Final Fantasy Hacktics

Quote from: "FFMaster"I live in DD. You guys can't just trample over my fun =p

You live there?

So, tell us the question on everyone's mind.

Is it so cold in there that the one Lune Knight really needs to wear two Robes?

Quote from: "FFMaster"Not much can be done about bosses and knockback. Immortal status makes them immune to knockback. Dash got changed to 25% cancel charging because Throw Stone already had knockback, and was much better because of range.

As for the UberSquire in DD, I could easily take him on, with 0 Items. He is much weaker than Queklain, due to lack of AoE. I can just spam Raise/Fairy to tank and use whatever for attack. You need to give him Ultima at least, but even then, he still might be too weak. I can just Mind/Magic Ruin him until I can tank him easily.

EDIT: Forgot about Stop. Other alternatives include Don't Act, Sleep, etc. Forgot about Immortal status' lack of immunities to the important status. Hell I could Poison him and stall for 10 rounds.

You're taking that post way too seriously, FFM.

=p

Quote from: "Voldemort"I cast stop

fights over

I thought the ??? made it obvious the Squire would have boss immunities.

Psh.  :p

One of the Deep Dungeon battles should be a Squire with bandon, 100 Br, Elf Mantles, innate Defend status, innate Defense / Magic Defense UP, Teleport 2, ???, Attack UP, Martial Arts, Concentrate, and some ridiculous secondary equipped with two best Flails, forcibly equipped with Grand Helm, Maximillian, and Robe of Lords accessory (because its fricking cold down there!).

Then make Voldemort be forced to be the person to test the fight and only give him 5 of each Item.

Revenge for the hell that is 1.3... by a true UberSquire!



EDIT:  In seriousness, it would be kind of cool to see some bitching Squires over the course of the main game and an uber broken one or two in the Deep Dungeon, if only because people will see Squire, go "lol, bad", and then get wrecked before learning the awesomeness that is 100% accurate, high damage dual Flails.

Speaking of Squires, is it possible to insert an ability into their skillset that replicates the 'old' version of Cheer Up (Br boost), while allowing us to keep the Regen-adding one from 1.3?

It's not much, but it boosts Basic Skill's usability up a bit more.  Is it possible for Dash to cause both knockback and Cancel: Charging 25% each (in the way Masamune casts Haste or Regen instead of both)?  Dash with just 25% Cancel: Charging is decent but too situational to justify the skill over something that simply hits like a truck and kills the caster midcharge.  Knockback seems a lot better in this game, so that would probably do it.   Especially if we could knockback non-Zodiac bosses... not being able to do so doesn't make much sense, imo.  That, and I think all of us want to Throw Stone Algus off the side of Fort Zeakden into a snowy, pancake death.

Quote from: "philsov"Edit:  Actually, the "fix" would be to not give monks innate martial arts and boost the potency of punch art, but I think this would cripple them too much.  Dunno, I'll run some numbers.

No Innate Martial Arts.  Make Martial Arts cost 0000 JP.  Boost either Monk PA and/or Punch Art to compensate so that they're not quite Two Swords'ing, but about 50% between their current level and their Two Swords level when equipped with Martial Arts.

They'd still hit pretty hard and their abilities would be more potent, but no W-EV in a game where all EVs mean more and no hats / Equip Armor option without losing power should balance this.

I say 0000 JP Martial Arts so that the class isn't worthless upon unlocking, as it already feels (to me, at least) like it takes a good few ages to learn enough good Punch Art skills to have a truly usable set without Crystals to help.  This'd make it impossible for anything to Martial Arts with two fists.

Quote from: "philsov"It's package deal.  As ninja lose innate two swords, thieves lose innate concentrate.  Removing one but not the other is folly :p

Thank god.  Least you did that much, though I'm not sure if I prefer more innates or no innates yet.  I find the innates are cool ways to make each class truly unique, but too many can easily result in unintentional game-breaking-ness, I suppose.

Quote from: "philsov"This is of course coupled with the change to daggers to be 100% anyways + Steal %'s increased slightly to compensate for the new evasion.

Ic.

