Aero Jump over rivers

[Orris]

Aero Jump is really cool, I love using it to be able to get past some hard climbing areas. What about letting us jump over rivers with it?

[Isiaa]

In all fairness, this is would make sense.

[Rias]

I'm not so sure. Blasting yourself more or less straight up a short distance, or cushioning a short fall with a blast of air is one thing, but propelling yourself over an entire river of considerable size, I'm not sold on. Plus, it'd be one more step toward people requesting flight via aeromancy, and that will never happen.

[TwistedAkai]

I'm not so sure. Blasting yourself more or less straight up a short distance, or cushioning a short fall with a blast of air is one thing, but propelling yourself over an entire river of considerable size, I'm not sold on. Plus, it'd be one more step toward people requesting flight via aeromancy, and that will never happen.

How wide -are- those rivers?

[qinweiqi]

So, I was getting all ready to make a fuss about this -- because it is a really fun suggestion -- but when I dusted off my science hat I concluded that the science might be on Rias' side this time. If we look at projectile motion models (and assume the relevant assumptions apply to our aeromancers) we can get an idea of how far an aeromancer might be able to jump based on heights they can clear. If the tallest climbable obstacle an aeromancer can clear is 150 meters (about 500 feet, or the height of a 33-story office building) on a straight vertical jump, then we could expect them to have a range of about 300 meters or 1000 feet on an optimized distance jump. While the vertical clearance seems to me to be more than sufficient to clear most obstacles where height is the issue, such is not the case with the horizontal distance.

Stats I could find suggested that the Amazon river is between 1.6 and 10 km in width (or 1.0 to 6.2 miles; it various across the river obviously), the Nile is about 2.8 km (~ 2 miles) wide, and the Mississippi varies between 20 feet and 4 miles (6m to 6.4km). Thus, large rivers can easily span 5 times the horizontal range of an aeromancer. While the rivers may be narrow enough to aerojump across in some places, those are the most likely places to build bridges, which makes it kind of moot to jump across anyway.

That being said, the rivers would logically vary in width and not every narrow point would have a bridge. It would be really cool to have various parts of a river coded to be aerojump-able, but the downside with that is that you shouldn't get a message about your inability to clear it -- that is you're not sure you couldn't clear it until you don't. For aeromancers lacking sufficient swim skills to navigate the river they'd probably die a lot trying to figure out the safe places to pass. So, maybe put this one on a bucket list of things to do after death is very, very miserable.

[Orris]

I would be happy with only certain narrow points being jumpable, it would be cool to find them! I'll volunteer, I'm a great swimmer so it won't be too dangerous. I'd also be happy with no rivers being jumpable at all, I just thought it would be a fun suggestion to expand elemancer utility.

Can we really jump as high as a 33 story building? Whoa. I thought it was maybe as high as a two story house tops. If it's 33 stories then the damage from aeromancy blasting people into another room should have a much higher maximum!

[Orris]

On the subject of rivers of variable width it would be nice also if there were fords whre you can just wade across. Give a chance of slipping and falling but nothing too dangerous.

[qinweiqi]

Can we really jump as high as a 33 story building? Whoa. I thought it was maybe as high as a two story house tops. If it's 33 stories then the damage from aeromancy blasting people into another room should have a much higher maximum!

I have no particularly factual stuff backing that estimate up. It was more or less a wild guess to show that even if you have amazing vertical clearance, it doesn't scale to horizontal barriers well. That being said, if the aero lift drops you at the peak of a parabolic projectile motion, then I think at 10 seconds you'd be about 120 m high. (And have a launch velocity of 49 m/s or 109 mph) Though if any of that 10 second travel time is you falling downward and slowing your motion my height and initial velocity estimates would be off. Also I have no idea how the aero lift compares to the capabilities of a single aeromancer (master or otherwise).

[Rias]

I think two storeys high is a generous maximum. The Aero Lift has vastly more air-blasting-power than an individual elemancer could conjure. I can't say for sure how wide these rivers are, but they're wide enough to be considered major rivers and would take more than a pole-vault to get over. I agree, some spots where you can aero jump over, or ford the river on foot, would be cool.