53 replies to this topic

[SmashedFish]

QUOTE (Hatless @ Feb 23 2013, 04:50 AM)

one difference I want to point out is that Light is generally heavier than Anima

I was genuinely not aware of this, but sweet.

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=why does everybody overestimate the weapon triangle particularly for lategame where you'd actually have things like Tomahawks or Spears by the time you get there the weapon triangle advantage or disadvantage is something that might as well be ignored for the most part (kind of like how forest tiles become more of a nuisance than something to enjoy avoid bonuses from the later they appear)

It doesn't help for sure. Later on, its impact admittedly isn't as big, but it still hurts. Anyway, you're just not going to hit a Swordsmaster with your typical axe user's Tomahawk and its 65% hit rate. Try a Spear on an axe user, and you may get Tomahawked in return.

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I did that in every FE8 run i've done and S ranked his bows

Good on you for playing anti-meta, I suppose. I guess that he'd be good with that because rangers, but personally, I enjoy making him pure melee DPS because swords and axes is a really good combo. Switch to damage or hit rate as needed and counter anything that isn't swords (and endure typical sword-user attack stat hitting your somewhere between swordmaster and general defense).

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wait what you mean the Constitution that no one maxes? (as far as I know even +99 from hypothetical infinite body rings won't be stopped by the constitution limitation) (and i'm not even sure if unpromoted mounted people had 25 con caps instead of 20)

My bad on not being clear. Unmounted unpromoted units have caps of 20 on every levelable stat besides HP and Luck (I think on luck, anyway). Mounted unpromoted units have caps of 25 instead.

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and more importantly so that people won't throw their GBA across the room when SURPRISE ENEMY NOMADS

That sure didn't hurt by any means. Freaking ambushes. DIdn't they move the turn they showed up in FE7?

[Mercurius]

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Anyway, you're just not going to hit a Swordsmaster with your typical axe user's Tomahawk and its 65% hit rate.

Maybe if you're a generic enemy(though I think this has more to do with how axe users have less Skill in general too but I could be wrong as I didn't bother to check the enemy growths there) or an RNG screwed(in leveling up) axe user, but by the time I start dodging tomahawks so easily, I can more or less dodge spears nearly as well. It has more to do with how speedy/lucky Swordmasters are in the first place, from what I noticed(and in FE8 by late game you're already dodging the hell out of everything with any class even on hard mode). I also don't consider 65% hit rate very bad by late game because of Skill to compensate for it(relatively speaking, considering how little enemy dodge rates improve), which is why I stick longbows on Warriors(who aren't exactly known for very high skill stats) whenever I get the chance. It starts getting bad below 50% as far as i'm concerned (and the only things I remember being that terrible are Eclipse and FE6 Hammer)

Luck is always 30 yes. Unpromoted units always have caps of 20 otherwise, or at least, GBA ones did anyway. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head are Fleets which had a higher Defense cap (and they are enemy-only classes, though I still found it weird regardless, as there's no way they're anywhere close to even 20 defense in the ONE chapter they show up in.)

I'm not sure if nomads moved the turn they showed up in FE7 but I do remember Merlinus' chapter in HHM being a huge pain in the ass because of them.

[SmashedFish]

[QUOTE=Hatless,Feb 23 2013, 01:10 PM][QUOTE]Anyway, you're just not going to hit a Swordsmaster with your typical axe user's Tomahawk and its 65% hit rate. [/QUOTE]

Maybe if you're a generic enemy(though I think this has more to do with how axe users have less Skill in general too but I could be wrong as I didn't bother to check the enemy growths there) or an RNG screwed(in leveling up) axe user, but by the time I start dodging tomahawks so easily, I can more or less dodge spears nearly as well. It has more to do with how speedy/lucky Swordmasters are in the first place, from what I noticed(and in FE8 by late game you're already dodging the hell out of everything with any class even on hard mode). I also don't consider 65% hit rate very bad by late game because of Skill to compensate for it(relatively speaking, considering how little enemy dodge rates improve), which is why I stick longbows on Warriors(who aren't exactly known for very high skill stats) whenever I get the chance. It starts getting bad below 50% as far as i'm concerned (and the only things I remember being that terrible are Eclipse and FE6 Hammer)[quote]
I still disagree on the tomahawks. You can dodge them fine, but you're not not going to hit with them either. Compare 15 uses, 13 might, 65% hit, and 14 weight to 20 uses, 13 might, 75% hit, and 6 weight on a Silver Bow. As you pointed out, axe users have low weight to begin with, while bow users have hit chance out the butt. Fair enough, but 50% and above isn't reliable. 80-85% is. 50% can be the difference between hitting a foe and trading them hitting you or letting them get in and hit you uncountered.