Quote from: "philsov"Looking at the mage tree, there isn't much "progression" -- they are all rather interchangeable, and chosen based on which primary + stats + equip option you'd like.  Once Samu and ninja enter the melee picture, they outclass all other melee most of the time, because of their innates -- true there are times 2H lancer trumps equip spear/AU samu and two sword thief trumps concentrate ninja, but all in all I'd like the fighter classes to be more akin to the casters in terms of superiority.

I figured as much.  It's worth playing around with and seeing how class superiority pans out.  I always felt Samurai having the most melee potential was okay since they have lower HP than Knights / Lancers (from what I've seen, at least) and the Speed of a Knight, meaning they were very "kill them quickly or die trying" every time I used one.  Lack of Br formula may make Katanas really worth it even without Two Hands innate, so we'll see.

Ninja and Thief were always rather interchangeable in the melee picture for me in 1.3, depending on whether I wanted Throw for damage, Martial Arts > dual Daggers / Sasuke Knives, Steal, etc.  My Lancer was my crutch for a majority of the game, as well.  While I probably should have stuck with UberSquire for Ramza, he did very well as a Geomancer for me as well.

Melee classes I never found really worth using on a mainstay basis were Squire / Knight / Archer.  I didn't use Monk often either, but that was mostly because I felt no need for it, not because I felt it inferior.

Though I'm also assuming you want to try and lower how much damage gets output per unit in order to make battles last a bit longer and be more interesting without throwing Defense UP,ridiculous growths, and uber equipment + Maintenance everywhere.  At which point this may work out okay.

Quote from: "philsov"Samurai already have the highest MA -and- PA multipliers in the game, and in previous versions had innate 2H.  I really don't think they need more.

You're saying you took that off?

Bawww.  Hopefully, I can still justify using a male Samurai.

Quote from: "philsov"Why else would you use a thief over a ninja?

I already use a Thief over a Ninja in 1.3, and if Ninja lost Two Swords innate, I see no reason not to just slap that onto my Thief and take my 100% shots and higher HP multiplier for the slightly lower PA.

Besides Throw, which is honestly better in ASM'd for obvious reasons.  But I think you get the idea.  Guess it depends how much better Throw is to determine whether a innate-less Ninja is still worth using over a Thief.

Quote from: "philsov"

QuoteBut this means only non-Br using Reactions (essentially Abandon and Weapon Guard) can be made innate at this point? Damn.

Dunno.  The ASM hack somehow bypasses the problem -- if it was as simple as just giving everyone innate weapon guard in ffpatcher there wouldn't be an ASM hack for it, no?

On paper I think mantles are fine, with the feather mantle now boasting 25% evasion.  I may change my tune once I play with them in game, but for now I think they are suffucient.  And IF it were possible to make them global, which is waaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond my ability, they'd still need to flip-flop and be 100% back/25% front.  

I agree there's some redundancy between spike shoes and battle boots, but I don't think evasion is the answer.  Perhaps status immunity.

Status Immunity could be good.  Immune to Sleep, Don't Move?  IDK.

SilvasRuin may be right on how the ASM bypasses the problem.

I'd love to see evasion be like:

Weapon Guard - 100% Front, 50% Sides, 0% Back
Shield - 100% Front, 50% Sides, 0% Back
Class - 100% Front, 50% Sides, 25% Back
Mantles / Accessories - 100% Front, 50% Sides, 25% Back.

Magic Evasion obviously remains 100% on all sides.

This'd really further the goal of this hack - make positioning and position planning turns ahead become far more important, simply because WHERE you hit the opponent always matters no matter their equipment, instead of just "Am I behind him?  Y/N?", makes it harder to try and RNG through the game with stupid Evasion setups, etc.  It also makes a lot more sense, as honestly I can't see how I get a 100% Shield benefit from a right side hit when my Shield's equipped in my left hand and facing my front initially.

Actually hacking it to be so, IDK.  I don't ASM, but I assume the game uses an equation and just multiplies unneeded values by 0 depending on the direction being faced, so it may be as simple as finding those 0s and changing them to 50s and 25s.  If I'm wrong and they store separate equations for each side, it'd be a matter of editing the equation directly to handle more values and have a (value * 100) * (value * 25), etc. thing going on, which'd be a lot more complicated I assume.

Still, too bad on not being able to Reactions stack classes without nulling their equipped Reaction.  That could've made for some really cool class specialization and rebalancing.

