Final Fantasy Hacktics

So I've decided to try a Squad Challenge for CCP!  It's based off of the one for the vanilla game, but since this is CCP and not vanilla and since I'm doing this mainly for my own entertainment, I've modified the challenge rules a little bit.

Here is the link to the original Challenge FAQ http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/15661 for those unfamiliar with it.

Sadly, I'm not recording these because I neither have the knowledge or the equipment/programs to do it 

My own personal rules for treasure hunting and item finding:
(1) No upsetting the squad battle rotation in order to send in a squad that has a Bandit or Alchemist in it
(2) No resetting on Move-Finds; if I don't find it, I don't find it
(3) If I happen to poach something cool from a random battle or wind up with a Bandit in a battle with something good to steal, great! If not, then that's fine as well.

Banned Items
Chocobo Index (I do have this on my Loremaster but only until another tome is available; I will not use the Reraise effect)
Ribbon
Healing Band
Dusk Shroud

*If anyone has other suggestions on items that would be too powerful/broken, feel free to post.

The Setup
Ramza - Ghaele

Squad #1
Nella - Mystic Knight
Sabrina - Alchemist
Lissa - Tactician
Korin - Nomad

Squad #2
Prier - Brawler
Aubrey - Red Mage
Gavin - Demagogue
Celine - Lapidary

Squad #3
Estellise - Champion
Tyris - Loremaster
Janus - Enchanter
Darian - Bandit


Chapter 1

Dorter 1 - Squad #1 (0 resets)
Ahh, the start of our challenge.  I derped pretty big here and sent both Delita and Algus into battle without any equipment!  However, I figured that I may as well turn it to my advantage, so I immediately had everyone climb up to the top part of the adjacent building, squishing the Nomad that was already up there in the process.  From there, I had everyone hang out on the roof while Algus and Delita took turns blocking the enemy Warrior and Champion from climbing up after them.  Since Sabrina was my only reviver, everyone circled around her in order to keep her shielded from the arrows the other two nomads were firing.  This setup basically allowed for the group to slowly wear down the enemy without any real danger due to Sabrina's potions and Delita & Algus using Bandage as necessary.

Random Comments
I can already tell that I'm going to enjoy Mystic Knights.  Nella's Howling Rend will come in handy, especially as she gains more MP.
The Yew Wand battle trophy means that Tyris finally has a weapon! Yay!
Some people -did- wind up shirtless by the time the battle was done.


Sand Rat Cellar - Squad #2 (0 resets)
This was a pretty straightforward battle.  I had everyone back up a bit except Gavin, who then moved up and hit most of the enemies with Power Word: Blind before they were even out of the house.  From there, I just bunched my guys up and took down the enemies as they came to me.  Once again Algus and Delita were mainly on healing duty, which freed up Aubrey to take people out with Jolt and Freeze.  Ramza and Gavin poked people with swords, and Prier punched people in the face.

Random Comments
Prier learned Fire Dance from one of the fallen Brawlers - yes!
New equipment in the shops finally, but it takes a lot of gil to keep 13 units geared up since I despise equipment-swapping between fights.


Thieves Fort - Squad #3 (1 reset)
Unsurprisingly, this has been my first story battle where I had to reset.  The first time I got trounced pretty quickly, so I went and fought a random battle or two with this squad and as much as I wanted to wait until a different book became available, I equipped Tyris with the Chocobo Codex.

What a difference carrying a book can make!  Since I tend to play more defensively in CCP, I kept my guys all bunched together down at the bottom of the map.  I've got a Red Mage, a Champion, and two Brawlers that all move down towards my guys.  Tyris' turn comes up and I see that she has *just* enough MP for a Fireball.  One cast later, I have three dead enemies and one in critical status, which Delita promptly dispatches.  From there, I just had one Red Mage and Miluda to my six guys, so the rest of the battle was more or less like shooting fish in a barrel.

Random Comments
You guys will have to take my word for it when I say that I'll only keep Tyris with the Chocobo Codex until another tome shows up in the stores.  Until then, she'll use it to cast her spells and then switch to a wand once her MP is depleted.  No Reraise/Heal nonsense with it. Loremaster, more like Lolmaster.

Yay! Looking forward to it 

I might just take you up on that in the near future; I'll need to figure out what sort of setups I'd want for my squads first though.  I'd probably do 3 groups of 4 + Ramza, so that'd be 12 generics. Thanks! 

Hehe thanks, but I tend to avoid SCCs because I would get bored without having at least a little class variety to play with.  A squad challenge would be easy to formulate but it can be a pain getting all your guys to their classes.  The magic user challenge, uh...I guess pick from the classes that are MA-based?  Oh!  Limited skills might also be entertaining!  Such possibilities 

Yeeeeah, the Silence + Charm thing is annoying but can be worked around.  However, the Poison Frog thing makes my blood pressure go up.  At least it can hit the enemies as well as my guys...

Oh, and the changes to the Bomb class! "What the-oh. Well."

I have to admit that I -do- like that you're giving more monsters ranged attacks, which actually makes them a little more challenging to fight.

Otabo's post about doing War of the Gods got me to thinking about how challenges would work in CCP.  I'll probably play it normally once to get a better feel for the classes, but I'm tempted to try a Squad Challenge or some type of Magic User Challenge in the future.

After taking a break for other games (ME3, Skyrim, D3) and RL (got married, moved), I'm back to playing around with CCP.  I'd previously made it to Chapter 4, but enough stuff has been changed with the last few patches that I decided to start over.  I'm only a few story battles into Chapter 1, but I gotta say that the new (to me) Siren and Adamantoise enemies definitely threw me for a loop at first.  Must recruit some of them soon >.>

Just posting to say that I updated my Dudes just a little bit more; sorry for the inconvenience 

Reworked my team a little bit!

