Engine update 9th of September
Big update — your flags did most of this
Spent today going through every result you've flagged as wrong. Some of you were right, some of you weren't, and a couple of you found things I'd never have spotted on my own. Here's what changed.
Characters who were being rated for things they don't do — and not for things they obviously do
This was the big one, and it started with a stat bar.
The Hulk had no speed rating at all. None. A character who leaps miles at a time and catches Mjolnir out of the air was being treated as though he stands still. So anyone quick just walked around him.
Once I started looking, it wasn't only him:
Superman wasn't credited for combat at all — despite being trained by Batman, Wonder Woman and Mongul's son, among others
Naruto had no speed rating, which one of you flagged directly: "Naruto 6 paths is enough, he dodged Madara's light beam attack". You were right. Six Paths Sage Mode dodges attacks moving at light speed, and it turns out he can fly in it too, which also wasn't recorded
Thragg had no speed rating despite outpacing every other Viltrumite
Mahito was on zero speed — a special-grade curse who fights in Shibuya, rated as immobile
Gojo and Doctor Doom weren't credited for their hand-to-hand fighting
All fixed. These aren't cosmetic — a speed rating decides who moves first, and fighting skill is part of what gives someone a way to hurt an opponent at all.
Scarlet Witch was rated as a minor magic user
MCU Wanda was sitting below characters she'd go through without stopping.
In Multiverse of Madness she kills Black Bolt by taking his mouth away, tears Reed Richards apart, cuts Captain Carter in half with her own shield, crushes Captain Marvel, kills Professor X inside his own mental attack, and then takes Kamar-Taj on her own. Her sheet said "minor magic user".
She's now rated for what she actually does. Her old note saying telepaths could get at her has been removed as well — the most powerful telepath in fiction tried it and died.
On the Darkhold, since someone will ask: it's a spellbook, not a power source. It taught her to travel between universes. While she was doing the killing she was holding and reading nothing. So it isn't treated as borrowed power.
The Flash was being rated on how fast his chair flies
This one's my favourite.
Wally West in the Mobius Chair had no speed rating whatsoever. The engine was reading his flight value — the chair's travel speed — and calling that his speed. The fastest man alive, measured on his furniture.
He's now rated properly. In that form he outran the Speed Force itself, so he's at the top of the scale.
Which led to a genuine bug underneath it.
The Road Runner could beat reality-warpers
The engine has a rule for top-tier speedsters: if you're fast enough, you can hit a reality-warper before the warp completes. It's the right rule — in a straight fight with no prep, the Flash turns someone to red mist before they've finished forming the thought.
The problem was the rule only checked speed. It didn't check whether you had any way to hurt the person.
So the Road Runner qualified. Speed 10, no offensive ability of any kind, and he was beating reality-warpers by running at them.
Now the rule requires that the engine has already found you a genuine route to win. Running very fast at someone you can't hurt doesn't kill them — it breaks your arm.
The Road Runner went from winning that fight to losing it decisively. Super Sonic, who has actual attacks, kept the ability.
Battle write-ups should explain themselves better now
A fair complaint I've seen more than once: results come back saying someone "outlasts" or "wins the war of attrition" or is "the only one with a path to victory" — and that's true, but it doesn't tell you why.
The engine always knew why. It just wasn't passing it on to the part that writes the story. It was handing over the conclusion and none of the reasoning.
It now passes the actual mechanism. So instead of "only Yhwach has a valid win condition", you get what really happened — his energy absorption drains the Kamehameha before it lands, and Goku can't outpace a man who's already seen the movement.
Fights you've run before may still show the old write-up, because results are cached. New matchups will read better.
Bugs
Flag reports were sometimes recording the wrong fight. If you changed the fighter selection before hitting the flag button, the report captured the new fighters instead of the ones you'd actually watched. Fixed, and I've repaired 85 old reports so they point at the right fights.
One character was two characters. Hancock — the Will Smith one — had been merged in the data with Boa Hancock from One Piece. The write-up called him "she" and gave him charm powers, because that's genuinely what the engine had been told about him. Separated.
A matchup page was broken. The Doom Slayer vs Kratos page was pointing at a version of Kratos I'd retired, so it was arguing nothing at all. Working again.
What I didn't change, and why
Three things I looked into properly and then deliberately left alone:
Mahito vs Thragg. Someone flagged that Mahito's soul-touch should get through Viltrumite biology. Fair point — but Idle Transfiguration needs him to physically touch you, and Thragg is far faster. He never lands it. The verdict was right; the write-up explaining it was misleading, and that's now fixed instead.
Domain Expansions. Went deep on whether someone like Superman could break out of one from the inside. The answer is that the engine already handles it correctly, so nothing needed building. Worth knowing: a domain barrier is reinforced against the person trapped inside and weak from the outside — which is backwards from every normal wall, and deliberate.
A change I was about to make to how fragile characters are treated. Measured it first, and the measurement said it would help in about 12% of cases and cause problems in more. Left alone.
Keep flagging things
Genuinely — the flag button is the most useful thing on this site for me. Several of today's fixes started with somebody hitting it, and two of them found bugs I had no other way of noticing.
You don't need to explain yourself. "Naruto's faster than that" was enough to find a character with no speed rating at all.