Quote from: "philsov"If given an innate reaction ability, the equippable reaction slot gets nulled out.  Multiple (innate) reactions only work for mimes and monsters (and enemy-only job classes).

Besides, Katana's (and knight swords) are going to be straight PA * WP -- the current knight sword weapon formula is basically "swordskill", which is why it doesn't work with poach.  Katana's will probably recieve a reduction in WP as a result of this, however.

That sucks.

I didn't see you had taken my suggestion of making Katanas straight PA x WP.

But this means only non-Br using Reactions (essentially Abandon and Weapon Guard) can be made innate at this point?  Damn.

At least Katanas will hopefully be more useful melee weapons now.

Also, reposting my second edit in case you don't see it since you posted while I was doing it:

Quote from: "RavenOfRazgriz"EDIT DOS:

I remember one of them. Battle Boots. Right now they're pretty much worthless, especially with how early Spike Shoes come in.

Maybe make them Jump +1 and some small Evasion (~5-10%)? Speaking of accessories that give Evasion, is it just me, or are the %s Mantles give pretty damn ridiculous, considering they work on all sides?

I've always thought something needed to be done with them, either making them fall under C-EV's new 'Global' clause, getting lower %s for Phys-EV, or even being completely redesigned into something like an accessory version of a Robe. I know you cut their evasion numbers somewhat, but it's still something I'd like your thoughts on.

Odd idea: Giving (at least some) classes an innate Reaction in addition to Weapon Guard.

I forget exactly how the Reaction stack works in terms of which Reaction fits where, but I know its similar to the Evasion stack.  

Example, I was contemplating on how Equip Spear on a Samurai is still > Attack UP, as Equip Sword (iirc) can be as well.  Which honestly makes no sense to me, because for such high WP weapons, Katanas are pretty much worthless outside of Draw Out if Samurais can't even make good use of them offensively.  Since from what I can tell, philsov either hasn't or doesn't want to give Katanas some sort of proc, innate, buff, etc to make them worth equipping beyond their WP, and the WP isn't enough on its own to merit using them since Equip Spear is both superior and directly on the way to Samurai... I thought of giving all Samurai innate Brave UP, allowing them to cause more damage over time via Katana melee without essentially being Reaction-less.  Obvious problem at first is that the primary Reaction equipped becomes more and more dangerous over time as well... but that doesn't seem like a very big issue, considering many other moves that modify Br / Fa returned and the most unbalanced Reactions have been removed or modified (I'm looking at you, Auto Broketion).

Whether every class should get an second innate Reaction, or just a few that may need it like Samurai, I'm not sure.  But things like Samurai with innate Brave UP, Ninja with innate Sunken State, Thief with innate Catch, etc. seems like it could be a pretty cool way to make the weaker Reactions more useful, unless they receive major buffs to put them on par with Dragon Spirit, HP Restore, etc.

Just a random thought.  Also, if Auto-Broketion has been downgraded sufficiently, is there still a reason not to at least test implementing a variant of the Fury hack, either lowering the +X value or simply lowering Orlandu's Br a bit?

EDIT:

I agree with above.  If possible, make Blind > Concentrate.  That makes too much sense not to do and makes Blind pretty damn useful compared to its current 1.3 form.

I actually had a few more suggestions, but I can't recall them right now.  Damn.

EDIT DOS:

I remember one of them.  Battle Boots.  Right now they're pretty much worthless, especially with how early Spike Shoes come in.

Maybe make them Jump +1 and some small Evasion (~5-10%)?  Speaking of accessories that give Evasion, is it just me, or are the %s Mantles give pretty damn ridiculous, considering they work on all sides?

I've always thought something needed to be done with them, either making them fall under C-EV's new 'Global' clause, getting lower %s for Phys-EV, or even being completely redesigned into something like an accessory version of a Robe.  I know you cut their evasion numbers somewhat, but it's still something I'd like your thoughts on.

Quote from: "philsov"ULTRAPOTION (name tba, it's all caps and poor name for sarcasm~) will heal for 200.  

KEEP.  THAT.  NAME.

ULTRAPOTION

Desc: A REAL MAN'S POTION!  HEALS 200 HP!

