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Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn ReDux (v0.8.72 CH 2-2)


Dunal
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28 minutes ago, Renigade said:

So we're clear the normal mode included is regular normal mode and not pseudo hard mode normal mode? Are you still planning on doing a pseudo hard mode normal mode or was that more of an "eventually it might happen" kinda deal?

No rush either way, just curious.

The difficulty is slightly higher than the original (for part 1) past around 1-4. Before then it's a bit easier just by virtue of your mages being outside of 1RKO range and a few other factors (Nolan not getting doubled with a steel axe, Edward a lot more likely to remain in doubling range etc...). It's similar to ReDux in that regard, but not really the same type of difficulty (maps are still in their original form).

Chances are I'm not going to make a separate version (I've instead made some additional scaling adjustments to the base patch) since there isn't any meaningful way to raise the difficulty further (during certain parts of the game) without actual changes to each map. Therefore, If I make some adjustments to the difficulty curve itself then that will be sufficient enough. Unit/class balance also contributes to that.

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48 minutes ago, Mr. Mister said:

You'd confuse a bit fewer people if you kept the .ppf extension to the patch files :P

Fixed. Not sure why PPF-Studio automatically removes the extension. Something I've overlooked more than once..

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This is amazing, thank you Dunal: I wanted to play RD since forever and now with this it will be a thing

 

i presume you will fix stuff like Mist's florete being magic based instead of strength 

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@Dunal I just got through part 1 of the rebalance and it certainly is a vast improvement over the original. Would you consider changing the master seals to 2500 gps?  I think 1000 is too inexpensive. Also, I think the Black Knight would be better balanced with 5 pts cut from each stat and 5 pts reduced from his hps.  I do really like that you can use lances with him though.  Everything else seems pretty good. 

Trying to play Part 2 results in non-recoverable read errors.

Edited by grinus
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11 hours ago, grinus said:

@Dunal I just got through part 1 of the rebalance and it certainly is a vast improvement over the original. Would you consider changing the master seals to 2500 gps?  I think 1000 is too inexpensive. Also, I think the Black Knight would be better balanced with 5 pts cut from each stat and 5 pts reduced from his hps.  I do really like that you can use lances with him though.  Everything else seems pretty good. 

Trying to play Part 2 results in non-recoverable read errors.

Regarding the Black Knight, I doubt those changes would have any impact since unless he's nerfed to the point where he cannot solo (like in ReDux) in 1-E then that won't really change him (you're still fighting tier 1 units keep in mind). I otherwise left him intact because it's true to the original game and his part 4 incarnation (and no real reason to arbitrarily lower his stats if it's not significant like in ReDux).

For master seals, I don't really think that freedom to early-promote is inherently a bad thing when you consider how that affects the game (aside from skipping level 21 itself). The Dawn Brigade need any level acceleration they can get. And if you're buying master seals to early promote (implying that you're promoting more units than free master seals you are receiving) then increasing their cost would only be penalising using a larger roster of units as opposed to low-manning. By being cheap, it means that you can at least promote everyone for part 3 and have them contribute. Units also benefit far less from auto-promoting since stat caps are high in tier 1 (standard FE fare of 20 in most stats) so you're potentially losing stats long-term in order to do so. By making them less accessible you're essentially nerfing the less optimal style of play (for example, leaving Leonardo as an unpromoted level ~10-15 scrub because you can't afford him a master seal). If anything I'd add a base panel option under 'manage' to freely promote units if that were easy to implement. Master seals having a cost at all is just an illusion of value, aside from the short term power boost in early/mid part 1 (which can't be bought at that point anyway).

Appreciate the feedback nonetheless. That is just my reasoning behind why I have/haven't changed those things in particular.

Part 2 isn't available yet. It will come in 2-3 days.

 

 

Speaking of low-manning I've been thinking of doing some scaling changes to ReDux, mostly in regards to SPD/AS (where growths/bases/promos etc... are reduced and scale less with EXP/investment). This would be beneficial to the game by making it so under-levelled units are faster and over-levelled ones are slower in relation to how they are now. But relatively speaking, anyone with moderate investment would remain around the game. Obviously enemies would be impacted the exact same way.

It's the same with how the DEF stat functions currently, where a ~50% growth is on the very high end and even ~30% is an okay growth. The variation becomes lower between units. In the context of SPD, it would still mean that an average Jill will double most enemies, but extra investment won't suddenly make her double swordmasters for instance. The reverse being true for units like Aran being under-levelled where he'd be less likely to get doubled. 

It essentially just means that SPD scales less with EXP investment. 

 

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I dunno about further scaling down SPD; I'd still like having to plan for the enemy fast units (not just swordmasters, but also pegasiand even some cavaliers) to double mybelow-average Spd units and laugh at their puny attacks.

