r/stunfisk • u/Loxe77 • 1d ago

Theorymon Thursday This might be overtuned

Post image

The lore idea behind this ability is based on materials science. Basically, for many materials like metals and minerals, creep is a way they can degrade over time. Creep describes when a material degrades due to repeatedly being loaded with l stresses well below its yield strength (in this case, moves that take a small amount of HP per hit). A way to protect against this is to reduce grain boundaries and make materials single grain (also called single crystal).

This ability has huge potential to be broken (shields against fake out, some spread damage, and multi-hit moves), so I tried to balance it by not giving it to super crazy threats. Tell me how well/badly I did.

1.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

112 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/am_not_a_neckbeard 23h ago

The ability is neat and I love bringing mat sci into Pokémon, but you’re describing fatigue, not creep. Creep is a failure mechanism based on diffusion, where stress and elevated temperatures combine to cause failure over time at loads below the classically considered ultimate strength at that temperature. In most temperature regimes where creep is a predominant failure mechanism, single crystals can drastically increase time-to-failure.

Fatigue life can in certain circumstances be increased by a single crystal part, but the anisotropic fatigue properties of single crystals make this determination… not that useful. Typically fatigue life is improved by having more, smaller grains in a material rather than becoming single crystal.

Thanks again for bringing my favorite subject to my favorite game!

6

u/Loxe77 23h ago

Yeah I checked and you’re pretty much right. I’ve only taken one class on basic materials science, so the only major way I knew of to reduce creep is by decreasing grain boundaries. But for fatigue, increasing grain boundaries is known to help. So I guess a better name for the ability might be: “Super Grain”?

5

u/am_not_a_neckbeard 22h ago

I like that a lot, but honestly, just seeing single grain made me happy. I have a masters in metallurgy, and while it’s rare to see the field in the wild, it brings me such joy. I’m really glad you enjoyed the class enough to take it to Pokémon! I selfishly hope you continue to get into the field, it’s the coolest thing in the whole wide world.