Spell Quote: PAPER CUT, BEGONE!  ULTRAPOTION!  [new line] ...*Glug Glug Glug*



Also, I'm not entirely sure I agree with Voldemort's idea for Blind.  Since everything has some Evasion via Innate Weapon Guard and Global C-EV, Blind seems like something that'd be far more useful even with just its 3-2 AoE, assuming I remember the exact effects of Blind correctly.

Quote from: "philsov"So....... I can introduce another potion class.  Pot / Hi / X can be 30/50/70 and ULTRAPOTION can heal for 150.

...Can you keep the name in all caps like that and give it a spell quote?

It'd be the BEST. POTION. EVER.

Also, 30 / 50 / 90-100 / 150, imo.

Quote from: "Voldemort"if by "relatively slow" you mean "relative to setiemson humans with thief hats" then yes, he's slow

so what? alot of things are

That + immunity to general Haste.  I still would say for this keeping him immune to all status + magic is better than making him vulnerable to Haste / etc, but eh.

And yeah, a lot of things are slow compared to those things.  But also remember when you get Worker 8.

All that's left is Nevleska Temple, Zarghidas Trade City, Deep Dungeon, Orbonne Monastery, maybe a little bit of Chapter 4.

The first two are a joke.  The third we need not discuss, and the fourth too, though since this is based on Easytype those battles are probably a bit less ridiculous.

Having used Worker 8 in quite a few random battles and such, I can say he's really damn good when his Speed relatively close to the enemy's speed.  However, considering the insane Speed growths 1.3 has on some of the enemies you fight in Orbonne, Deep Dungeon, and the fact those ridiculous setups with massive speed are possible in the first place, Worker 8 is slow relative to the options the player has at their disposal by the time they get him, especially in 'Normal' 1.3, as I can't imagine getting through that godforsaken Engineer battle without Setiemson unless Level 99.  Again, easytype base + lowered Speed probably means he's a lot better in the end game dungeon if not Deep Dungeon, but in 1.3, he is still relatively slow compared to what a player probably needed to go and get in order to get through the fights to get him in the first place and compared to many of the remaining enemies in the main story and optional dungeon.

When units aren't on gimped Speed, he isn't slow at all.  But that wasn't the point in my reply to iopyud.  I said Worker 8 doesn't need a Speed point because he becomes relatively faster, due to the fact the above gimped setups are far slower than they are in either 1.3 or easytype, and this hack will (or at least, I hope would) slow down end game bosses enough to compensate for the fact the player can't go and get 4 hoes with ridiculous 20something Speed after Initial: Haste.

EDIT:

Quote from: "Voldemort"(btw in 1.3 Holy Dragon Reis can be worth keeping in Holy Dragon form.. has anyone seen her breath damage and innates? :O)

I remember you saying the Innates a few times and remember them being pretty good, though not the specifics on what they were.

But the question is: Is Holy Dragon Reis worth giving up both obscene stat human Reis and Cloud and the two copies of Secret Clothes from Zarghidas Trade City and Javelin II and Escutcheon II and Nagrarock and a Kaiser Plate?

Quote from: "Voldemort"and 13 speed at lvl 99 is not slow, like philsov said

Read my above post on explanation on the use of the word 'relatively'.

Unless you're talking to the iopyud kid thar.

EDIT: STOP EDITING YOUR DAMN POST IT MAKES REPLYING RETARDED.

Thank you. ^_^

Quote from: "philsov"Draw Out and Sing for starters, but understood.  I'll make him immune to less as well.

So, vulnerable to Haste / Protect / Shell, Blind / Slow... Don't Move / Don't Act?  IDK on the last two, since it depends how one thinks the statuses are inflicted by non-magic on a flavor level.  You could theoretically say Snipe hit a joint and Worker 8's repairing himself while the status is up, which I guess could also let him be vulnerable to Regen.

Reraise is a reinsertion of the soul into the corpse from what I can see (like Raise), so I don't think letting him be Reraised makes sense.  Then again, Items working on him doesn't make much sense either.

Quote from: "philsov"He's not getting any secondary.  Giving enemy monster-types a full working secondary via ENTD is fine.  I considered Fly too, maybe I'll just go with that.

Why not?  Item Secondary + Fly on 2 Move and a Speed that'll generally be slower than human counterparts doesn't seem broken, really.  Sure, that means Worker 8 could Elixir or X-Potion himself, but that's not much different from compensating Dispose with Move-HP UP.