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13 minutes ago, Mr. Mister said:

I dunno about further scaling down SPD; I'd still like having to plan for the enemy fast units (not just swordmasters, but also pegasiand even some cavaliers) to double mybelow-average Spd units and laugh at their puny attacks.

That's not really being affected though. Pegasus/Swordmasters etc... would still be doubling your low/mid SPD units. The difference is that units would less likely to be SPD blessed (or have way higher SPD due to being over-levelled) to either not get doubled by them, or  for someone like Jill/Sothe to start doubling them. Each class/unit still has their own tier of SPD, but due to lower growth, it means that EXP/promotion will have less of an impact on how units deviate from those. When I mentioned Aran before, that was referencing being doubled by Tigers or other Halberdiers by being under-levelled or SPD screwed. But his interaction with high SPD classes shouldn't change.

Upon reflection it might even be something that's more of an issue currently than it is in some other FEs. SPD growth/scaling is higher than it is in say, the GBA games and EXP amounts are higher than the original FE10 for the most part (at least for the DB/Crimeans) so it's something worth looking into.

Edited by Dunal
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Well, I do like having two or three (temporarily) SPD-blessed units per playthrough, considering there's bound to be the same amount of SPD-screwed units per playthrough. It keeps thigns exciting. Also keep in mind that mages are very dependant on STR procs for leveling up their AS on mid-rank tomes and above, so that they are only trly AS-screwed if they are both Str-screwed and non-SPD-blessed, so the chances of them being SPD-blessed mitigates it, while still not elevating them into the next SPD-tier.

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If a unit like Jill is in danger of doubling Swordmasters can't you just make her speed cap lower so that she never does? And unless I'm mistaken couldn't a higher emphasis on the speed stat be a good thing for promotion if the growth rates are gonna be so low (seeing as unlike growths promo bonuses aren't random) so for example couldn't you make it so that Aran's base speed + promo bonuses won't ever get doubled by Part 3 Tigers even if his base speed - promo bonuses would?

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17 hours ago, Mr. Mister said:

Well, I do like having two or three (temporarily) SPD-blessed units per playthrough, considering there's bound to be the same amount of SPD-screwed units per playthrough. It keeps thigns exciting. Also keep in mind that mages are very dependant on STR procs for leveling up their AS on mid-rank tomes and above, so that they are only trly AS-screwed if they are both Str-screwed and non-SPD-blessed, so the chances of them being SPD-blessed mitigates it, while still not elevating them into the next SPD-tier.

I mean, that possibility isn't being removed entirely (we're talking lowering AS scaling to be more in line with GBA FE or slightly lower than that). It's more about just making AS scale more slowly and close the gap between AS on units as a whole, so that EXP is less of a factor on whether a unit doubles/gets doubled (your units are less pressured to keep up with the enemy's SPD since they also scale more slowly). On the plus side for faster units, it means that they remain doubling for longer with less investment (base stats would have more relevance than before). A base level Jill would now be able to double some enemies in 1-E, just on the flip side, she would require an insane about of investment (and/or speedwings) to double fast enemies. In the current release, Jill can gain 3 points of SPD in just 4 levels (on average). This would be changed to 6 levels with a ~50% growth. SPD values/growths would be in-line with the DEF stat.

16 hours ago, Renigade said:

If a unit like Jill is in danger of doubling Swordmasters can't you just make her speed cap lower so that she never does? And unless I'm mistaken couldn't a higher emphasis on the speed stat be a good thing for promotion if the growth rates are gonna be so low (seeing as unlike growths promo bonuses aren't random) so for example couldn't you make it so that Aran's base speed + promo bonuses won't ever get doubled by Part 3 Tigers even if his base speed - promo bonuses would?

Caps alone doesn't really do anything especially early on after promotion, and will just make it so units will cap-ram their SPD fast (due to growth). That doesn't really prevent someone like Jill doubling fast units in 1-E since your units would be freshly promoted at this stage (and assuming her cap would be reduced to ~26 or something). Then the secondary problem to that would be being able to BEXP other stats quickly on the virtue of SPD capping earlier. Of course, caps would be changing as well. But lowering those without any other changes would cause more scaling issues than it solves.

Promotion gains is a separate topic altogether since they define the power difference between pre and post promotion and not much else. For instance, if promotion bonuses are globally increased by 1, then base stats for all tier 2 enemies (or playable units) are also logically increased by 1 so nothing changes. The only actual difference this makes is the encouragement of an early promotion or the necessity of promotion to remain inside/outside doubling range. I do think that this needs to exist in some form since opportunity costs for promotion need to play a factor (as in, do you wait for a unit to cap their T1 SPD, or promote early to get that boost?) on certain units.

