their analysis and how damage is dealt. Was very informative.
Sorry english is not my first langage , it’s french and it’s énergie cinétique in french
E(sub)k tho, not CE. Because Energy (kinetic), just like Energy (potential).
So, she can move fast enough to crush three months worth of training into three days, so she’s moving at around thirty times normal speed. Is that a limit of how fast the computer can go, or a limit of how fast Max can take in and learn new information? It’s not a limit of how fast Max can move, her top speed is above Mach 4 (according to comic #354), which is well over 100x as fast as a top-end sprinter can go (let alone an average person).
It’s a combination of limits. The biggest one is that she still needs to eat and rest and recover between sessions. There’s also a limit not so much on the “framerate” of the illusions, but on the force fields needed to give them solidity. The force fields are more complicated and energy intensive to manipulate.
After 3 month of intensive training, you know what you do and pose a real threat , she is not longer a peasant conscripted in haste, but a professional soldier, or even what was called a Doppelsöldner (“double-mercenaries”, “double-pay men”, from German doppel- meaning double, Söldner meaning mercenary), a Renaissance shock troop.
Progress in a technique is exponential, initially rapid but gradually slowing down.
– Progress in a technique is exponential, initially rapid but gradually slowing down.
1) That’s logarithmic, not exponential.
2) My experience is that learning hits plateaus, then jumps again, then plateaus again, etc… Different schools have different plateau profiles, so you should pick one that matches the amount of time you have to put into it.
Depend my experience 3 years of HEMA is more a rapid, then low pace of progresion.
Yes progression is logaritmic but dedication and efforts are exponential to progress.
For competition it’s a cliff effect at every category…
But Maxima unlike me was not noob figther at the begining of her training , she has a solid hand to hand combat training , at my advice not a usual military one , military training is mainly about weapon retention , reisiting or evading holds and switching as soon as possible to a firearm , a 9×19 mm parabellum is about 480 J more than many punch and a 5.56 NATO about 1700 J definitively surhuman.
When Maxima punch is at least comparable to the energy of WWII naval gun , her training if the US army is at least midly competent wil be mainly hand to hand and shoting is focused on her natural ranged weapons due to range and speed , a .338 Lapua Magnum has a velocity of 1 023 m/s , and speed of light if she use lasers is 299 792 458 m/s.
Its undeniable that she had some training in close combat , perhaps experience with knives , but she understand striking distance and tactical positionning two importants items of armed melee , the two important items of learning are mainly adapt to new striking distance with a greatwsord , halfswording to maximize stabs , and introduction to the montante style because it is eficient against multipe adversaries.
And Maxima seems to have been in a serious pool before the finals , not surprising for an unknow name , the organizers want a show with know figthers to sell tickets and atract patrons.
Not in the shin! For the love of tibia! Not the shin!
I don’t know, really, depends on how the physics of somebody’s super powers works.
Impacts behave differently depending on whether the object hitting you is moving faster or slower. The slower the impact, the more it’s just a push. Faster, it deals damage instead of pushing.
Think of it this way: That 25 mph boxing glove is going to deal out a lot more damage if there’s a wall behind you, right? The wall won’t let you recoil, so the impact energy deals out damage, instead.
But for a fast moving impact, the back of your body is the “wall” that’s keeping the front of your body from moving out of the way. So fast moving blows do disproportionate damage.
It’s a question of the superpower physics: For normal humans, if you’re stronger, the greater force you’re applying with your muscles makes your fist move faster, which is why your punches do more damage: You stored up more kinetic energy in your fist before it hi!
If the physics worked the same way for Maxima, when she throws a hard punch her fist should be moving about Mach 5, and hit more like an armor piercing tank shell than a fist.
But since Maxima has that weird contact telekinesis based strength, maybe her fists only move faster if she switches over to super speed, and she’s more like the 25mph boxing glove attached to the cargo ship?
Which, to be fair, is a lot more damaging than a 25mph punch, because when my fist hits your face, my fist at last slows down, while the unstoppable 25mph punch is going to deal out whatever amount of force is needed to instantly accelerate your face to 25mph in the space of a fraction of an inch…
Sydney is painfully aware of the kind of guns Cora uses. Remember the “unwinder round”?
The Best DNA collection round ever!
My head canon for “fighting strength” and “hit force” among supers is that at a certain point they are accessing other powers. Psychic, gravity, force, kinetics or whatever you want. And it imbues them with that physics breaking attributes.
