[bug] Missing skills in a remapped skill set

[R999]

Update: Looks like we found out why this phenomenon occurs in this thread: http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4868


You can test this out yourself.

Go to the 1E Mighty Sword skillset (Delita4's) and fill up all 16 skill slots (change the original skills too, if you want). Make all the abilities learnable by 0 JP.  And then,

1. Reassign a generic job's skillset to 1E Mighty Sword.
2. Go to Mighty Sword on your generic and learn all of the 16 abilities.
3. Go into any battle with your generic with that swapped job as his Primary.
4. Observe that the generic only have access to  only 4 out of the 16 skills you assigned. Specifically, only the first 4.
5. Check the generic's status, job menu, and verify that the generic indeed has all 16 abilities mastered.

Pictures of the problem,


Skills learned.


Skills actually available for use.

I have tested with Priest, Lancer, same results. Patched over a clean ISO.

Which leads me to question, what exactly causes this behavior and, because of the huge remapping + reallocation of jobs, skillsets and abilities, I am starting to worry if unexpected problems like this would occur more often.

While this bug just be for this particular Mighty Sword skillset, I am suspecting that it could be a much more common problem. Please comment if you have experienced similar cases of missing abilities IN BATTLE (NOT in formation screen, they will all show up correctly in formation).

edit: I have had successes remapping other skill sets with absolutely no problems; this is just the first or second time that I have encountered this issue.

[philsov]

There's been reports of giving generic jobs custom skillsets and having then glitch out in battle to only display the top 2-5, but my search-fu is quite weak.

Either way, the mini moral is to work within a generic's own skillset.  Special characters can take on custom skillsets without problems.  Unless your previous successes contradict this, of course.

[R999]

^
it might have to do with the fact that the original 1E Mighty Sword had only 4 skills. I wonder if this is only limited to generic jobs though (I actually would suspect that the AI wouldn't have access to the other skills as well, I will test this right now).

edit2: Here's what happens when you swap out a generic skillset with another generic's skillset,


So... not even a single skill. (This is a simple reassignment test in turning the Thief into Knight (with the proper sprite swap and skillset). That thief has all the skills learned in his primary job; yet 0 of them are actually available in battle. In fact, this Thief has every single job mastered manually.




edit3: I was actually wrong when I said that all the skills would show up if set as secondary. As it turns out, sometimes it works, sometimes it does not... On one generic it showed 3/16 skills, on another generic it showed 16/16.  I am thinking that this is possibly a very serious bug that could be missed easily.

In response to working within the generic's own skillset, what happens if you can't? Say, especially with fixed jobs like Dragoon, Ninja, Samurai, Geomancer. I have had some success swapping out Jump for something else previously, but I haven't gone as far as tested it with more generics and set as secondary to see if all abilities are actually present-in-battle.

[formerdeathcorps]

I assume you set all the skills to 100% learn as well?

I've had no problems with any of my skillsets.  I really don't know what you did.  Just as a general principle, generic unit classes should never change their skillset number (to that of a special or any other generic unit class) and special unit classes should never have their base skillset be a generic unit class (or their ability to use their attacks will be dependent on their JP of that generic unit class, not of their base unit class).  For safety, special unit classes should only be assigned to the skillsets of already existing player-controllable special units.  If you want to change or swap generic unit classes, you always swap their movesets and job levels, not which skillset number corresponds to which job.

It should be noted that the AI never has this problem.  I gave bard the samurai skillset via a skillset swap (under the jobs tab).  When my "bards" were set to AI control, they were perfectly able to use samurai skills, but not when under player control.

[R999]

So in your opinion, what is the safest method to give jobs like Archer, Geomancer, Lancer, Samurai, Ninja, Calculator new skillsets?

I have actually just tested this out with Ramza himself. I gave a (swapped generic) skillset 9 skills (it had 8 originally). Then I made Ramza primary on this new job. In the formation and status, he has all 9 skills learned. But in actual battle, he only has the first 8 available. So it is still possible to have missing skills even for special characters, but these maybe more difficult to spot.

[formerdeathcorps]

The safest way is to change their action menus to default and then modify their skillsets directly.  All you need to do is ensure archer retains skillset 08 Charge, lancer retains skillset 12 Jump, and so on.

You shouldn't be giving generic skillsets to special unit classes in the first place (due to the bug I noted above).  I'm willing to bet if Ramza had Delita's Holy Knight skillset (or Ramza4's own skillset 1B Guts) with 9 skills, you wouldn't have this issue.

[R999]

What I meant to say was simply changing ramza's job via the formation screen to a generic job (9 skills instead of 8.). It probably has something to do with me swapping out the job numbers. Anyway much thanks for the workaroubd tip. I am aware of the possibility in changing the menu type, but this method didn't work for me when messing around with the math menu in my early test runs. So I have had become cautious of doing stuff there.

[formerdeathcorps]

Are you sure?  I made red mage out of calculator with no trouble at all.  You just have to replace both the action menu and all the original moves in the skillset 15 Math Skill.

[R999]

Well I couldn't remember exactly what the problem was. To be fair though my early testings might be more prone to human mistakes. I'll test this out thoroughly tonight.

edit: By the way, what if I want to keep the original Jump and Math skillsets? At least for AI exclusive use. If by editing a random Job slot, having its Action Menu changed (to Jump or Math) and then manually remap the Jump and Math skills to the new skillset, would it work for AI use (I am aware that it would not work for the player)? I'll go test this out as well but I suspect that you probably have tested this before.

[philsov]

If by editing a random Job slot, having its Action Menu changed (to Jump or Math) and then manually remap the Jump and Math skills to the new skillset, would it work for AI use (I am aware that it would not work for the player)?