1 hour ago, Maggonis said:

I just downloaded this mod 2 weeks ago did a lot Change? Would it help to replay it again? 

Played until 2-2 like a week ago

Current release of ReDux hasn't changed. There is however a much more minimalistic balance patch released recently for Part 1, which will update very frequently as I test through it. Feel free to check it out.  Full release should be within the next week or two.

Edited by Dunal
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I'm going to try and test out the minimalist balance patch over the weekend when I have time. Is it meant to be played with transfers, or should I go into the game without transfer bonuses?

Some thoughts ahead of time though. You definitely don't have to do any or all of this, I'm just putting down my thoughts on what I'd like to see.

* Would it be possible to get a more comprehensive change list? Some of the stuff I can work around, such as the changed bases (I can just wait until I recruit the unit and look at their bases then), but other stuff is a bit harder to figure out. I'm seeing stuff like "Stat caps tweaked for most T2 & T3 classes", but that doesn't really tell me what caps were changed exactly and what the new values are. This is especially important because caps are a really big factor in determining late game performance, and in order to actually discover the new stat caps I would have to play through the game multiple times.

* This might not be true to the goal of keeping the changes minimalist, but have you put any thought into sharpening the distinction between enemy classes by tweaking their bases/growths? Enemy units in this game, regardless of class, scale pretty similarly in terms of damage, defensive stats, and AS, with few exceptions. Base RD isn't really like the GBA FE games, where things like AS and defenses vary wildly between enemies. In RD for the most part, if your unit reaches the threshold where it can ORKO one class, or survive a few rounds of combat with one class, it can probably do the same for most other classes. For example, enemy Halberds and Warriors are very similar statistically. Snipers are as well, with the only real distinction being that they are locked to 2 range. Swordmasters are slightly faster and weaker defensively, but not significantly weaker defensively. Generals are a bit bulkier, but as a supposedly "slow" class they aren't even that much behind all other enemy units (on most maps they're only behind the other enemies by 1-2 AS, and sometimes they're equal in terms of AS).

* I'm not even sure how easy/possible this would be to hack, but I think this would be a decent quality of life change. Would it be possible to adjust the math on finding hidden items? Hidden items play a much bigger role in RD than they do in most other games (usually there is only one late game hidden item chapter), and they are sometimes incredibly frustrating to find. I think it would be good to boost the find rate on hidden items in general, or at the very least give thieves a 100% chance to find hidden items.

* I'd like to see WEXP boosted on tomes. WEXP is just generally lower for tomes than it is for weapons. Iron weapons, your basic Part 1 stuff, give 2 WEXP, whereas basic tomes like Fire give 1 WEXP. Similarly Steel weapons give 3 WEXP, whereas your mid game tomes like Elfire give 2 WEXP. In addition, since mages are squishy and tend to die in two or three hits, they generally have limited enemy phase, which means they just get to attack less often than most physical units. I know that Fire giving 1 WEXP is in some sense "consistent", because it is an E rank tome and Bronze weapons are E rank weapons that give 1 WEXP, but nobody actually buys Bronze weapons, so Fire is much more comparable to Iron weapons, whereas Elfire should be on the same tier as Steel weapons. (Also, for some reason the weapon ranks on thunder tomes are inconsistent with the rest of the tomes.) All this adds up to mean that mages have a much harder time boosting weapon rank than frontline classes, which is actually a noticeable negative for mages that join with poor weapon ranks (such as Micaiah, Ilyana, and especially Laura).

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3 hours ago, Silly said:

Some thoughts ahead of time though. You definitely don't have to do any or all of this, I'm just putting down my thoughts on what I'd like to see.

Pretty much all of those are good suggestions. Some of which I've overlooked for the mini-patch so far. Mostly because a lot of the changes were done for it before I'd implemented them in ReDux (such as hidden items), so these changes you've listed would be worth including as well.

 

3 hours ago, Silly said:

but have you put any thought into sharpening the distinction between enemy classes by tweaking their bases/growths?

This is already being done, particularly for any class past tier 1. I'll agree that diversity in classes isn't that great in FE10, so much like ReDux, there will be changes especially for SPD/AS. 

This also applies to some playable units as well. For example, Calill now has the base/growth to double consistently from base level, but I've reduced her SKL moderately so she also has be selective in enemy targeting (or tome use) to secure hits. Which at least makes her more interesting than just "Soren/Ilyana but actually having SPD". Things aren't as drastic as in ReDux in this regard but it does means that some of the lesser units from the original haven't just been flat buffed in some cases (which can lead to just homogenising units).

With that said, the scope of it is a bit higher than originally intended, since I'm making further tweaks as I play through it.

3 hours ago, Silly said:

Would it be possible to adjust the math on finding hidden items?