So if someone “hits like a locomotive” it’s because when they are punching their fist actually weighs as much as a locomotive. But only while they are punching. As it is all reflexive, it might not even be mental, it might be they trained their muscles to summon the extra force or mass.
But I don’t think too deeply on it. It is just enough of a notion to hang my hat on. And then I sit back and enjoy the fights.
And it varies as needed for the plot. In the Smallville series, Clark gets hit by Lex’s car and is knocked thru the guardrail and into the river. in the opening montage, he gets hit by a truck and the truck shatters around him without him moving an inch. He has to be using some strength and flying skill to stay in place or not.
There’s something that in super speed in superhero (and sometimes science fiction like in the case of Data doing thins really fast in Star Trek) that if you did that in the real world, you would break things.
What I mean is that force = mass times acceleration. So like say The Flash is typing on a keyboard. That keyboard is freaking PULVERIZED because his fingers are moving so fast that the mass of his fingers times the near light speed manner in which he’s typing results in massive amounts of kinetic energy being dumped into the keyboard. That is of course ignoring the fact that the machine likely wouldn’t be able to properly respond to presses that fast, it’d register them as constant presses rather than individual, discrete presses, EVEN IF they could spring up fast enough which they can’t, and all of that ignores the physical damage done by the super speed typing.
What I’m getting at here is… if this were real life, and that sword didn’t have some kind of durability enchantment or wasn’t made of like scrith or something, then she’d be obliterating the sword SO FAST…
Also something a lot of people don’t realize, swords weren’t made to last. They were made to be damaged and eventually have to be smelted back down and turned into something else, possibly another sword but not necessarily.
Of course we are talking magical sword here, so I’m not really saying “it doesn’t work like this, she shouldn’t be able to do this”. I’m more saying “thank goodness that sword is both magical and in a superhero universe or this wouldn’t work”
Sidekick Girl touched on this also. Haze (super speed) was able to shatter a geo-kinetist defenses by taking advantage of F = m * v^2
Speaking of duel wielding, a) does her TK field extend to her weapon, it should (as I’m writing this I just imagined an MK style Grrl Power fighting game where on of her employs full Dur/str allocation and focuses on her handcannon as a club weapon [think erron black crossed with Jax]) b) the normal rules of swordfighting don’t work om someone her strength and speed and I guess mobility, I look forward to that
Something bugs me about this version of training montage. Max is condensing 3 months of training into 3 realtime days. But she’s still expending energy for those 90 days. Her brain has to deal with 90 days worth of experience. She should sleep 90x over the period, etc… (and that’s only IF she can speed-sleep).
Superpowers are weird I guess.
Physics vs Super Powers is a short sliding scale. You can basically have one or the other, or there need to be extra super powers to compensate for when physics or biology goes ‘nope’.
If you have extreme physics breaking super powers and magic like this comic have in abundance, you’re already ignoring physics and logic to tell a story, so why even try to make a tiny bit of real world sense here and there?
I agree wth R., Grrl Power’s medium primarily allows the author to create the story. Any effort Dve B. puts into realism does enhance the story, up to a point of diminishing returns.
FYI, “martial” is misspelled in paragraph 2 of today’s commentary. I only bring it up because the idea of a “marital artist” amuses me. The possibiities seem endless. :)
Just to touch on the application of physics to super-powers, Dave B. & the other commentors are making some good points.
Relative mass & inertia should apply to any supers story with any significant depth. But if you want to base a physics class on supers fisticuffs, you are going well beyond Physics 101. Just identifying all of the relevent physics in an example would be fascinating.
For example, attack a castle wall with a battering ram. Place the ram on the proverbial frictionless surface: very little damage. Now place the whole thing underwater instead of in atmosphere: more damage.
Then there are the mechanics of physiology. Take Spiderman vs. the Lizard, or Arnold vs. the Predator. Simple cases of longer arms & legs on one side. What are the strength & structural integrity of muscles, bones, and tendons? What are the anatomical dimensions and leverages? You need to calculate all of that to advise the combatants on what distance they should engage their opponents for their best advantage. (Don’t let Spiderman get in close.)
If Krypton had not exploded, Kal El would have been learning this stuff in grade school!
“Training anĺme montage time?”
-Sidney
Your thoughts re Thor v Thanos remind me of the reasons why I really disliked the 1992 “Death of Superman” story arc in the comics. Unless I’m really remembering it wrong Doomsday should have been easily defeated by Superman because he couldn’t fly and lacked most of Superman’s ranged attacks – Superman should have been able to throw him off the Earth into space, or intercept one of his super-leaps and use a suitably large explosion (or series of explosions) to propel him past escape velocity if he didn’t want to risk hand to hand. A “code against killing” really makes no sense when dealing with something that has already caused hundreds of deaths.
