What is the ranked run?

[Harvey]

I'm considering playing FE7 again hector mode(through the use of emulator because now the game's save is busted). So I'd like to know just what is this rank run in general. i.e, those stars that appear that judge the overall tactician's score or something. Does it do anything if you accomplish them all?

 

[Florete]

https://serenesforest.net/blazing-sword/miscellaneous/rankings/summary/

You get bragging rights if you can get S rank (5 stars in all categories). Like me. It's not too difficult on the normal modes, though even then you do need to pay careful attention to experience and make sure you don't let too much go to waste through overusing a few high-level units.

[Harvey]

Ok. So if you promote Dart using the ocean's seal, how does it affect the funds rank? 

 

[Florete]

The Ocean Seal has a value of 50,000, so if you promote him you simply lose 50,000 gold. How much more difficult this makes getting 5 stars in funds depends on what else you do, but it's essentially worth 5 normal promotions (and 2 1/2 Lord promotions) or a little more than 6 stat boosters. If you're smart and thrifty you can probably get away with it if you have the silver card, but of course that's only available on the hard modes or through the MK:DD bonus disc items.

It can be difficult to know how well you're doing on Funds if you're always sitting at 5 stars because the game doesn't tell you what you need and your only option to know how much you have is to manually add up everything in your convoy, so it's tough to know if it will really hurt you, but if you're unsure it's a better idea to just save the Ocean Seal. For what it's worth, if my calculations are correct (and I'm only ~75% sure that they are), in my EHM S rank run I could have promoted Dart and still gotten the 5 stars, though it would have been pretty close.

[Harvey]

Ah ok thanks...maybe I'll just not bother too much on the rank and just enjoy Hector mode.

 

[bethany81707]

I remember getting the "Biran and Etruria go to war" ending on my first run of Eliwood Normal... think that was just an A Rank, though.

[Interdimensional Observer]

You do get a slight boost from ranking well:

Tactician Stars

In the Fortune-Tactician window, one star is awarded for every 12 Tactician points obtained. Tactician points are added at the end of the each chapter, the amount depending on the Overall Rank obtained for that individual chapter:

0 for E Rank, 1 for D Rank, 2 for C Rank, 3 for B Rank, 4 for A Rank and 5 for S Rank.

The maximum obtainable stars is 10.

For each Tactician star, all playable characters receive +1 Critical Evade. Playable characters with the same Affinity as the Tactician receive an additional +1 Accuracy and +1 Avoid for each star.

And as phineas alluded to, the Tactician's character ending does is chosen from one of three possibilities depending on your rank.

If you plan to ever try Ranked. Survival is easy to 5 Star for any decent FE player. Combat means just not doing too much babying/enemy abusing/taking down foes slowly. Funds means don't use/sell many stat boosters and promotion items, limit your gem selling to what is needed at a given time and avoid buying expensive weapons, playing a few careful rounds at the arena helps here.

Tactics and EXP are the two major concerns. For Tactics (and Combat) you want to use a handful of battle juggernauts like Marcus and much later Pent and Harken to plow down foes to get maps done fast. However, such a stratagem for good Tactics limits EXP gain and hurts that rank, which is helped by constantly using a wide and changing array of low level units- but that makes battles take longer. The key is to know which battles to rush for Tactics, and which you can afford to take slowly for EXP. Field a mix of units, a core elite to clear the primary objectives fast, with a revolving group of low leveled units who try to fulfill the EXP rank by killing whatever they can and that the core elite don't need to eradicate.

[Paper Jam]

For me, the biggest obstacles to S-ranking were different on different modes.

For Normal mode, the Mode Coefficient makes it pretty trivial to get and maintain 5-star Experience (to say nothing of how much more lenient Normal mode's Experience requirements are than Hard mode's). I forget how many characters I benched and still got 5-star Experience the first time I played ENM, but it was a lot.

However, Tactics are a pain to keep at 5 stars on Normal mode, especially HNM, because the turn requirements are stricter in Normal mode. Funds, too, require more attention in Normal Mode, not only because the Silver Card is unobtainable on Normal mode without the Mario Kart bonus disc, but also because you have fewer turns to gain money from the Arena in chapters that have an Arena.

I have found the opposite to be true of Hard mode: Tactics and Funds are easier to keep at 5 stars, but you really have to make sure that everybody gets at least some experience. If your Experience rank ever dips below 5 stars, it's extremely hard or outright impossible to raise it back up.