Yeah this will be boosted for the next update. Like in ReDux I'll make it so the find rate is further boosted by good Biorhythm, with a global % increase along with that.

 

3 hours ago, Silly said:

I'd like to see WEXP boosted on tomes.

E tomes are increased to 2 currently but a global increase of 1 (for the rest of them) should be fine on top of that. 

 

3 hours ago, Silly said:

Would it be possible to get a more comprehensive change list?

A full change-log will be provided when the patch is complete.

In terms of caps, they have been changed to be appropriate to each unit's growths (which aren't changed too much). And I've made an attempt to tune caps so that each class in the lategame are suitably good (obvious candidates such as Bishops/Gold Knights being improved overall).

Edited by Dunal
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I finished part 1 of the rebalance mod. Here are my current opinions on the units that I had experience with. I have some broader balance ideas as well, but I still need to type them up, so I'll probably post the more general ideas tomorrow. In my playthrough I played reasonably efficiently (max bonus exp, don't spend extra time on things if it isn't necessary), so that probably influenced some of my opinions on some of the units.

Spoiler

Micaiah: +1 authority star is great. Other than that she still feels like regular Micaiah. I really don't think she is noticeably better in part 1. Can't really double, does reasonable chip damage, and dies to literally any two enemies attacking her. The extra physical bulk that she has really doesn't amount to that much, but might have turned some OHKOs into 2HKOs. What is actually bad for her bulk though is the resistance nerf that she's gotten, in combination with the magic weapon triangle advantage being bigger in the rebalance. As a result, Micaiah actually takes non-negligible damage from enemy magic users (who are basically all anima and therefore have WTA over Micaiah). Physical enemies are more common than mages though, so the overall change to her bulk is probably fine. Her speed growth is also increased, so maybe a speed blessed Micaiah could actually start doubling enemies (about an 18% chance that a level 20 Micaiah will be able to double enemies in 1-E), but that's probably unlikely. (Also my Micaiah got speed screwed so she didn't gain too much experience.)

Edward: I'm happy with the Edward changes. The buff to his bases and his strength growth means that it's much more reliable for him to hit the right stat benchmarks in the early game, which allows him to ORKO enemies. This is a great help, and allows him to snowball better and hopefully become a good unit. Zihark is likely to still outclass Edward statistically when he joins, but the gap is much closer and with some good level ups Edward might even become better.

Leonardo: I tried giving Leonardo a reasonable share of the experience and I sort of regret it. Even with experience he is still too slow to double. Heck, I don't even think 20/1 Sniper Leo is fast enough to double most of the enemies in 1-E on average. Now being too slow to double isn't the end of the world sometimes. But on Leo it really is. It results in him being a unit that not only has literally no enemy phase to speak of, but also a pretty subpar player phase as well, as he can't even KO an enemy without assistance. Now don't get me wrong, I do think that Leo is noticeably better than he is in the base game. His base stats are high enough now that he can contribute reasonable chip damage for a sizable portion of part 1, and he doesn't get ORKOed in return anymore. But as a long term growth unit I was very disappointed in Leo. Also, note that this is my part 1 opinion. It is possible that Leo is potentially able to double some enemies with the Lughnasadh in Part 3. (Maybe tigers? Cats and hawks are probably out of the question.)

Nolan: No opinion. I didn't feed him that much exp so I can't accurately judge. And his stats all look like regular Nolan's, so there is probably not that much difference.

Laura: I noticed Laura was a lot better, but I'm not 100% sure how she will turn out, as she still suffers from some common healer problems. First off, the good. The significant buff to her base speed is really helpful, as it now means that she isn't doubled and ORKOed by literally every enemy at base (though you should still really keep her out of combat if at all possible). The buff to her starting level is also really good because it means that she can reach promotion faster. Now the bad news is that even with the buff to her starting level, Laura still suffers from her poor rate of exp gain. I played through the game relatively efficiently (which means no wasting extra time just to give Laura levels), and even with spamming heal at every possible opportunity Laura barely reached level 10 by the time that part 1 was finished. And while 10/1 Laura can contribute she's not really turning any heads in the stats department, especially since she's likely to just be an inferior version of Micaiah once part 1 is over.

Sothe: This is fine. The lower bases don't really make him much worse (though it actually means that he doesn't ORKO enemies with the Bronze Dagger at base anymore, which is slightly significant), and the higher growths should theoretically compensate. He still feels like typical Part 1 Sothe, even if his bases are a bit worse.

Ilyana: I think the buffs to her have so far been reasonable. The changes to her bulk are especially important, because it means that she can realistically avoid 2HKOs, which means she actually does a okay job at being a frontline unit in part 1. Her speed is still sort of an issue though. The base speed increase and her promotion gains means that she has a better shot at doubling, though that chance is still far from reliable. She's probably in an okay spot in part 1. Who knows how she will turn out when she rejoins in part 3.

