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Great stuff. I guess I spoke too generally to be 100% accurate. Of course there are a million unknowables, but I was speaking in generalities because they're generally helpful. Every cross country race I've ever done has been on a consistently smooth surface, with the exception of very brief technical bits, so slower rebound speeds with medium to low tire pressure has definitely been an advantage. Letting the tires take care of ultra high frequency vibrations from the dirt and letting the suspension take care of larger impacts and mass shifts has felt very fast. If you're doing a cross...

Literally every cross country bike I work on has the rebound set wide open and feels like a pogo stick. It really shouldn't, but its been a curious observation! My feeling is that they are all so far past needing a service that they are getting a large amount of damping from the seal friction. The 'theories' all depend on a number of things, not all of which you have control over and it all depends on how deep in to the rabbit hole you want to think about it! the TL;DR is go ride and test several different spring...

Great question! You're correct that total spring forced damped is probably equal to or less than your enduro setup, so I can see why you assume the damping necessary is equal, but there's more at play here than just damping your rebound stroke at the deepest part of your travel. Interestingly, most of the high speed rebound damping that occurs at bottom out is provided by shims on your main piston, which aren't adjustable with your rebound knob. Your rebound knob is mostly just affecting rebound speed at the top 2/3's of travel. Generally speaking, faster rebound settings are going...