[quote]Luck is always 30 yes. Unpromoted units always have caps of 20 otherwise, or at least, GBA ones did anyway. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head are Fleets which had a higher Defense cap (and they are enemy-only classes, though I still found it weird regardless, as there's no way they're anywhere close to even 20 defense in the ONE chapter they show up in.)[/quote]
Unless they're mounted. They the caps are 25, which is what I meant about nomads, not their Constitution. But yeah, weird. Were they intended as promoted, possibly? Actually, how cool would playable Fleets be? Super tanky death machines, only usable on water maps... *scribbles hastily into an offscreen notebook*

[quote]I'm not sure if nomads moved the turn they showed up in FE7 but I do remember Merlinus' chapter in HHM being a huge pain in the ass because of them.[/QUOTE]
Oh dear lord, I bet. HHM is notorious for that kind of thing, but I don't even want to think of troops of nomads... Well, at least they're not troops of nomad troopers.

Edit: Quotes are broken but meh

[Mercurius]

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Fair enough, but 50% and above isn't reliable. 80-85% is. 50% can be the difference between hitting a foe and trading them hitting you or letting them get in and hit you uncountered.

I feel that this would only be the case if weapon hit rates was what determined the total hit rate, which it isn't, most of the time I have at least over 70% hit with longbows on warriors (which are a combination not known for awesome hit rates) and while that is a semi-decent chance of missing, FE8 has weak enough enemies to not really give a shit. Except when enemies have Luna. Accursed Luna, always somehow hitting me more than half the time despite its low hit rate...

Snipers also have relatively low constitution and bows are relatively heavier to them than axes are to promoted axe users, which drains speed, possibly making the case where while an axe user may have lower chances of hitting with a tomahawk, they also have better chances of doubling(which is more chances to hit per turn) if they didn't get RNG screwed on Speed (on the playable side) though in either case most of the time you will be doubling anyway because of how low the speed of enemies has a tendency to be.

Also, about ballista, the problem with them is that they are typically unnecessary by the time you actually reach them, and they are far more limited than super-long range magic tomes, as they both lower your movement (from what I remember anyway) and they are only 5 uses per vehicle, while you can say, carry five Boltings around (though it's also true that those are either very expensive, or rarely obtained regardless.)

Playable fleets would be extremely inconvenient(even on water, they have 3 move, that's like, as slow or slower than swimming pirates I think, and i'm not sure if the fleets themselves receive the movement penalty or not) and at best they would be generic units that you just happen to be capable of controlling, as expecting them to consistently appear would mean water on every single map of the game, and more importantly they won't be equipped with ballista for very long even if they are specifically programmed to have 4 ballista by default as those things only have 5 uses each. And then there's the problem of how they could technically be abused by trading their ballistae with your permanent units, giving your archers something they're not supposed to be capable of carrying around.

Unpromoted mounted units having 25 cap for Strength, Skill, Speed, Defense, and Resistance is extremely unreasonable, as many promoted units have caps that are under 25 (including mounted ones, though the only one that immediately comes to mind is Great Knight's 24 speed)

A quick screenshot of some unpromoted mounted and unmounted units:



notice how all of them have the same stat cap bars and that it is about 2/3 of the Luck cap (30)

and before you say something like "it's not like that in FE8" or "the enemies have different caps" that isn't true either

[kirant]

QUOTE (SmashedFish @ Feb 20 2013, 08:32 PM)

A mean and standard deviation of what? The individual stats of each character at various levels? Sounds like masochistic fun, if so. I'd be willing to help with data collection.

It's not too bad. Excel spreadsheets and a few choice formulae make everything easy.

QUOTE (Hatless @ Feb 23 2013, 02:50 AM)

why does everybody overestimate the weapon triangle particularly for lategame where you'd actually have things like Tomahawks or Spears by the time you get there the weapon triangle advantage or disadvantage is something that might as well be ignored for the most part (kind of like how forest tiles become more of a nuisance than something to enjoy avoid bonuses from the later they appear)

Damage wise, it's worthless. However, hitting wise, it can be big dependant on your difficulty. Because the true hit is variant from the real hit, the swing of 30% can actually be 50% (the true hit at 50% is 50.5%. At 65%, it's about 75% if my math is right, while it's really 25% at 35%). In a normal difficulty game, it's not worth mentioning as the difference from, let's say, 80% base hit rate up and down is total 25% from a 35% swing in listed hit rate, while on an enemy it's negligible because of low damage.