Aran: No comment. I didn't really use Aran.

Meg: Definitely a lot better than before. Her base stats aren't awful anymore, so she can actually be deployed and used for a few chapters, even if she doesn't get fed much exp. Being stuck in the armor knight class is still kind of meh, because of the lower mobility, but at least she is no longer completely hopeless.

Volug: I didn't feed him much exp, but he feels like he is noticeably better. His bases aren't that much lower than before, as he still ORKOs most enemies for a while after he joins, and has good bulk. In return he now has a much easier time getting levels, slightly increased growths, and an easier time building strike rank. Don't know how he is without halfshift, since I only played part 1, but I imagine the changes to the laguz gauge are a buff to him as well.

Tauroneo: Basically the exact same in part 1. His bases are esssentially identical and he gains no exp from combat. He's already a good unit when he joins though, so not a big deal.

Jill: Basically no changes. Jill is already a good unit though.

Zihark: Basically no changes. Zihark is already a good unit though.

Fiona: Similar to Meg, the changes to her bases turn her into an actually usable unit. I was a little bit disappointed in her, as even with stat boosters fed to her she still struggled a bit. This is mostly an unpleasant side effect of her availability. She has 1-7 to train, but in a reasonably efficient run of that map she shouldn't get too much experience, because in order to get maximum bonus exp you need to move through the map pretty quickly. In addition, by now you should have a bunch of fairly good combat units (any tier 2 unit and any laguz) that will be taking a sizable portion of the kills from Fiona in an efficient clear. She is unavailable in 1-8 and 1-9. And 1-E is actually a very noticeable difficulty spike from the previous few chapters. Unless Fiona had the opportunity to gain a lot of experience in 1-7, she turns out to be a pretty underwhelming unit in 1-E.

Tormod, Muarim, Vika: No comment. They're basically just as good/useful in part 1 as their base game selves. It remains to be seen how good they are in part 4.

Nailah: Still stupidly strong compared to part 1, even with nerfed stats. I assume that this means that she will need a bit of training if you want to bring her to the endgame though.

Rafiel: He's about the same, which is fine because base game Rafiel is already very good. I believe he transforms significantly faster though, which helps, but as a dancer most of his usefulness lies outside of his stats.

Black Knight: This is the Black Knight. He ORKOs enemies and doesn't afraid of anything.

 

 

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Thanks for the feedback. I've made some further changes recently which should address some of that but I'll respond to a few of them:

With Micaiah the main purpose with her changes was to merely give her enough bulk to avoid 1RKOs as well as enough SPD to avoid being doubled. Otherwise I don't think her combat is considered to be that bad in part 1; mostly because of Thani. I don't believe that she should necessarily naturally double either. Still, she averages 17.5 SPD at LV20 now which is still pretty good. Otherwise, I could boost her MAG and increase the cap beyond 20 like in ReDux. A mag cap of 25/40/50 (with an even higher growth) would boost her ATK a decent amount. If she isn't doubling then hitting harder would be fine. The only problem with doing this is making her an even better healer (one of the reasons why in ReDux she doesn't have staves in T2) but eh... If you've trained her significantly then I'd imagine you'd want her for combat either way (and training her in part 1 just for a powerful staff bot is fine too I guess).

With Leonardo there's a point where if I just give him a ton of STR/SPD it... wouldn't really be Leo anymore (even if it would obviously make him better). At the very least he is almost guaranteed to cap STR in tier 1 (at least with the recent changes I've made) which gives him 23 STR at 20/1. He's also able to use the steel bow at base now which does make his early damage respectable. The Iron Longbow also gives him a range advantage over any other unit, so there's that as well. Otherwise his stats are solid all-around even if they mean less for an archer. It would means that BEXPing his SPD is still potent later on, especially since STR can cap really easily at all tiers (as in, at 20/9 on average -- you can viably master crown him early for a powerful 3-range one-shot).

I think the main difference with Laura now is that she has a realistic opportunity to become a great combat unit if the player wants her to be (and have it pay off). It would involve BEXP and/or the Spirit Dust etc... But the possibility of the player giving her more resources to shine is at least viable. Worth mentioning that she does have a 39 SPD cap at tier 3 (highest for a mage tied with Calill) so you can imagine her lategame is really good. Worth mentioning that I am keeping units mostly intact in regards to their original design/role. So for units like Laura/Meg/Fiona etc... they still need some kind of favouritism to be great, with the difference being that it now requires less for a better pay-off.