Or is saying no a problem with actually adding the secondary?

Odd idea:  Item Secondary, Fly, 2 Move, vulnerable to Haste / Regen / Protect / Shell / Defend Status (lol) / Blind / Slow / Don't Move / Don't Act, immune to all other statuses and Items so that he can't randomly Elixir himself.  Maybe give him both Fly and Move-HP UP to compensate for immunity to both Healing Magic and Items.

If that's possible.  I think that'd be kinda pimp.

EDIT: Saw Voldemort's post below me.  Nix Move-HP UP from above suggestion because Energy and altered Speed values are enough for self-healing, imo.

Quote from: "philsov"Worker 8's speed was never poor in the first place.  He hit 13 speed at 99, which is something only a thief-leveled generic can pull off.  It keeps up the same pace, as do most monsters, in that they usually have 1 speed more than your 100 SPM unit without any speed gear, because odds are they are going to have on a piece and the boost compensates for that.

Note 'relatively'.  That means I was actually counting Speed-boosting gear, Setiemson / Excalibur, etc, because its always your final product that matters when you decide what unit to use, not just raw stats.

Because of Speed boosting and Auto-Haste, Worker 8 is relatively slower than the humans a player can have access to end-game.  Lowered Speed +X values and lowered base Speeds make Worker 8's raw speed have a far better chance to compete, as base speed means more and Haste means less because it has smaller numbers to multiply in terms of "Do I use Worker 8 or 5 obscene speed Auto-Haste guys?".

Since we're talking more like, 10 vs 14 here instead of 13 vs 20-25 (sometimes more) after factoring in Auto-Haste potential and equipment.  Which was what I was referring to in the first place.  Not *just* his base Speed vs base human Speed.

Quote from: "iopyud"EDIT: You know, if Dispose... or that Homing Laser thing still have that great range in this reduced movement patch, maybe... just maybe, giving Worker 8 an extra speed point and increasing its power will be a good buff.

And @Raven about Worker 8 mirroring other Steel Giants. NO. Worker 8 should be more powerful. He's Worker Fucking 8. STEEL GIANT. STEEL FUCKING GIANT.

Dude HE.AM.VERY.STRONG.

Philsov wants things SLOWER.  Not FASTER.  Everything else became SLOWER.  So Worker 8's Speed is better relatively, unless Philsov lowered his speed as well.

Also, go fight some 1.3 Steel Giants.  THEY. AM. VERY. STRONG.

Plus, Worker 8 is just an android like every other android.  There's really nothing special about him when compared to Worker 7 or any of the random encounter Steel Giants.  Absolutely nothing, besides the fact he joins your side instead of nuking your medieval ass with lazorzes.  THEY. ALL. AM. VERY. STRONG. THEY. ALL. AM. SAME. MODEL.

Machines don't get randomly more powerful because they join your team.  Nor do they get randomly far shittier.  Hence why all the Steel Giants in 1.3 (and in here) should be the same, imo.  They're all the exact same model of the exact same machine, aged for (relatively) the same amount of time.

Quote from: "philsov"a little more HP, move HP-up and no longer immune to haste/regen/protect/shell/reraise?  Move HP-up is the big one, he should be able to Dispose all the live long day.

Keep him Immune to everything.  You can theoretically justify Haste / Protect / Shell if they're added using non-Faith abilities, but then you'd also need to make him at least vulnerable to Slow, probably a couple other random things for logical consistency.

Move-HP UP maybe, iirc he has Defense UP already.  You could give him Item secondary and / or Fly the way the enemy Steel Giants have it (at least in regular 1.3).

Hell, I've always thought Worker 8 should mirror the Steel Giants you fight against in 1.3 in the first place because of how relatively weak he is compared to Humans or even straight monsters combined with Monster Skill.  So in the scope of this game, that'd be... Item Secondary, Fly, Defense UP, but no Move-HP UP (and in the scope of what this hack wants to do, no Move +X)?  Item secondary and Fly combined with lowered Speed and Move ranges on all the other units in the game (thus lowering how damaging being immune to Haste is) should make him pretty damn useful, I would think.

As for Auto-Potion... IDK.  20-25% Self-heal seems best for right now, I suppose.