If a result looks wrong, say so.
Spent today going through every result you've flagged as wrong. Some of you were right, some of you weren't, and a couple of you found things I'd never have spotted on my own. Here's what changed.
Characters who were being rated for things they don't do — and not for things they obviously do
This was the big one, and it started with a stat bar.
The Hulk had no speed rating at all. None. A character who leaps miles at a time and catches Mjolnir out of the air was being treated as though he stands still. So anyone quick just walked around him.
Once I started looking, it wasn't only him:
Superman wasn't credited for combat at all — despite being trained by Batman, Wonder Woman and Mongul's son, among others
Naruto had no speed rating, which one of you flagged directly: "Naruto 6 paths is enough, he dodged Madara's light beam attack". You were right. Six Paths Sage Mode dodges attacks moving at light speed, and it turns out he can fly in it too, which also wasn't recorded
Thragg had no speed rating despite outpacing every other Viltrumite
Mahito was on zero speed — a special-grade curse who fights in Shibuya, rated as immobile
Gojo and Doctor Doom weren't credited for their hand-to-hand fighting
All fixed. These aren't cosmetic — a speed rating decides who moves first, and fighting skill is part of what gives someone a way to hurt an opponent at all.
Scarlet Witch was rated as a minor magic user
MCU Wanda was sitting below characters she'd go through without stopping.
In Multiverse of Madness she kills Black Bolt by taking his mouth away, tears Reed Richards apart, cuts Captain Carter in half with her own shield, crushes Captain Marvel, kills Professor X inside his own mental attack, and then takes Kamar-Taj on her own. Her sheet said "minor magic user".
She's now rated for what she actually does. Her old note saying telepaths could get at her has been removed as well — the most powerful telepath in fiction tried it and died.
On the Darkhold, since someone will ask: it's a spellbook, not a power source. It taught her to travel between universes. While she was doing the killing she was holding and reading nothing. So it isn't treated as borrowed power.
The Flash was being rated on how fast his chair flies
This one's my favourite.
Wally West in the Mobius Chair had no speed rating whatsoever. The engine was reading his flight value — the chair's travel speed — and calling that his speed. The fastest man alive, measured on his furniture.
He's now rated properly. In that form he outran the Speed Force itself, so he's at the top of the scale.
Which led to a genuine bug underneath it.
The Road Runner could beat reality-warpers
The engine has a rule for top-tier speedsters: if you're fast enough, you can hit a reality-warper before the warp completes. It's the right rule — in a straight fight with no prep, the Flash turns someone to red mist before they've finished forming the thought.
The problem was the rule only checked speed. It didn't check whether you had any way to hurt the person.
So the Road Runner qualified. Speed 10, no offensive ability of any kind, and he was beating reality-warpers by running at them.
Now the rule requires that the engine has already found you a genuine route to win. Running very fast at someone you can't hurt doesn't kill them — it breaks your arm.
The Road Runner went from winning that fight to losing it decisively. Super Sonic, who has actual attacks, kept the ability.
Battle write-ups should explain themselves better now
A fair complaint I've seen more than once: results come back saying someone "outlasts" or "wins the war of attrition" or is "the only one with a path to victory" — and that's true, but it doesn't tell you why.
The engine always knew why. It just wasn't passing it on to the part that writes the story. It was handing over the conclusion and none of the reasoning.
It now passes the actual mechanism. So instead of "only Yhwach has a valid win condition", you get what really happened — his energy absorption drains the Kamehameha before it lands, and Goku can't outpace a man who's already seen the movement.
Fights you've run before may still show the old write-up, because results are cached. New matchups will read better.
Bugs
Flag reports were sometimes recording the wrong fight. If you changed the fighter selection before hitting the flag button, the report captured the new fighters instead of the ones you'd actually watched. Fixed, and I've repaired 85 old reports so they point at the right fights.
One character was two characters. Hancock — the Will Smith one — had been merged in the data with Boa Hancock from One Piece. The write-up called him "she" and gave him charm powers, because that's genuinely what the engine had been told about him. Separated.
A matchup page was broken. The Doom Slayer vs Kratos page was pointing at a version of Kratos I'd retired, so it was arguing nothing at all. Working again.
What I didn't change, and why
Three things I looked into properly and then deliberately left alone:
Mahito vs Thragg. Someone flagged that Mahito's soul-touch should get through Viltrumite biology. Fair point — but Idle Transfiguration needs him to physically touch you, and Thragg is far faster. He never lands it. The verdict was right; the write-up explaining it was misleading, and that's now fixed instead.
Domain Expansions. Went deep on whether someone like Superman could break out of one from the inside. The answer is that the engine already handles it correctly, so nothing needed building. Worth knowing: a domain barrier is reinforced against the person trapped inside and weak from the outside — which is backwards from every normal wall, and deliberate.
A change I was about to make to how fragile characters are treated. Measured it first, and the measurement said it would help in about 12% of cases and cause problems in more. Left alone.
Keep flagging things
Genuinely — the flag button is the most useful thing on this site for me. Several of today's fixes started with somebody hitting it, and two of them found bugs I had no other way of noticing.
You don't need to explain yourself. "Naruto's faster than that" was enough to find a character with no speed rating at all.
If a result looks wrong, say so.
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