At higher difficulties, it can become a factor though because the 60% (~66% true I think) rolls up to 75% (~85% true) in a neutral to positive advantage situation. That's a big jump.

This is a massive factor early game, but less of one late game. However, in games where enemy's hit rates stay above about 40-50% and non-negligible damage, I say you'd want to look at flexibility in combat weapon as a factor in character ability.

[Mercurius]

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Damage wise, it's worthless. However, hitting wise, it can be big dependant on your difficulty.

Well tbh the hardest thing i've played so far is FE12 Maniac (i'm on FE13 Lunatic right now too but i'm also abusing DLC to at least equip everybody with steel as soon as I can get it and also leveling them to at least the average enemy level of the chapter) and even there, the weapon triangle advantage later on doesn't seem too important because every enemy hits you all the time anyway and my 80~89% hit rates like to miss because Anna is trolling me even when i'm at the disadvantage. I'm not using any axes(least accurate weapon) in FE12 though.

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because the true hit is variant from the real hit, the swing of 30% can actually be 50% (the true hit at 50% is 50.5%

uhh wut

i'm not sure how that works

shouldn't the true hit of 30% be like 18% or something around that IIRC instead of jumping to 50% (though this is exclusively from memory rather than any sort of calculating i've ever done)

[kirant]

QUOTE (Hatless @ Feb 23 2013, 04:06 PM)

QUOTE Damage wise, it's worthless. However, hitting wise, it can be big dependant on your difficulty. Well tbh the hardest thing i've played so far is FE12 Maniac (i'm on FE13 Lunatic right now too but i'm also abusing DLC to at least equip everybody with steel as soon as I can get it and also leveling them to at least the average enemy level of the chapter) and even there, the weapon triangle advantage later on doesn't seem too important because every enemy hits you all the time anyway and my 80~89% hit rates like to miss because Anna is trolling me even when i'm at the disadvantage. I'm not using any axes(least accurate weapon) in FE12 though.

Fair enough. It's a style thing. I play heavily with speed and mobility as my primary damage absorption so the drop in 50% hit can be huge

QUOTE (Hatless @ Feb 23 2013, 04:06 PM)

i'm not sure how that works shouldn't the true hit of 30% be like 18% or something around that IIRC instead of jumping to 50% (though this is exclusively from memory rather than any sort of calculating i've ever done)

What that means is that the swing of hit rate between a negative score and a positive (from 35 to 65) actually is a swing of 50% as opposed the shown swing of 30%. In other words, when values are about 30-70 in hit rate or so, the changes in hit rate because of the weapon triangle are bigger than what it shows. And for higher end difficulties, this can mean a decent amount if you're relying on evasion.

[SmashedFish]

QUOTE (Hatless @ Feb 23 2013, 04:17 PM)

I feel that this would only be the case if weapon hit rates was what determined the total hit rate, which it isn't, most of the time I have at least over 70% hit with longbows on warriors (which are a combination not known for awesome hit rates) and while that is a semi-decent chance of missing, FE8 has weak enough enemies to not really give a shit. Except when enemies have Luna. Accursed Luna, always somehow hitting me more than half the time despite its low hit rate...

When I said "As you pointed out, axe users have low weight to begin with, while bow users have hit chance out the butt." I meant Skill instead of weight. I'm not fully sure how I messed that up, my bad. Anyway, regardless of how weak the enemies are, you're still taking damage where you could avoid it.

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Snipers also have relatively low constitution and bows are relatively heavier to them than axes are to promoted axe users, which drains speed, possibly making the case where while an axe user may have lower chances of hitting with a tomahawk, they also have better chances of doubling(which is more chances to hit per turn) if they didn't get RNG screwed on Speed (on the playable side) though in either case most of the time you will be doubling anyway because of how low the speed of enemies has a tendency to be.

Right, but Snipers also tend to have good speed. Even better, Rangers tend to have okay speed and horse constitution. Snipers are admittedly inferior.

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Also, about ballista, the problem with them is that they are typically unnecessary by the time you actually reach them, and they are far more limited than super-long range magic tomes, as they both lower your movement (from what I remember anyway) and they are only 5 uses per vehicle, while you can say, carry five Boltings around (though it's also true that those are either very expensive, or rarely obtained regardless.)

