Balancing CT and Speed Growth

[arganthonius]

Using the Raven's Utilities Spreadsheet, it seems that even with a speed growth of 255, a unit will gain 1 to 2 speed over the course of leveling from level 1 to level 99. Is there a way to completely remove speed increases from leveling?

I'm having difficulty figuring out how long a Charge Time certain abilities need to have. It seems that since my hack will have 10 Speed as the highest possible, the longest a Charge Time can be is 15 ticks before the target will get a turn, nullifying any panel-targeting abilities. It also seems to me that 10 speed is too low, and that a maximum speed of 12-15 might be better. Are there tradeoffs to increasing the max speed of which I should be aware? Also, is there a good rule of thumb to determine how long the CT of any ability should be?

[Desocupado]

The actual value of speed affects abilities like speed ruin (losing 1 is worse when your base speed is 6) and jump (starts at 50 ct, i think)

[Emmy]

I don't remember where I found this hack, but use this:

spoiler

<Patch name="hpc/mpc/spc/pac/mac of 0 produces 0 growth">
    <Description>0 = 0 growth</Description>
    <Location file="SCUS_942_21" offset="4E278">
      80FF0234
    </Location>
    <Location file="SCUS_942_21" offset="4C0FC">
      80FF0234
    </Location>
  </Patch>

Personally I like the 6-8 speed range the most, because you can use a ct range similar to vanilla (0-10) without many ill consequences.  Had to reduce Meteor slightly and there's no equivalent to Charge or Cloud's abilities.  The kinds of issues you probably want to avoid is having characters who are faster than their own spells, which can easily happen if speed values are too high and you have haste; or spells that take so long to charge that they can't reasonably be set up. Why are you looking to increase the speed of units?

[Nyzer]

Also, is there a good rule of thumb to determine how long the CT of any ability should be?

None that Vanilla uses. Cloud's abilities are dead in the water, Charge+20 is not going to happen, and swordskills are broken as fuck. I mean, just by skillsets alone, the mandatory recruit Orlandu blows the optional, deep-into-a-sidequest Cloud out of the water, which is just awful.
Look at established patches like Jot5 if you want to get a better feel for how things should be, if you want them to be at least moderately balanced.

It also seems to me that 10 speed is too low, and that a maximum speed of 12-15 might be better.

Erm, well, no. If you're increasing the max but not the min, then you're only going to cause a massive discrepancy the closer you get to max level. If you're increasing both, you're going to throw off the balance of CT charge spells, especially with how rapidly the cast time changes in the earlier numbers. Just going from 1 to 2 doubles the cast time, and those are the two quickest charge times! Yet doubling it after that means you have to go from 2 to 4, from 4 to 8, from 8 to 16...
The vast majority of the CT options just aren't designed for high speeds. Going up to 15 means you've just knocked even more CT numbers into the "dead in the water" range, and you can't get any better ones for the ones you lose.
Never mind Speed+ gear like the Green Beret.