Androids #19 & #20's Power

[Super Saiyan Turlast x4]

I'm honestly starting to wonder if these guys are a lot weaker than I thought.

[RandomGuy96]

You know, Super Saiyan Turlast x4, looking at those quotes actually makes 19 and 20 look super weak to me. Hmm.

But then again 20 doesn't seem to be a great judge of power.

I think the only thing against that is powered up 19 being able to hurt SS Vegteta. But then again, we don't know how that absorption works. Theoretically, couldn't Gero just get some weakling like Yamcha to continually fire Kamehamehas at him every day, raising his maximum each time? Would the ki taken from a Kamehameha be greater than the ki of the person who fired it?

Even if he isn't a great judge, I see no reason why he wouldn't at least know how strong he was relative to some weaklings. If he said that Yamcha would be a great addition to his own power, I think we should believe him; he has a scouter, and the Yamcha he's sensing has no reason to look more powerful than he is. So, if Gero is 15 million, Yamcha could be 2 million (where I have him at the time); the increase he got from absorbing Yamcha's energy would be more than 10% of his own, enough to be considered significant.

Maybe his scouter has an upper limit, but instead of exploding when it tries to sense someone above that, it just gives the wrong reading? Like, the limit is 30 million, and if he senses anyone above that, it'll just read them as 30 million?
But then again 16 didn't have such problems; he was able to accurately read Initial Perfect Cell with his scouter. Sooooo... most likely Gero was just desperate, and didn't bother reading his enemy. Then there's base Goku's punch being tanked, but actually causing 20 to move a little (this could be excused as a surprise attack, but he should still have been expecting an attack...), and Ten being able to see and react to 20's eye beams. Does that mean Ten's closer to 20 than Nailccolo was to ~3% Freeza?

Oh, another thing: powered up 19 couldn't one-shot post-Kamehameha sick Goku, who couldn't one-shot base 19, despite being able to make Vegeta bleed. These androids' powers are weird.

Okay, here's a quick list of the androids' feats:

-Base 20 one-shots Yamcha.
-Base 20's beams are dodged by base Goku and Ten.
-Base 20 tanks base Goku's punch, though his head moves.
-Base 19 survives multiple blows from sick SS Goku.
-Post-absorption 19 defeats sick SS Goku (but doesn't one-shot him).
-Post-absorption 19 is knocked away from Goku with an off guard hit from base Vegeta. He has a visible indent in his face for the rest of his short 'life'.
-Post-absorption 19 causes SS Vegeta to bleed from a full force hit.
-Post-absorption 19 is then easily defeated (but not one-shotted) by SS Vegeta.
-Base 20 manages to catch Piccolo in a hold he can't escape.
-Base 20 is launched off of Piccolo with a surprise kick from Gohan.
-Post-absorption 20 is easily crushed (but not one-shotted) by Piccolo.
-Post-absorption 20 is one-shotted by 17.

[Saiga]

Good point about 16's sensing actually being accurate. Maybe the energy 19 and 20 are talking about isn't equivalent to battle power, or I can't see how that makes any sense.

[RandomGuy96]

Good point about 16's sensing actually being accurate. Maybe the energy 19 and 20 are talking about isn't equivalent to battle power, or I can't see how that makes any sense.

Why would he give himself an inferior scouter like that? Even if he did, and he's not talking about battle power, it still wouldn't make any sense. It's basic "who's stronger than who" stuff, or "how much stronger is this guy than me?". If it can't do either of those simple things, what's the point in even using it, and why did 20 actually bother to install one?

The strength of these two androids also relates to the strength of the humans here, what with Ten dodging 20's eye beams (which he shouldn't be able to if he's ~3 times weaker) and Yamcha being stated to be a great source of energy. At the very least, with these actual feats and statements (what few there are), I can't see any of them being below 1 million. I used to think that they were all under 100,000 at this time ('cept Krillin, who's still only a few times stronger than that), but not anymore.

[Saiga]

Not an inferior scouter, but a completely different scouter. One that is more relevant to their needs - if energy and battle power aren't the same thing, then they need to know more about energy because that's what keeps them going. Him using energy as a basis for evaluating strength is the only way I could make sense of him scanning Goku and then being completely wrong about him, because there would be a correlation but they're not completely the same leading to surprises like that.

[RandomGuy96]

Not an inferior scouter, but a completely different scouter. One that is more relevant to their needs - if energy and battle power aren't the same thing, then they need to know more about energy because that's what keeps them going. Him using energy as a basis for evaluating strength is the only way I could make sense of him scanning Goku and then being completely wrong about him, because there would be a correlation but they're not completely the same leading to surprises like that.

