greenmeanie said:
Scion does a hard scan of the future before the fighting even starts.
The text you're quoting has nothing to do with any fight. Scion is using PtV in response to being spoken to by Jack Slash and given a potential new direction in life. He has a very clear reason to use PtV here that has nothing to do with combat, where it's more efficient and less self-destructive to fight without it 99.99% of the time.
greenmeanie said:
Of course he's using precognition to determine when he should activate precognition.
That's paradoxical.
It's made emphatically clear that Scion doesn't use PtV except in rare circ*mstances. It's something he activates when he wants to take a quick glance at the future, not something he runs .
Scion's PtV is normally inactive, because of how much energy it costs, and has to be activated at great expense, either consciously or in response to specific triggers, like Sting being fired at him.
If he was using PtV to detect threats then he wouldn't need specific contingencies—no, "if X happened," triggers—it would react to everything.
Scion's PtV costs him a lot of lifespan to use.
Wildbow said:
He maintains a toolkit of a handful of other powers to be able to fly, thinker abilities to understand complex ideas/languages, the precog ability that costs him a lot of lifespan to use, and a bunch of other stuff I can't be arsed to name, as I said above.
Scion activates PtV and burns a year off his life.
Worm: Interlude 26 said:
The entity looked to the future, looked to possible worlds, and it saw the ways this could have unfolded. It burned a year off of the entity's life, but he had thousands to spare anyways.
Scion doesn't actively use the power.
Worm: co*ckroaches 28.6 said:
"No. Well, maybe. I don't know. Haven't exactly had a long conversation with her. No. I'm saying… well… Scion has it. Her power. That line he fed Eidolon? It was calculated to devastate the man at the point he was flying highest, so the fall would be more catastrophic. It's something I couldn't pull off. I watched some footage of the fight, where Scion's power didn't nix the cameras. Corroborates the evidence. He wasn't actively using the power, but there's a confidence there."
"Scion sees the path to victory?"
Scion merely takes quick glances at the future because it expends a lot of energy.
Worm: Interlude 26 said:
A quick glance into the future, not so deep a look as to expend too much of its remaining energy. Conservation is key at this juncture, and from here on out.
PtV kicks in in response to set criteria, at a cost to Scion's lifespan.
Worm: Speck 30.5 said:
His future sight power wasn't like Contessa's. Narrower, lacking imagination, but he'd set up contingencies. If X happened, then the power would automatically kick in.
Apparently the cost of being hit by Foil's power was worse than whatever it cost him to use that power.
Scion tries to conserve energy in-character. He uses PtV only when his alternatives are less efficient.
Worm: Interlude 26 said:
It spends the least energy for the maximum result.
[...]
A quick glance into the future, not so deep a look as to expend too much of its remaining energy. Conservation is key at this juncture, and from here on out.
[...]
The shard that allows the entity to see the future is broken up, then recoded with strict limitations. It wouldn't do to have the capabilities turned against the entity or the shards.
The fragment it just used is sent off, directed to a small female.
The other fragments in that same cluster are retained. To see the future is resource intensive, but the entity will harbor it as a safeguard.
[...]
Stored energy is expended as a resource, to view the future, to perceive and communicate.
But this is not sustainable here, in this phase of the cycle, when the entity is so much smaller.
[...]
It remains aware of its limited lifespan. Three thousand and six hundred revolutions.
[...]
The counterpart is dead.
For a very long time, the entity is still. It does not move, and instinctively holds back every ability, as if conserving energy in the face of a vast threat.
Worm: Interlude 27 said:
Another attack. Glaistig Uaine coordinated with him on this one. Another attack, rending Scion. An attack that would have killed an ordinary man.
He could sense a degree of distress. Of concern. Not as dramatic as the disgust he'd felt from Scion before, but noticeable.
If Glaistig Uaine was going to betray him, it would be now.
"Are you going to stab me in the back, Faerie Queen?"
"Every time-" Glaistig Uaine spoke, stopping as they stepped into a lush Earth, "he uses his power, it costs him time."
"Time."
"He experiments, he plays, but he doesn't yet abandon hope. I don't abandon hope. The cycle could yet complete, by luck alone. He needs to find his reflection in the mirror. He lost his, like Peter lost his shadow, but another could appear."
"This doesn't answer my question."
"You are so blind, High Priest. Deaf. He will not let himself run out of time. If he runs out, then he will stop playing, stop experimenting, and simply wait, bide his time in the hopes that another will come to act as his reflection."
