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Introduction
Hammer units are the unit of measurement used in Source Engine games by Valve, they are present currently on profiles for Counter-Strike and Team Fortress.
Currently, it is accepted on pages that everyone in Team Fortress is Subsonic for comparing the rockets of Soldier to that of an RPG-7 and how they are relative to the mercenaries in terms of movement. It has been like this for years and only until recently when someone attempted to upgrade them once more, just with a different weapon to scale.
This is the point where I had started to take notice of this, and how much of a problem it actually is.
My Issues with the Scaling
Lack of Proper Justification
As mentioned above, hammer units are their own unit of measurement, 1 HU is the equivalent of 1.905 cm. As such, anything in terms of movement can be scaled with them through HU/s, and this is how the game itself does this, so why the need to make the comparison when the information is laid out in front of us?
Using the Projectiles page, we can confirm that Soldier's rockets move at 1100 HU/s, this translates to 20.955 m/s or Superhuman in terms of speed. This is much lower than what we currently estimate them to be, but what exactly is the issue with that? Is it because it doesn't strike us as realistic? What are the motivations behind the comparison to something higher when they don't remotely look the same?
Arbitrary and Inconsistent
The choice of scaling from Soldier's rockets doesn't have any real logical decision behind it, and the result hinges entirely on what side of the bed the person woke up on, they will never line up with the results of another calculation made the same way using the same measurements, and this can be demonstrated by examining the two calculations above and my example here:
Say we chose to use the Huntsman for scaling instead of Soldier's rockets:
Using the bow page on the wiki, we can see that a standard recursive bow can reach speeds of 225 FPS or 68.58 meters a second.
The Huntsman's projectiles travel at 1812.1 HU/s uncharged to 2600 HU/s charged, the average Scout moves at 400 HU/s
Uncharged - 400/1812.1 = 0.2207 | 65.58*0.2207 = 15.135606 m/s, Superhuman
Charged - 400/2600 = 0.1538 | 65.58*0.1538 = 10.547604 m/s, Peak Human
Compare this to the results above, we have the actual HU/s telling us Scout is 7.62 m/s or Average Human, we have different calculations that use these same units and compare them to actual equipment in the real world, one is Subsonic, another is Transonic. The only thing they all have in common is that they are inconsistent with one another.
This is ultimately something that could be present in more online multiplayer shooters where projectiles are a common sight, so I don't think it's a problem strictly with TF2, but rather using given speed values in a game and attempting to convert that to vague real world counterparts. It creates inconsistent speed ratings that are always subject to change based on what weapon you want to try and scale from.
If we are unwilling to use the hammer units by themselves, they shouldn't be used at all and speed feats need to be gathered in other ways, such as from other media like Meet the Scout or the comics.
Hammer units are the unit of measurement used in Source Engine games by Valve, they are present currently on profiles for Counter-Strike and Team Fortress.
Currently, it is accepted on pages that everyone in Team Fortress is Subsonic for comparing the rockets of Soldier to that of an RPG-7 and how they are relative to the mercenaries in terms of movement. It has been like this for years and only until recently when someone attempted to upgrade them once more, just with a different weapon to scale.
This is the point where I had started to take notice of this, and how much of a problem it actually is.
My Issues with the Scaling
Lack of Proper Justification
As mentioned above, hammer units are their own unit of measurement, 1 HU is the equivalent of 1.905 cm. As such, anything in terms of movement can be scaled with them through HU/s, and this is how the game itself does this, so why the need to make the comparison when the information is laid out in front of us?
Using the Projectiles page, we can confirm that Soldier's rockets move at 1100 HU/s, this translates to 20.955 m/s or Superhuman in terms of speed. This is much lower than what we currently estimate them to be, but what exactly is the issue with that? Is it because it doesn't strike us as realistic? What are the motivations behind the comparison to something higher when they don't remotely look the same?
Arbitrary and Inconsistent
The choice of scaling from Soldier's rockets doesn't have any real logical decision behind it, and the result hinges entirely on what side of the bed the person woke up on, they will never line up with the results of another calculation made the same way using the same measurements, and this can be demonstrated by examining the two calculations above and my example here:
Say we chose to use the Huntsman for scaling instead of Soldier's rockets:
Using the bow page on the wiki, we can see that a standard recursive bow can reach speeds of 225 FPS or 68.58 meters a second.
The Huntsman's projectiles travel at 1812.1 HU/s uncharged to 2600 HU/s charged, the average Scout moves at 400 HU/s
Uncharged - 400/1812.1 = 0.2207 | 65.58*0.2207 = 15.135606 m/s, Superhuman
Charged - 400/2600 = 0.1538 | 65.58*0.1538 = 10.547604 m/s, Peak Human
Compare this to the results above, we have the actual HU/s telling us Scout is 7.62 m/s or Average Human, we have different calculations that use these same units and compare them to actual equipment in the real world, one is Subsonic, another is Transonic. The only thing they all have in common is that they are inconsistent with one another.
This is ultimately something that could be present in more online multiplayer shooters where projectiles are a common sight, so I don't think it's a problem strictly with TF2, but rather using given speed values in a game and attempting to convert that to vague real world counterparts. It creates inconsistent speed ratings that are always subject to change based on what weapon you want to try and scale from.
If we are unwilling to use the hammer units by themselves, they shouldn't be used at all and speed feats need to be gathered in other ways, such as from other media like Meet the Scout or the comics.
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