Balistas are free inferior 10-range tomes, yus. Thing is, they're free. They're good for the extra chip damage if you actually have a Sniper/Archer. Yes, the tomes are better, but they're so rare/expensive that you wouldn't want to waste them on most common units.

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Playable fleets would be extremely inconvenient(even on water, they have 3 move, that's like, as slow or slower than swimming pirates I think, and i'm not sure if the fleets themselves receive the movement penalty or not) and at best they would be generic units that you just happen to be capable of controlling, as expecting them to consistently appear would mean water on every single map of the game, and more importantly they won't be equipped with ballista for very long even if they are specifically programmed to have 4 ballista by default as those things only have 5 uses each. And then there's the problem of how they could technically be abused by trading their ballistae with your permanent units, giving your archers something they're not supposed to be capable of carrying around.

Just throwing out ideas is all. There would be problems to work out, but hey.

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Unpromoted mounted units having 25 cap for Strength, Skill, Speed, Defense, and Resistance is extremely unreasonable, as many promoted units have caps that are under 25 (including mounted ones, though the only one that immediately comes to mind is Great Knight's 24 speed)

Okay, I completely misread having a max Con of 25 as an unpromoted mounted to all as 25. No idea how.

QUOTE (kirant @ Feb 23 2013, 05:09 PM)

QUOTE (SmashedFish @ Feb 20 2013, 08:32 PM) A mean and standard deviation of what? The individual stats of each character at various levels? Sounds like masochistic fun, if so. I'd be willing to help with data collection. It's not too bad. Excel spreadsheets and a few choice formulae make everything easy.

For some reason, I was thinking manual data collection via arena abuse or something. That that won't be necessary is a great relief. By the way, do you know off the top of your head whether leveling up was done via single or dual RNG?

[Mercurius]

Ballista chip damage is very disappointing, though. Particularly because ballistae are typically difficult to actually arrive at (and by the time you do you have a tendency to not need it for much anymore.)

Which is why I think it would be nice if Defend chapters had a bunch of already-near ready ballistae for you, personally, but that rarely happens.

[kirant]

QUOTE (SmashedFish @ Feb 23 2013, 08:22 PM)

By the way, do you know off the top of your head whether leveling up was done via single or dual RNG?

Single if memory serves.

[SmashedFish]

QUOTE (Hatless @ Feb 24 2013, 12:00 AM)

Ballista chip damage is very disappointing, though. Particularly because ballistae are typically difficult to actually arrive at (and by the time you do you have a tendency to not need it for much anymore.) Which is why I think it would be nice if Defend chapters had a bunch of already-near ready ballistae for you, personally, but that rarely happens.

In my playstyle, I make seizing it 1-2 of my units a priority. I'll leave the rest of my front line to hold their position until the one gets back. As such, it's not really a problem for me.

QUOTE (kirant @ Feb 24 2013, 12:04 AM)

QUOTE (SmashedFish @ Feb 23 2013, 08:22 PM) By the way, do you know off the top of your head whether leveling up was done via single or dual RNG? Single if memory serves.

Alright. I'll probably end up coding something with C++ to sim some leveling.

[Mercurius]

i'm pretty sure there's already an averages calculator somewhere, though that technically isn't reliable (since it's fairly rare for someone to have stats gained in a way that is as rigid as averages) i'm not sure what you'd code that would be better, as the results are random otherwise.

[kirant]

QUOTE (SmashedFish @ Feb 24 2013, 05:23 AM)

Alright. I'll probably end up coding something with C++ to sim some leveling.

Why? All you need are simple assumptions or the application of statistics formulae, dependant on your interest level.

[SmashedFish]

QUOTE (Hatless @ Feb 24 2013, 07:51 AM)

i'm pretty sure there's already an averages calculator somewhere, though that technically isn't reliable (since it's fairly rare for someone to have stats gained in a way that is as rigid as averages) i'm not sure what you'd code that would be better, as the results are random otherwise.

QUOTE (kirant @ Feb 24 2013, 12:47 PM)

QUOTE (SmashedFish @ Feb 24 2013, 05:23 AM) Alright. I'll probably end up coding something with C++ to sim some leveling. Why? All you need are simple assumptions or the application of statistics formulae, dependant on your interest level.

An excuse for coding practice, I guess. Anyway, either I was not paying attention in class when we covered said formulae, or we haven't yet (we're currently doing stuff with z-tests, if that helps).