[...]
Had Scion decided on a tactic that would cost him less time than he was losing by taking Eidolon's repeated attacks?
He had.
[...]
It dawned on Eidolon. He has Contessa's power.
How many years did it cost Scion to use it?
Scion didn't need to use PtV to sense Sting preemptively because he's aware of his immediate vicinity.
Worm: Venom 27.2 said:
"His perceptions are finely tuned," the Doctor said. "He's aware of his immediate vicinity, and in absolute control of how his power is expressed. He left… what was the number?"
greenmeanie said:
Also the claim that it only triggers on things he already knows are a threat is not supported by the quote you listed.
It is. Scion's PtV is activated in response to specific triggers: if X happens, then the power kicks in. His contingencies aren't broad, like Contessa's, they're narrow and unimaginative.
greenmeanie said:
You are claiming that its a narrow "trigger if sting hits me" which would have required him to set a contingency for every individual power that could possibly hurt him.
Yes. It costs him nothing to do this irrespective of the size of the list. He already knows every power. Using PtV costs a lot of energy but having a contingency that causes it to activate shouldn't cost anything unless the contingency is activated.
Besides which, the only power we know of that's able to actually threaten him is Sting. Not the powers of the thousands of other parahumans he fights, or the Endbringers', or even the results of nearly every Tinker in the setting building a weapon together. There are likely very few contingencies in place.
greenmeanie said:
This is much more complicated then a single simple command like "trigger if anything would actually hurt me", which would be far more likely for him to have given
The issues with this are that A) he explicitly turns PtV on when using it, B) running PtV non-stop in order to know what would be a threat in advance would drain his energy incredibly quickly, C) he uses PtV more narrowly than Contessa (who does use broad paths to protect herself), and D) many attacks so hurt him but don't merit a response from PtV (it's the esoteric and unique elements of Sting that actually matter).
Eidolon and Glaistig Uaine do enough damage that it's more efficient to use PtV against them but it would have been even more efficient to skip the fight entirely and use PtV out of the gate. Scion doesn't do this because he doesn't know that the fight will be draining until it already is. No precognitive power makes him aware of that before fighting Eidolon and Glaistig Uaine or lets him dodge their attacks.
TheMasterOfMankind said:
PTV is not as energy intensive as you make it seem. According to the text:
The text you quote doesn't relate to PtV, just Scion extending his senses across multiple universes. He didn't simulate any futures or hypothetical timelines.
Worm: Interlude 26 said:
Extending its perception over the world and other realities, the entity can sense everything at once. It can sense conflict. Wars.
It remains aware of its limited lifespan. Three thousand and six hundred revolutions. To search like this costs a tenth of one revolution's time. There is more than enough remaining before the cycle concludes.
Or there should be.
Simulating a few possible versions (and the consequences) of his conversation with Jack Slash costs one year of his life.
Worm: Interlude 26 said:
The entity looked to the future, looked to possible worlds, and it saw the ways this could have unfolded. It burned a year off of the entity's life, but he had thousands to spare anyways.
PtV is implied to cost multiple years when used against Eidolon.
Worm: Interlude 27 said:
It dawned on Eidolon. He has Contessa's power.
How many years did it cost Scion to use it?
It's elsewhere implied to be very costly.
Wildbow said:
He maintains a toolkit of a handful of other powers to be able to fly, thinker abilities to understand complex ideas/languages, the precog ability that costs him a lot of lifespan to use, and a bunch of other stuff I can't be arsed to name, as I said above.
Worm: Interlude 26 said:
A quick glance into the future, not so deep a look as to expend too much of its remaining energy. Conservation is key at this juncture, and from here on out.
Scion's intended "lifespan" is three-hundred and thirty-one years.
Worm: Interlude 26 said:
Three hundred and thirty-one revolutions before the shards reach a critical mass and enough information is gathered.
Scion can afford to burn less than eleven years of potential lifespan per year. He burns one naturally. That leaves him with nine brief uses of PtV per year, if we generously assume that he uses no other powers and that each use of PtV costs only one year.
If Scion is trying to out-stamina something like ORT then he needs to be even more selective with his use of PtV
Broadening his senses and running PtV simultaneously may well be multiplicatively expensive: more data and more things to simulate, exponentially more potential interactions to account for. PtVing an entire Lostbelt would be obscenely costly.
It would be completely out of character for Scion to open with PtV the moment he spawns in or in any scenario in which he isn't given very good reason to fall back on his safeguard.