Yup.

This is present in 1.3 -- Calculator still uses skillset 15 (Math Skill), but its set to <default> and is loaded up with new spells and works fine.

Then there's another custom skillset (an old All Magic) with the old math skill abilities, which is loaded onto generics for a nasty chapter 4 random battle.

[R999]

Well, after some thorough testing, I was able to get all the skills being available and are working fine with the non hardcoded jobs. However, the "fixed job" that I have played with this time though, is the Lancer.

What I did:
1. Set 12 Jump's Action Menu to <Default>
2. replaced all of the Jump skills in the Jump skillset
3. Went to battle with a generic with Lancer as Primary class.


All skills in the [Jump] skillset defaults to 0% success rate and weapon range


Sample of skills


For reference, this is [Jump] with <Default> Action Menu, replaced skills as Secondary on a special character.

The skills work fine on another job, it's just not in the generic 12-Jump skillset.

Has anyone else had luck with this? Am I missing something crucial?

[formerdeathcorps]

Oh dear, you just found a really nasty bug.  In fact, the skills won't work fine on another skillset because if you set any skillset other than 12 Jump to lancer, you will automatically master all the skills, even if you didn't learn anything in the skillset.

[Boxiii]

I just ran into this as well. I want archers and lancers to have different skillsets, but cannot find a way to get them to have all skills that actually work. Do we need to just trash a generic job to get a working skillset for these classes?

[R999]

I have managed to find out what was wrong when using the Math Skill (setting it to <Default> action menu). The bug is visual, but it can be very annoying --enough to affect the playing experience a bit.

Video Demonstration:

15 Math Skills - Major delay for special effects bug

Here it is, video explains all. Basically, the wait time for special effect speed is dramatically slower than usual, especially noticeable for AoE effects. Indeed this bug is present in 1.3 as well (as I have checked with the Sage). I don't think there would be huge problems if you don't use AoE effects, but other than that, it seems to be pretty stable (at least from what I can tell from playing 1.3). By the way, I even tested it with that "Draw Mana" skill having Math Skills flagged, and unflagged, with same results. Update: It seems the Rafa/Malak like skills does not have any delay. So it's not entirely hopeless.


Edit: More findings:


14 Throw - All abilities 00% and weapon range (same as Lancer).


13 Draw Out - All abilities are overriden with a skill that has a 60% chance to cast Regen and has range-3 radius-1 vert-1 AoE.

spoiler

Another Samurai bug. This is the quote when any of the skills is cast, notice the clearly wrong portrait.

11 Geomancy - 00% success skills + weapon range (same issue as with Lancers).

Nothing works here. By the way, even the AI does not have access to the skills.


I suspect that there are probably other potential problems when modifying the Chemist, Archer, Geomancer, Samurai, Ninja, Lancer, Calculator, and of course Mime.
Checklist so far,

1. Chemist
2. Archer - GOOD so far
3. Geomancer - all skills 00% and weapon range.
4. Samurai -> all skills 60% Regen, range-3 r1-v1 AoE
5. Ninja -> all skills 00% and weapon range.
6. Lancer -> all skills 00% and weapon range.
7. Calculator -> major delayed AoE spell effects.

Has anyone tested enough with the other ones? At this rate, I might even have to axe the Squire...


Although this topic is related, I will post this as a separate thread in the General Hacking section so more people are aware of these problems (if not already so). I was told that I couldn't just simply modify these jobs before. Now that I know you can't even change the job's skillset without potential serious bugs,  well... it's honestly quite disappointing to say the least.

[Boxiii]

I changed the Calculators skillset to default, and then i changed the skillset how i wanted. However, the skillset is grayed out in battle even though i own all the skills. I am also editing WoTL rather than the original, if that matters.

[fluke84]

-edited out message-

thanks Boxiii, and R999 I'll mess around a bit more and see what I can figure out, if nothing else works I'll make a thread, didn't intend to highjack

[Boxiii]

The X and Y values are used when the formula has them present. For example, [Heal_(Y)% Hit_F(MA+X)%] has both X and Y values in it. Whatever you put those values as will affect the formula.

I think what you did wrong is you changed the effect. Every time i tried to change the effect of something, i just got errors in FFTPatcher.Just leave the skill in it's own effect, changed the formula and flags, and animations if needed. There probably is a way to change the effect, but this is just how i have been doing it and it's fine.

[R999]

@boxiii for your edited Math Skillset, Try
1. resetting the game completely and load from a fresh save file, if you haven't already tried.
2. double check to make sure the Action Menu is changed correctly, in your patch.
3. Make sure you did NOT change the Skillset number in ANY of the jobs
4. Make sure the exact same skills in the new Math Skillset, are useable outside of the skillset, each and everyone of them. For easier testing, simply put Cure1 into this skillset (and nothing else) and test if that works.
5. Try turning other characters into Calculators and learning the new skillset manually (just one skill is sufficient) and see if they have access to the skills. As long as you test on someone who does NOT have the Math set mastered should be okay.
6. Make sure the Calculator job requirements are obtainable and is correctly unlocked. It does not matter if you have the abilities mastered, if it is locked.

If you tried all of the above and still failed, it could be caused by something entirely unrelated. I wonder if 1.3 for WotL still includes the Sage, via the Math set route.

@Fluke84,

This thread is about missing skills when reassigning skill number, and modifying special generic skillsets with special action-menus. So it's not related. If you are still having problems, I'll help you out if you post in another thread (in order to avoid going off topic). Also it would help if you take screenshots and upload them here, incase something is missed.