Stop buying Speed Star
I see a lot of posts on this subreddit complaining about "Fraud Motion gave me Prepared to Pass", or "I glued my run because Fraud Motion didn't give me Speed Star", my brother in christ, you shouldn't be buying Speed Star anyway, let's analyse the skill:
Per Gametorra for the above screenshot, the conditions are, a random point on the final corner if you are in the top 5, increase target speed by 0.35 for 1.8 seconds.
Comparing with other gold velocity skills and their effective distance gain:
- Professor of Curvature: 0.35 target speed for 2.4s = 0.84m
- Escape Artist: 0.35 target speed for 3s = 1.05m
- Unstoppable: 0.35 target speed for 2.4s = 0.84m
And with white velocity skills:
- Distance/Style Corners/Straightaways O: 0.15 target speed for 3s = 0.45m
- Distance/Style Corners/Straightaways OO: 0.25 target speed for 3s = 0.75m
- Corner Adept: 0.15 target speed for 2.4s = 0.36m
Compare the above to speed star, 0.35 * 1.8 = 0.63m
Speed Star has worse velocity gain than all other generic gold velocity skills, and is even worse than double circle Distance/Style Corners/Straightaways. The cost of double circle Distance/Style Corners/Straightaways with skill hints is ~150 - 200 skill points, compared to Speed Star which is 360 sp without hints.
You might be wondering why is there this discrepancy between Speed Star and other velocity skills? It's because of it's activation condition on the final corner, the main use of Speed Star is speed carry over. Speed carry over is when a target velocity skill overlaps with the start of the acceleration zone, meaning you enter the zone at a higher base velocity, meaning you get a head start on your acceleration. A lot of tracks in Sprint/Mile/Medium distance have accel zones somewhere around the final corner, and generally there is where Speed Star gets its value.
HOWEVER
If you do the actual math on a lot of courses, the % chance of Speed Star actually giving speed carry over is very small. Take the upcoming CM18, Hanshin 1600m mile track, which I will use Umalator for analysis:
On this track, Speed Star has an effective duration of 2.88s, and in distance terms this is ~60m
The final corner stars at 800m, and ends at 1127m which = 327m window. The late race starts at 1067m, in order for Speed Star to carry over on this track, its random activation point has to lie between 1010 - 1150m for the carry over to take decent effect, that's a 40m window.
The % chance of Speed Star activating during the 40m window from a possible random selection of 327m is 40 / 327 = 12.32%
You are spending 360 skill points on a 12% chance for a speed carry over.
If it activates later than this window it gets eaten by the accel zone, before this window and it's just a very poor value mid race velocity skill. It doesn't matter if Fraud Motion finishes her event chain before make debut and gives you prepared to pass, you shouldn't be buying Speed Star anyway, unless it's for a team trials Uma, then complain away I guess, but for CM stop buying this skill and stop looking for this skill.