The killer thing about Max and swords is she can use flight to ignore many of the normal laws of physics.
“Maxima is a surprisingly competent marital artist. Nowhere near Math’s level,”
Seriously? Nobody is gonna comment on this typo? And how well it segues into the next sentence?
That should be enough to tingle Dabbler’s porno sense…
I’m glad someone else spotted this. I was like, “wait… hold up a sec.”
I came here looking for who had already commented on it.
3 months of training? Better than nothing? Yes. Good enough? No.
For any hobby martial artists out there, 3 months = 90 days = 2 years of one day a week. (Except not really, because downtime helps you learn faster than pure hours would suggest) That’s 2-3 belts of most martial arts, which isn’t much. You’re generally looking at ten years for anything approaching mastery.
Luke Skywalker became very good with a lightsaber in a very short time but perhaps he is a bad example. If the force is strong with you there is little you can’t do.
Well, I think the idea here is not to get Max to a point where she could beat an opponent on sword skill alone. Against a competent sword wielder, she will be outmatched. The sword is her defense against opponents with magic, so not losing it, I think, is the focus here.
Hey Dave B., I just had a thought: if you did a page on Professors Dabbler and Deus teaching a class on superpower phusics, I bet their contrasting styles could be hilarious!
Nice touch with the Family Guy knee injury reference with that lone speech bubble from Maxima in the final panel!
I’m actually surprised the program is, based on the dialog, actually managing to harm/stress Max.
Also, lmao, Cora is very real for that. Even in a world with supernatural forces, sufficiently advanced guns are the way to go.
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side.
I suspect that it’s more Maxima managing to harm herself. Been there, done that while learning weapon styles. XD
Can Maxima also Speed-Sleep?
With everyone else at normal speed she’ll be alone for the next few weeks
except for dinner breaks. Every 4 minutes!
Maybe I’m completely missing how Super Speeding works for Supers.
Honestly I’ve always thought about the 3rd law issues with DBZ fighters punching each other. So much of hitting is bracing and leverage, see the infamous one-inch punch which is basically deriving the force to hit someone using body mechanics rather than full body momentum. So when you can hit with enough force to completely override your own ability to keep your feet on the ground and enough to make your body weight completely superfluous in the resulting third law equation, it starts to get to the point where it’s like fistfighting in freefall, and without some kind of propulsion to counter it, you’ll be walking/flying back to your target after every hit.
I’ve always kind of assumed this is an unspoken thing in DBZ and it would apply to Maxima that they’re dedicating part of their flight ability to counter their own recoil whenever they’re hitting someone, because simple foot-to-ground contact would be insufficient.
What about singing swords?
Flight would be insanely useful in a sword fight.
I remember many years ago I was sparring with a guy at Pennsic and I kept beating him and I it took me a while to figure out why. This guy was stronger than I was, faster than I was, and more skilled than I was, but I kept winning. (Heinlien was right, fencing moves much faster than the conscious mind typically works.) Eventually I realized it was because he had a bad leg, so I could back up faster than he could advance, which allowed me to control the distance , which was all it took for me to win most of our bouts. I pointed out that he would be kicking my ass if he were less aggressive as that would take away my advantage, he said he knew but being aggressive was more fun.
yeah, I have similar experiences. I was already a somewhat experienced foil fencer and had done some HEMA type work with broadwords and longswords, but had never used a dueling saber before, when I had my first sparring match against a dedicated saberist. I skunked her 15-0 no because I was better with saber fundamentals, but because I was faster, had better reach, and was better at controlling the distance of engagement.
I tried fencing in college, but ran into two problems.
1. I was extremely nearsighted, and the strength of my prescription apparently messed with my hand-eye coordination. Or maybe it was just that I had lousy reflexes.
2. In my first bout the opponent’s button came off in mid-match just before he scored a hit over my jugular, and while I didn’t get more than a scratch, I decided, screw this, I’m less likely to be killed practicing judo.
Dave, I applaud your dedication to detail, but I think you’re overlooking one important detail:
This sword was built by aliens &/or magical beings who probably don’t live on Earth. The sword can be any combination of design features &/or aesthetics you can imagine. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an alien species that uses 4-ft diameter edged hula-hoops as their mainstay ‘sword’ weapon.
