[zombero]

What do people think about the player using more than 10 deployments? Technically, the player can create up to 25 squads, but can only field 10 at a time. I had basically been operating under the assumption that the player will only be using 10 squads, with maybe a few reserves. My friend floated the idea of designing stages with the expectation that the player will lose half their army in the process of victory. I don't think players would enjoy that, even in a hardtype, but it did get me thinking more about the 60+% of the player's army that will be unused at any given time.

What do you think the role of these 15 reserve squads should be? Do you typically use these at all when you play through this game?

[Taylor_778]

The main thing I didn't like about dying was the unit being set back to 100 exp. With that being changed I think I would like the idea of more squads with the expectation of some deaths. Getting to use even more variety of units would be good too.

[Kliktu]

I love that idea! I've already accepted that some of my squads will lose a character or two, so I've made a bunch of reserve squads to replace them in the case that I need to send a badly hurt squad back to base. I decided that, for myself, its against the spirit of the hard-type to reload from savestates while inside a stage, and I find it more fun to just keep going with what I have anyway, so I think backup squads will be handy. If you can deploy those backup squads immediately, then that will save tons of time sending a squad back to base, and you can even speed up the clearing of a map by being able to send more squads out to capture more cities! The downside will be that strengthening so many units will take a lot of time, which will cause reputation loss and erase any chance to earn money for clearing a stage if you take too long. If you can train them efficiently enough, though, then maps will become easier!

[Far Horizon]

I have had some stages where I lose 10-20 characters near the end of the old hardtype, but typically I was sending them back to base and replacing the dead characters one at a time, as compared to replacing entire groups. The biggest downside was that group being out of commission for so long.

I would be fine with losing lots of guys, as long as the stage was still winnable - it might be difficult to make it kill that many of the player's characters but not wipe them completely out (see that one stage I did out of order )

[Fidelity]

The main problem I have with deployments in general is spreading out the XP, so my play strategy is half-dedicated to "feeding" my units as evenly as possible. I'm good with only using about 9 units per stage out of about 16 (excluding the mandatory OL unit), so I don't think I'll have much use for this, but I'm all about freedom of choice, so if it can be done, I say why not. If it turns out that there's a stage with sooo many enemy units that my own units are getting "full," I might like the convenience of just tagging in other units who were close by. That would likely lead to other XP / level issues, but I'd worry about that if it came up.

I would be more concerned about the units dying because there was absolutely nothing that could have been done to prevent it, like 3 x Wizards killing my Knight leader from full HP on Strong tactics because they only targeted him, and stuff like that. If I happened to get hit once while on Weak tactics, and the other five attacks were on Strong, and then he died, I'd consider that my fault. Is it possible to have a few enemy tactics like FF12 gambits, where some of them try to only go after units who are > 20% HP, etc.?

[EDIT] However, I'd be okay if it were three Angels or Demons in the back targeting a leader, because there are other leaders who would be resistant enough to survive 6 Nitemares or 6 Banishes. Basically, as long as there is someone who can be expected to survive a unit's tactics, it's fair game to me.

And I don't know about anyone else, but usually the starting units that come with special characters are often worthless, and I end up ignoring the extras and / or deleting them, so if Slust shows up again with that one Salamander or w/e, they're not going to be some unit that I'm going to build on and try to grow. Some of the Vanilla units were okay, like Aisha's, but Ashe's sucked, etc.

[zombero]

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I have had some stages where I lose 10-20 characters near the end of the old hardtype, but typically I was sending them back to base and replacing the dead characters one at a time, as compared to replacing entire groups. The biggest downside was that group being out of commission for so long.

Bells and Boots can potentially have big roles to play here. I don't have much problem making Bell super cheap, and that can save you the trip back to your base (or waiting until your squad is wiped out entirely). But I'm hesitant to make Boots too cheap, because being able to warp one of your units to a town feels like it removes some of the importance of positioning, unless it comes with a cost that can't be simply written off. One possibility could be creating a new item that lets you swap a deployed unit with an undeployed unit, that way you could only reinforce positions where you already have troops, but that would probably be a pain to create, and I'm not sure it's that much different Boots. It's still letting you reinforce an area where you had an insufficient presence.

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Is it possible to have a few enemy tactics like FF12 gambits, where some of them try to only go after units who are > 20% HP, etc.?

It is possible, and I already have quite a few things like that. Currently, the version of Strong that early game enemies use targets the character with the highest HP%, but it also has a tolerance range of about 25%, so if you had chars with 100% and 80% HP, the 80% could still be hit. This is to prevent the enemy's target from being predictable. I'm going to be adjusting this model, though, to direct enemy ranged attacks toward the back row. This is partially because if a Wizard goes first and hits your front row fighter before he starts taking melee damage (dropping his HP%) it can still lead to him getting overwhelmed. I won't be using tactics this merciful all game, but its appropriate for the early game.

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And I don't know about anyone else, but usually the starting units that come with special characters are often worthless

These won't be anywhere near as bad as previous versions of this hack, since I can safely make them higher tier units now. They also probably won't be as bad as vanilla since their stats will be much closer to where they would be if you had raised them yourself, though still a bit less. I can't promise you that you'll want to use them, but I expect at least some people will.

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The main problem I have with deployments in general is spreading out the XP, so my play strategy is half-dedicated to "feeding" my units as evenly as possible.

Well, the amount of XP present in a stage will depend on what kinda decision I make in regards to how many deployments I expect the player will be using. Currently, I have a feeling that the total XP present in a stage may be too low.

[Fidelity]

Pretty much all that I'd said above was general OB griping, and didn't have anything to do with any hacks. The 3 x Wizard scenario was just a future concern.

I did consider the possibility of using the extra deployments as a sort of side deck, though, where the units wouldn't even need to be feasible on their own, but just have units that could linger around and swap into the main units, like a unit of 5 Clerics, or 5 Dollmages, etc., to be swapped in as the situations call for them. I still wouldn't personally like that, as it would cause more XP hassle, but it was just something I was thinking about.

[Sophist]

I think the main problem with this idea is whether or not I would actually use them. On vanilla it is common for me to use less than 10 units. Obviously there was much potential for abuse in vanilla, but I cannot determine how you could fix the problem of having high-powered groups with flexible roles.

The movement type work you are doing may be the solution because then we are incentivized to have units for each movement type on hand. I just don't know if it would be enough to make up for the high cost of deploying units and keeping them out for a couple of days, especially now that you nerfed money income. I want to support this idea as a way of expanding the game in a general "bigger = better" way, but it might be difficult to pull off.

[zombero]

It doesn't cost anything to deploy or maintain squads. And I think people probably would field more than 10 squads if they could in this hack, but not in vanilla. Regardless, though, it'd just be too unreasonable to setup.