Quote from: "philsov"Yoink! - that sounds pretty cool, actually.  Less random without the gender check, and more fitting, battle wise.  Maybe Disarm?  Caution can be shifted over to Monk anyways.

Blade Snatch, for the lolpun?  I do like the idea of this one as well.

Quote from: "philsov"Counter Wave fist - Variable-range counter, which then gets extended to... book/harp/spear/stick/carpet melee + swordskills.

Pretty much, kind of like a single-target Counter Flood for PA-oriented units.  That's kinda the intent at least, as (iirc) even a Martial Arts boosted Wave Fist does slightly less than a straight Counter from the same unit... and it's a Counter-type move that isn't boosted by Two Swords / Two Hands, giving it far less max damage potential than standard Counter for the range it gains.

Quote from: "philsov"Counter Secret Fist - another good idea.  While both this and Steal Weapon are hardly worth using as action abilities, having them as counters really turns the table.

Agreed, this could be cool as well.

Quote from: "philsov"Edit:  Katana Breaking sucks, doesn't it?  I can hax them up to have a 0% (maybe) or 1% (surely) break rate, except the rares which I can ramp up to like 50/100% if so desired -- don't forget the player is outright handed 5 or 6 in the deep dungeon.  Sound good?  What's a good rate for the rare ones?

Lowering the break rate on the more common one sounds good.  Battles are supposed to not end in 1-2 turns in this version of the game, so farming up the cash to get large amounts of every Katana and stay fitted out seems like it'd be a really tedious bit of meta-difficulty for anyone using Draw Out.  As for the rarer Katanas, I think the 50/100 is a bit too high, as it makes it a requirement to go into Deep Dungeon and Move-Find Item like hell in a game where even the best Move-Finder can't break 4-ish Move to even try using the abilities, and Chirijiraden was further debuffed in Easytype anyway.  You still need to Move-Find Item a single Chirijiraden to use it regardless, I suppose, but it still seems kinda silly.

Idk, 50%+ just seems a bit too high for my tastes.

Quote from: "philsov"ok, I've starting inputting and toying with some of these changes...

Counter Spin Fist will need to shift somehow.  In order to actually activate, the Spin Fist ability needs to have at least 1 range, which means the radius will also need to be decreased.  The final effect will be something akin to a plus formation, with the targetted enemy in the center, and then all 4 panels around it affected as well, with the caster obviously immune to it.  We can call it Exploding Fist or something.  

Any alternate suggestions?

Counter Wave Fist, put simply.

Make it able to Counter a variety of attacks that could hit it within its 3 panel range (I'm pretty sure it can't Counter outside the range anyway, iirc?), so that its a ranged, weaker version of Counter that can be chosen for versatility instead of power.

With less mobility, the fact it'll mostly be weaker than Counter won't stop it from being unused since it allows you to run and heal while still doing some kind of Counter-based damage.  At worst, it'd be a poor man's Damage Split (in terms of ranged buffer damage on an enemy, not healing) for physical units while giving Monks / Martial Arts users a special Reaction to give them a bit of a leg up against Two Swords / Two Hands users, as they'd be the only ones truly outputting higher level damage with it.

Quote from: "philsov"Similarly, auto-potion is hardcoded towards using abilites 78, 79, and 7A (pot, hi pot, x pot), specifically on one's self.  But abilities in that range of code are forced as items, so the wiggle room there is dreadfully small -- I can't just adopt a new ability (cure2 e.g.) and be done with it.

That's what I was asking, as I don't believe you clarified Auto Potion as being limited to the Item skillset only in terms of switching.

We really need to go beat the shit out of a codemonkey, stuff him in a cave, and make him ASM Auto Potion into something that's not Item-based.

I'd do it myself, but I'm busy enough usually.

Quote from: "philsov"What midgame barettes?  The single one the game hands you with alma?  That never got equipped except on a female monk (lol) because monks can't equip a real piece of head armor?  Via poaching, ribbons are available the same time barettes are.

iirc, there's at least one more of them available in 1.3, unless it was removed again for Easytype.  But you're right, it isn't that big a deal,  I suppose.  I never used either of them enough for a loss of a Barette or two to bother me.  But will that mean Alma now comes with a Ribbon, or with one of these new Hats, or some random generic hat?