That sword’s super long hilt is wacky. Those quillions are almost uselessly short, which is the reverse problem. Definitely a ceremonial blade rather than one really meant to be used in earnest. But it’s there for the magic buff, not for sophisticated sword work, so I give it a pass for the specific circumstances. I’d never want to wield a blade designed like that otherwise.
Psssst Did you know that your city has an incredible density of HEMA clubs, as well as some of the best fighters in the country? Because you could have some sword fun or learn a cool bit of choreography for a fight scene if you wanted too, just saying
Metal gear vr training “textures?
She got Peter Griffined at least once, apparently.
The best attack with super strength is to grapple and crush. In Game of Thrones the Mountain didn’t kill people by punching them, he killed them by grabbing and squeezing.
I tired to work out a martial art for people with enhanced strength for a story, the answer I came up with was either: Get you opponent against something solid like a wall or the floor so that your hit are effectively crushing them between your hit and the solid object, or grab a hold of them to pull them into your hit. Also put some English on your hits because a spinning opponent it a disoriented opponent. Lots of arm and leg locks with strikes to the joints opposite the directed they are supposed to move it always help, even if they don’t break anything it sends a message.
It should be noted that most of the cases of Supers “punching down” at other Supers who are on the ground involve the Super doing the punching either straddling the one they’re punching or dropping onto them from above using either flight powers or the momentum of the downward portion of a leap. If they have flight powers, they’re using those to keep themselves from going flying if the other Super reflects rather than absorbs the impact, and if they don’t have flight powers, they may be using their legs to anchor themselves to the Super they’re punching.
The term “punching above their weight”, usually referring to a boxer facing an opponent in a higher weight class and winning, takes on a whole new meaning with Supers, who *literally* punch with more force than their physical mass and speed (and construction or body composition) account for. They are, consciously or otherwise, adding metaphysical force to the physical force of the punch. That’s the difference between a “Super” punch and one that is “enhanced” through physical means like an exo-suit. Not all “superheroes” have powers, and not all of those powers present as enhancing physical attributes, which is where Gadgeteers and Mad Scientists come in, and why Batman and Daredevil do a *lot* of high-level “mundane” martial arts training and typically find themselves fighting non-Super enemioes.
There’s two things that piss me off about how Super Strength (without Flight) is portrayed/used in fights.
One is right where you’re talking about, but it really boils down to “Why do they throw their opponents?” If you have a solid grip on an enemy, what you’d want to do is whale on them with your other arm, or try to get them into a full joint-lock/dislocation/bonesnapper grip. You become YOUR OWN leverage there, and then your superstrength directly contributes to both being the unstoppable force AND the immovable object, and so either the enemy is tougher than you’re strong, or something in THEM gives out, which, depending on where/how you’ve grabbed them, is going to end the fight pretty quickly.
Like, a crunched wrist or snapped forearm is going to stop the enemy from punching you BACK pretty quickly.
The second is movement/speed. Like you said, superstrength is going to almost naturally wind up with the person moonhopping or doing Hulk jumps when they try to put their food down with any force, so I personally think that ‘realistic’ superstrength-based movement systems would involve nearly horizontal body posture where they’re essentially ‘stair-stepping’ into the ground, punching toe holes and pushing off the mass of whatever material they’re in to move themselves. That or they’d need, like, brake pad ceramics or steel shoe soles that they’re bending and putting enough energy into that they heat up and ‘stick’ to the ground (or dig in) while using a very odd ‘purely horizontal’ leg motion so they, again, aren’t launching themselves into the air with each footfall.
I know enough physics/engineering to know that fights with super human strength wouldn’t look anything like how comics and movies generally portray them. A lot of things we think of as rigid are quite plastic under extreme forces; air resistance starts to matter a lot when you get much faster than a human. A “realistic” super speed puncher would be dealing with pressure fronts hot enough to glow, not to mention all kinds of shock wave turbulence. That doesn’t even get into the distinctions between power and energy you got into with the jousting boxing glove examples.
It does sap some of the joy out of the fights, because it’s hard to not see them as smashing action figures together; sometimes covered with a thick layer of handwavium, like vaseline on a camera lens.
On the other hand, I don’t actually know enough physics to do better myself without running into some other pitfall, so I try not to complain too much.
Ahhhh, isn’t time dilation fun? This is more from overclocking the holo deck and Max using super speed, but the effect is similar….. Hope the holodeck is accounting for ‘real time’ physics so Max doesn’t get bad habits training is a superspeed environment and the different physics from that.