Maybe the ki Goku was putting out that time was lower than it was normally?

And again, this is basic "who's stronger than who". Whatever scale he's reading them on, shouldn't he be able to tell if one of them is stronger? It's implied he knows his own strength, since after reading initial sick SS Goku, he comments that it's low enough for him to handle. He also says that he "adds" the power of others to his own, which brings battle power to mind.

Oh, and 16 uses the term "battle power" frequently. Gero at least knows what it is, and should know that he's in for a bad time if he randomly creates a completely different system that can have someone with a low energy rating and a high battle power rating.

Oh another thing: Ten and base Goku were able to dodge 20's eye beams with similar ease, or rather lack thereof, and Ten only considered Goku in a different dimension when he went Super Saiyan. Initial sick base Goku is only moderately stronger than Ten, maybe?

[Super Saiyan Turlast x4]

#20's power radar seemed current--but also based around calculated data. That's probably why he didn't seem as precise as #16. He does say Super Saiyan Goku surpassed his calculated limits to the point where he wasn't sure about #19 getting an opportunity to absorb his power, so I'm guessing anything above those limits is a guess. Also, after draining suppressed Piccolo, he's confident draining suppressed Piccolo again will put him above Vegeta.

[RandomGuy96]

#20's power radar seemed current--but also based around calculated data. That's probably why he didn't seem as precise as #16. He does say Super Saiyan Goku surpassed his calculated limits to the point where he wasn't sure about #19 getting an opportunity to absorb his power, so I'm guessing anything above those limits is a guess. Also, after draining suppressed Piccolo, he's confident draining suppressed Piccolo again will put him above Vegeta.

Suppressed Piccolo plus base Gohan, Ten, and Krillin. I'm going with "he only gave it an upper limit due to calculations" as well; could be that giving it a scouter that good would somehow cause his robot body to harder to control.

...hey, it makes about as much sense as a stronger body being harder to control. Even though 17 and 18 seemed completely in control. Unless they were actually completely different people prior to the cybernetic enhancements, and being enhanced in that method for some reason causes you to become a bratty teenager. In which case, Gero is justified in not wanting a to put himself in an infinite energy model.

[Saiga]

It could be an issue of standing vs fighting ki.

I'm not trying to argue that he's unaware of battle power, just that battle power/ki and "energy" might not be identical. Gero gives his infinite model the ability to measure battle powers, and 19 and 20 measure energy because it's crucial to their functions. Gero observes that the is a correlation with energy and battle power and starts using it as a way of measuring someone's power, which proves not to work as well. That's just how I see it.

It's not someone having low energy and high battle power, but the idea that the scaling isn't completely the same. Goku's energy goes up by a lot but his battle power went up even more.

[Super Saiyan Turlast x4]

That was his initial estimation. After Piccolo tells Vegeta to not interfere, #20 thinks Piccolo alone will put him above Vegeta. Keep in mind he's still unaware Piccolo has much greater power:

No.20: “Don’t interfere, he says…Kukkukkuh…Alright, if I drain [Piccolo]'s energy again, then [I’ll win] against Vegeta…”

But to be fair, I guess suppression can also fool his power radar like it does with the scouter. I mean, #16 still thought Vegeta was noticeably stronger than Perfect Cell in the beginning. Since #20 said there was no way Goku would ever have a drastic power-up because he's beyond his prime, I'm guessing he never felt a need to design a power radar that would measure a level of power far out there.

[RandomGuy96]

Well, whatever the case, I believe there's enough feats and statements that portray as not terribly far off from the base saiyans; Goku moving 20's head, Goku dodging his eye beams, Yamcha being stated to be "a great amount of energy" relative to 20, 19 bothering to drain half-dead base Goku's energy, 20 considering the ki of four base saiyan tier (at best) fighters to be equivalent to on omgawesome power-up, etc. But then, there's almost as many that portray them as in the tens of million even prior to absorbing any energy. I'm not quite sure what to think. Other than them being somewhere in between 10 and 100 million... maybe.

It's weird, because if I didn't know the proper context, I'd think that Toriyama originally intended them to be super weak, but retconned it when Vegeta showed up so his fight with 19 wouldn't be a one-shot victory. But it's actually the other way around; he originally intended these two to be stronger than the Super Saiyans, and retconned them into fodder for the Super Saiyans, and most likely Freeza.

[SSJ4_Zankuto]

I never thought of #19 (Post-Absorption) > #20 (Post-Absorption) before and slipping Piccolo (w/o weights) in-between the two is a good fit too. I consider both at their (Post-Absorption) strength level higher than 100% Full Power Frieza.