Meg/Fiona I've covered in my previous response. Yeah, they still need BEXP or other resources to be great so that's consistent with the original game. But it's far easier to use them at least. Meg's mobility is at least better by virtue of ledges no longer slowing her down all that much (or not at all in the case of thickets, which makes her deceptively mobile in say, 1-6-1 or 1-8). I have buffed Meg's bases a bit more though and Fiona's promotion bonuses even further (so an early promotion would be viable in case you just want her to contribute a bit in part 3). Either way, Part 3/4 are going to be more difficult than the original game so growth-oriented units should prove to be more useful and/or worth given investment and I would imagine that applies to these units over others. Meg has 36 SPD at T3 for instance with great stats all-around. Fiona is a similar case. Doesn't necessarily mean that they are optimal units overall but they can be used without too much effort.

 

With that said, maps beyond part 1 are getting some addiitonal changes. Part 2 now has fully promoted enemies in every map except 2-1. Part 3 enemies (typically in Ike's maps) have further stat boosts etc... There's some additional effort made to 'fix' the difficulty curve beyond just buffing/nerfing units at this stage.

 

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I don't necessarily think that Micaiah needs changes. She's not a great unit, but I assume the goal isn't to make every unit great, just to make them all reasonable to good. The buffs put her in a state where she is an okay unit to use without getting sort of frustrated. She does her job at providing reasonable chip damage in Part 1 and does a pretty good job as a healer in Part 3.

Leo I think is probably relatively on par with Micaiah. He's not a great unit, but he can definitely contribute chip damage in part 1 because his bases are actually pretty good, and I assume that with a little bit of help he can contribute in part 3 with his prf weapon. I think that if you wanted to make Leo into a good unit then that would require big, big changes because the archer class is sort of bad, but right now he can contribute pretty well for most of the part 1 chapters, which is more than regular Leo can do.

I will probably take your word on Fiona and Laura. I assume that they turn out good if you grind them a little, but they are probably just not very good units if the player is playing efficiently, since they just don't have any time to get very much experience before the difficulty spike starts kicking in. I gave Fiona the Part 1 Robe, Energy Drop, and Dracoshield and she still ended up sort of underwhelming, which really made me feel like those stat boosters would have been better invested somewhere else. I assume that if you take the time to feed Fiona a lot of experience on 1-7, or you spend more turns giving Laura staff exp, that would make them better though.

One possible solution for Laura that I can think of to make her better in faster playthrough without significantly changing her in a slower one might actually be as follows. Increase starting level even further (to level 9+). Increase tier 1 -> tier 2 promotion gains further. Keep base stats the same. This would be a net neutral change statistically (or maybe a slight buff) to the player who takes the time to level Laura to 20 in part 1 before promoting. But would be a substantial buff to someone who will only realistically be giving Laura five levels worth of staff exp in part 1. It's not like buffing Laura would make the Dawn Brigade chapters substantially easier anyways, in my opinion. What the Dawn Brigade is probably most interested in are units that can serve as good frontline combatants (due to their chapters in part 3 being relatively defensive in nature, with powerful enemies and plenty of choke points). Even if Laura were a much better unit than she were now, she is still a unit that needs protection on enemy phase.

I'm going to assume that with Meg's buffed bases, she will actually be a pretty good unit right out of the gate, which would probably make her something that the DB really wants. A unit that can frontline and has a reasonable time gaining experience (Meg definitely has a lot of potential chapters to get exp in compared to someone like Fiona, and with good bases she would actually be able to get into combat in those chapters more liberally and gain more exp as a result) is quite nice.

Also, for the rebalance should I be playing farther than part 1/early part 2? I understand that those sections are probably not fully done.

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1 hour ago, Silly said:

She's not a great unit, but I assume the goal isn't to make every unit great, just to make them all reasonable to good.

With Micaiah being a main character and all, I think there's room to make her more than just reasonable. It's why I'd be less inclined to nerf Ike as much as some people might think he should be.

To confirm, this is now Micaiah with further changes: 

image.png.dca33752c88ce66019b05a8a27a88ff9.png

MAG cap is 25 which she will reach on average. SPD growth is slightly lowered to keep her out of range of doubling (usually).

 

Here is Laura who has had some further base stat improvements:

image.png.f15c7cdde6d68b14da3aab8e97532e52.png

Promoting at 15 before 1-E (with ~4 levels of BEXP total) would mean:

HP STR MAG SKL SPD LCK DEF RES
26   7   19  16   21 13  10  13

I think that's really solid for a unit that does not share combat EXP, but may need a bit of BEXP to keep up. Either way, so long as she has 20 SPD by 3-6 she can double tigers and perform well. Only that benchmark needs to be reached for the most part. The base stat buffs since the initial release should be more than enough.

 

Here is Meg currently:

image.png.585e0041423a027f6776f0b42659d917.png

Should be a solid enough unit upon recruitment. (Just don't sell that fortune scroll!)