Some Dudes 2.0


Updated just a little more, sorry! One of these days, I'll learn to read *dodges thrown objects*

*Edit* And again... 

Okay, my team seems to more-or-less do what I wanted it to do, but it's obvious I need to rework it a bit because that Champion is dead weight as is.  Still, I'm happy to see that it seems fairly effective when starting at a distance; cramped maps appear to spell trouble 

Team updated; see new post!

Looks like White and Blue chocobos have the correct new coloring and skills, but still show up named Black and Red, respectively.

Finally got some more time to play today and finished up Chapter 2!

Golgorand took me a bajillion tries (or maybe just several) before things finally went my way and I was able to win.  I don't really like to do it, but I made heavy use of sandbagging here while I slowly whittled the enemies down.  The Vanquishers were mostly just there, but the Champions with Mystic Knight skills and the Demagogues were *extremely* annoying.

Lionel Castle Gate...actually took one try; I guess the AI must've felt bad for me here because none of the enemies outside the gate really did much of anything.  The three Toreros must not have had much to work with because they either did nothing or flailed uselessly with their whips.  They did bunch up rather nicely, allowing my Loremaster to nuke them though 

Queklain has a lot of hitpoints, which I believe I read about earlier.  This one took a few tries as well, but I mainly won by sandbagging the units that he'd Death Sentence and taking potshots as needed.

Small update, have cleared up through Zaland so far:

Windmill Shed, and to a lesser extent Zeakden, were stopping blocks until I opted to go delevel myself a little bit (from ~12ish down to ~9ish) and changed up my strategy somewhat.  Finally won Windmill Shed by launching an all-out offensive on Wiegraf once he moved close enough, though I also had Delita walk up and OHKO the closest enemy Enchanter just because I could.  Zeakden on the other hand, was won by playing very defensively and hiding my guys behind the fort and picking them off one-by-one.  I finally got tired of the one Champion and his Faerie Dust trolling and started giving them a dose of their own medicine 

Haven't had any trouble with the Chapter 2 battles so far, though Agrias and Gaf make a pretty big difference as well.

Enchanters are fun; definitely going to make use of the skillset though I may change the base class.
Still enjoying Red Mages (I tend to favor magic classes in most games).
Torero and Vanquisher are open now so I need to check them out!

Yeah, I fully intend to do that 

I'm most of the way through Chapter 1, having just finished up Miluda 2 a few minutes ago.  As of right now, I'm just focusing on Ramza and his four generic friends Estellise, Freeman, Janus, and Artemisia; depending on what the trio know at the start of Chapter 2, I may train them up as well.

So far I've not had any major trouble with any specific battle, though Miluda 1 took me a couple of tries due to the three Brawlers beating the crap out of my team before they could do much of anything.

General observations:

Enemy Enchanters are *annoying* with their status attacks
Enemy Brawlers will punch your face in or hit you with a hadoken
Playing defensively seems important in this patch, at least at the start
I like how status effects are designed to play a much more prominent role in battle

I'm kinda letting Ramza (melee), Estellise (melee), and Janus (magic) play around with different classes to see what works well, while Freeman (melee) and Artemisia (magic) are sticking with Nomad and Red Mage for the time being.  At this point, I'd say that Artemisia is the team's MVP.

Current classes open: Warrior, Butler, Homemaker, Nomad, Brawler, Champion, Bandit, Red Mage, Alchemist, Tactician, Demagogue, Lapidary

I'll post more as I'm able

Thanks for the welcome and the suggestions!  Since I'm indecisive and fickle, I went ahead and downloaded a few different patches and went through the first battle or two of each to see which one tickled my fancy the most.

FFT 1.3 Easytype: Hmm, can definitely tell a difference in the difficulty right off the bat, though I didn't really have any problems with the first battle or two.  Definitely cool, but I think I'll save this one for when I'm in a mood for a somewhat more traditional FFT experience.

FFT+: Onion Knights and a Red Mage, eh?  At least I'll have a reason to keep the trio around this time; seems promising.

CCP: When she said that all the classes were revamped, she wasn't joking!  Seems very different and quirky - I like!

I tried to download CoP, but the download link seems to be busted or something

At any rate, I think I'll probably go with CCP for the time being, it already appeals to my enjoyment of the odd and humorous; nothing personal against any of the other awesome patches as I fully intend to give them all a go as time permits

Hey all, just a new poster posting the usual, "Hi I'm new" topic!  I've been on a FFT kick lately and found this place via the Gamefaqs forums and my curiosity to learn just what the heck 1.3 is.  I've actually been lurking for a few days now and reading some of the posts, so I have a better idea of what things are and how to make them work.  Since there's uh...not really any other place/topic I could find for it, I wanted to ask a question:

For a newbie to playing patches of this sort, for this game, what should I start with?

Some additional information to help with suggestions:

(1) While I don't mind and would enjoy something a little more difficult, I'm not interested in having a hole kicked in my skull right off the bat, so I think I'll stay away from 1.3 normal for the time being!
(2) I prefer the PSP translation, but am wary of and unversed in making the adjustments to my PSP to play these patches; I think I can get things set up on my PC/laptop more easily.
(3) I've played vanilla FFT several times and WotL a couple so I'm fairly familiar with how the game mechanics work, though I generally don't look up the BMG formulas unless I need to know for a challenge run or something (I dislike math and theorycrafting-type activities, they bore me usually).
(4) I've tried reading over the changelogs for the various patches; I have nothing against trying new job classes, abilities, etc. but I don't think I'm ready for anything that radically changes the core storyline.

Anyhoo, any suggestions would be appreciated and I'm looking forward to lurking/reading/posting here