[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by SpaceBrotha

and why is that? if the field is set to resist cold, it merely is stopping energy from transferring between the user and the environment, hence providing safety from cold...
why not merely adjust the field to resist objects from outside from moving to the inside, effectively creating a dampening field... and the rapid slowing would wreck havoc to just about anything that enters the field.

Wouldn't that usually be called a shield. Stopping cold and gases is a matter of stopping low velocity objects (in atmosphere, cold and heat is mostly transmitted by conduction and convection, both relatively low velocity), as opposed to stopping something capable of crossing the field space in a fraction of a second.

AFAIK, it was because the bullet cannot take the forces that affect it upon entering water, and breaking apart, thus lessening the amount of force (and hence distance) needed to fully bring it to a halt...

Actually, the force to stop it would have been the same. When the bullet breaks up, the area of the bullet's frontal cross section effectively increases, so it reduces the pressure. And even then, the bullets took up to 90cm to break. A Barrier Jacket will be lucky to have nine centimeters to work with, so the bullet is far less likely to break before hitting skin with its higher KE.

...and since the water resists harder when the bullet enters with a greater velocity, the bullet breaks down faster if it has a greater velocity.

Most people will resolve breakup problems by toughening the shell of the round, such as using steel rather than using soft lead, rather than reducing velocity.

And the entire field is part of the BJ provided by an intelligent device, which seem to have rather good sensory capabilities (bardiche noting suzuka and arisa when they were still rather far away, and out of LoS) so the field would be adjusted to dampen the bullet by the time it was shot, thanks to the AI in the device.

ROFTLMAO. Arisa and Suzuka were enormously easy detections in the kekkai. They were pretty much the only two unidentified lifeforms, which means Bardiche picked them up out of a noise level of roughly zero. How that translates to picking up tiny supersonic bullets is difficult to imagine.

Actually the speed seems to vary quite a lot, from vices sniper rifle and nanoha divine bustering vita being good examples of seemingly near instantaneous travel of the beam, while some of the 'regular' beam attacks are slow enough to be dodged...

Actually, Nanoha DBing Vita is one of the slower examples of high powered beam speed - so many seconds elapsed that it was rated at only 16m/s. Vice's sniper rifle had a more decent velocity though.

Originally Posted by Keroko

And why should that increase range? Accuracy, yes, but range?

Effective Range is partially a function of accuracy. Bullet velocity being another factor.

Hence why we have the entire 'what do the creators intent VS what do we see' debate. It is obvious that simply observing is not an accurate measure of deciding that magic is faster or slower then normal projectiles. Judging by Vice and Nanoha, we can assume that magic can travel at similar speeds, but the action is merely slowed for dramatic effect.

Creator's intent is almost useless, especially in situations where they hadn't thought about it. Even if you catch them in an interview and they quick-wit up a semi-usable answer, it is very doubtful that's what they thought when they made it. So what is canon, is it their intention as they drew the slides or their retroactive thoughts during a post-production interview? Endless debates here alone for no result.

Obviously, what happened is that some rounds do travel faster than others, but it will be a rare one indeed that even has the speed of a pistol bullet.

Originally Posted by tshouryuu

One question why are you talking about barrier purge when we're talking about the fields? I don't really get this.

The point is how integrated the whole BJ system is.

Exactly how it does this is unknown. We think that the field of a BJ bleeds the kinetic energy into the atmosphere. Or It maybe like what SpaceBrotha mention, the field acts like how water stops a higher velocity bullet far more effectively than a slower moving bullet.

As a general defense system, a defense method counting on convenient target characteristics is extremely iffy. When they tested the bullet on water thing on Mythbusters, they were using lead bullets, which are soft and thus easier to deform. Change it with a tough material like AP-steel and that effect goes.

Yes, a higher KE incident means more energy that can potentially go into deforming the bullet. However, which side takes most of the KE damage greatly depends on which side is stronger, and since a BJ defensive complex, to all presentations is relatively soft and flexible, it won't be winning many such fights.