 

Fiona is left unchanged outside of promotion bonuses (from initial release):

image.png.e5c7678e885b05b9b1a6d4bcee50440a.png

The bonuses are: +3 HP, +4 STR, +2 MAG, +3 SKL, +2 SPD, +3 DEF, +2 RES

Thing is, I don't mind if Fiona is intentionally weaker until a bit later on. It's true to being an Est archetype if that's what she's intended to be. That said, she's not even that bad with a near-instant promotion. A speedwing (or a few levels of BEXP) + arm scroll + silver lance gives her serviceable offence without any combat EXP investment (she wouldn't be much worse than base Zihark with that setup). The difference being that the player has the option of training her in 1-8 to make her better if they really want to make her powerful long-term.

I had a very similar discussion when ReDux was much earlier in development. I could just make Fiona great at base level but that's not really true to her original design, nor does every unit need to be conventionally good or easy to use. Worst case scenario is that you instantly promote her for part 3 and she can chip enemies while self-healing (or block a choke-point in 3-13 with just healing items, since she won't be 1RKOed by tigers).

She could still be a novelty unit and that's fine. The pay-off for using her should be higher than before though, and that's the important part.

 

Don't play beyond part 1 for the time being. Part 2 will be out tomorrow. The hack will have more extensive changes beyond part 1 (than originally intended) since it'll ultimately be worth doing. The maps themselves will still be the same in layout but difficulty (and EXP) tuning have been modified quite a bit. It's not going to be the same kind of difficulty as ReDux, but should prove to be more challenging as a whole. Maps like 2-E are already quite fun to play so even just a difficulty bump (along with removing 1 or 2 turn cheesing) should make things more interesting.

The main reason is so people have something to play while ReDux is still being worked on. Yeah, this rebalance will delay ReDux a bit more, but I think that's worth it if there's something to tide people over for a much longer period (comparatively). Putting a bit more effort into it should give people more of a reason to play (rather than just a bog-standard balance hack which wouldn't fundamentally change how the original is played beyond the novelty of some units being better; basically the reason I'm not usually too keen on balance hacks myself).

 

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Oh; I haven't post in a long time

How are you doing nowadays Dunal? I'm seeing you're talking about Micaiah and Part 2 :D

If there is a new patch I need to play it; I hope my computer can handle it xD

Edited by Troykv
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10 hours ago, Dunal said:

With Micaiah being a main character and all, I think there's room to make her more than just reasonable. It's why I'd be less inclined to nerf Ike as much as some people might think he should be.

I do think that the idea of having main characters that people actively want to use is a really good one.

With that being said though, I think there is sort of an upper bound on how good a character with Micaiah's properties can be. A character who can't double and therefore can't ORKO enemies (enemies weak to Thani are an exception, but part 3 is mostly laguz enemies) and also can't take hits is fundamentally limited in terms of combat usefulness. Its hard for her to have significant enemy phase combat due to her squishiness, so her exp gain on enemy phase is limited. On player phase you have two main options. Either you use her for chip damage once per player phase, which limits her rate of exp gain (since she isn't really gaining EP exp and is only gaining chip exp on PP), or you try and feed her kills with her player phase action, which means that another unit's needs to prep a kill for her. She does have staff utility going into part 3, which I should definitely mention as being helpful, but staff utility is pretty constant, her ability to use staves in the rebalance is not significantly different from her ability to do so in the base game.

I think that within the bounds of her limitations, Micaiah is already pretty respectable in the base game. She contributes meaningful chip damage in part 1 and okay chip damage in part 3 if you need it, and does an acceptable job as a staffer in part 3+.  She has her niche and can fill it, which is much more than what the truly awful units in base RD can boast. The buffs here remove some of the most frustrating parts about her, but they don't really remove the fundamental limits on her design. She's still Micaiah, with all of the limitations inherent to her. Even though she is noticeably better statistically she's still only marginally better in terms of overall usefulness in my books.

Those Laura stats that you posted actually look fine to me, so I'm revising my opinion of her. If you play quickly and don't heal too much then Laura isn't that great, but if you take a little bit of time to grind some staff exp she looks like she'd turn out well statistically. She suffers sort of from the same problem as Micaiah, in that she can't have much enemy phase combat. But the ability to double is huge for a unit with no frontline potential since there is a lot of utility in being able to eliminate problem enemies reliably on player phase. And I forgot to account for the fact that she doesn't "steal" experience from any other unit. So as long as you're fine with accommodating Laura in part 1 then she is an additional useful unit you can use going into part 3.

Fiona is probably balanced as an Est, in that it takes considerable favoritism to turn her into a good unit, but she looks like she would perform well after receiving that favoritism. It's not generally my playstyle but from a numbers standpoint she seems to meet that goal. I do like that she can promote early to hopefully be useful in early part 3, because a unit that can serve two niches like that would be really cool. I'll try to do that when part 3 is released and have a more informed opinion then.

No additional comments on Meg at this time. Looking at the numbers I am optimistic at her prospects but I obviously don't have much experience investing significant exp into her.

Edited by Silly
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Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn Re-Balance (Part 2)

Spoiler


  • Bases/growths are modified for most playable units (as well as additional attributes such as authority stars)
  • The base difficulty of the game is slightly increased (adjusted enemy bases/growth rates based on class) in the early game, ramping up further as the game progresses
  • EXP amounts have substantially increased during certain parts of the game (part 2 for example)
  • HP cap now set to 40/55/70 for physical units, 35/45/55 for magical units and 80 for Laguz with some exceptions
  • LCK cap set to 40 for all classes with some exceptions
  • Stat caps of 10 (or lower) in T1 classes are now increased to 12 with any other caps increasing to 20 (Laura's SKL/SPD)
  • Stat caps tweaked for most T2 & T3 classes to be more in line with unit bases/growths
  • Promotion bonuses increased for all T1 units and certain T3 classes
  • MT on tomes increase further at higher ranks
  • Thunder magic's base MT has been increased (from 3 to 6) with higher tiers scaling accordingly
  • Earth affinity's evasion bonus has been reduced
  • Longbows and Crossbows have increased MT and adjusted HIT
  • Stats has been tweaked slightly for specific weapons to improve viability (Slim Sword, Wo Dao, Silver Greatlance etc...)
  • Playable Laguz are now lower level (with base stats to match in most cases)
  • Laguz weapons have modified stats based on class
  • Laguz weapons now grant more WEXP (usually double, sometimes more) and Laguz gain more combat EXP at higher levels (past level ~15)
  • Laguz transform gauges now decrease more slowly when shifted and increase faster when in human form
  • Magic cards have much more MT but reduced HIT
  • Mages and armors now have a lower movement cost for climbing ledges
  • Armors have no movement cost when moving though thickets
  • Horses can now move through shoal/rivers (at a high movement cost)
  • Some maps are modified slightly (such as unit starting inventory)
  • Gold cost changed for many items
  • Shops are modified in some parts of the game (promotion items can be bought infinitely when they are available)
  • The vine card (when forging with a coin) can no longer be selected and the pick rate for all other cards have been adjusted
  • The magic weapon triangle has been increased to +3/-3 MT and all mages have had their RES reduced by a flat amount (outside of normal balance changes)


 

UNIT CHANGES

Spoiler

image.png.ab428f4f9e2422de40ace27f8ae5c6e5.png

image.png.6e381be57a313dd4f87af1f8ef303e49.png

image.png.ef60a4a40ad31bd7e7135ff21daafba0.png

image.png.326b8bcc6811ac7f61b964066e08de5a.png

 

For the time being, do not go beyond 2-E. 

Would be interested in some feedback regarding the difficulty changes. You should also receive a lot more EXP than the vanilla game (so you are rewarded for the higher difficulty, especially during 2-3).

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I will try this weekend the whole thing since time is a hard mistress so I got a few questions:

- I have a save from PoR, should I used it here or those stats bonuses weren't part of your scope?

- The two parts were tested with the use of all characters? I really want to use them all

- I don't get the whole deal with the two patches, would you mind explain this to me?

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16 minutes ago, ronlyn said:

- The two parts were tested with the use of all characters? I really want to use them all

- I don't get the whole deal with the two patches, would you mind explain this to me?

Every character should ideally be usable, though probably not at once. Including enough exp to make every single character good at the same time would break the game, because you could just feed that exp to a smaller amount of characters and have overpowered juggernauts instead.

There are multiple different versions of the Radiant Dawn iso. The two patches are the same, except one patch works on one of the RD versions and the other patch works on the other version. You'll need one or the other depending on your disc.

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36 minutes ago, Silly said:

Every character should ideally be usable, though probably not at once. Including enough exp to make every single character good at the same time would break the game, because you could just feed that exp to a smaller amount of characters and have overpowered juggernauts instead.

There are multiple different versions of the Radiant Dawn iso. The two patches are the same, except one patch works on one of the RD versions and the other patch works on the other version. You'll need one or the other depending on your disc.

If my memory serves right, Dunal said that we could use all of the Dawn Brigade and have them promote by 1-E to make them decent at Part 3, so I was thinking about leaving everyone around lvl 14-15 and promote them (something I really dislike but I understand the fact that in Radiant Dawn you need to sacrifice potential growth in place of intermediate stats to be relevant so I can cope with that)

Also, thanks for the info about the patches

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