Tightening Ranking Requirements

[Toothache]

I've been pondering the idea of an FE6 hack, where the turn requirements of each chapter are tightened up according to what is reasonably possible for ranked play. Let's face it, the current turn counts are very loose, to the point where it is almost not worth bothering with. With tighter turn counts, a challenge will actually emerge.

I turn to the experience of people who actually have played FE6 ranked before, and would like suggestions as to what turn counts per chapter would be more fair, while still allowing the other ranked requirements to be possible.

In fact, on that subject, would tightening the turn counts require other ranks to be adjusted? I would also propose the turn count be possible without arena use at all, but I do want to avoid a 'S-Rank Lyn Mode L7 Nils' situation in order to meet exp.

At the very least, I hope to generate some discussion on this, and maybe someone who has the time (and cares enough) would like to put this hack together in the end, it should be good to experiment on whether these changes work in practise. I'll edit the OP as things go with the suggestions people have.

[Progenitus]

there's more to ranked runs than just tactics. FE6 ranked is reasonably difficult as long as you...

1) Are actually going for all the ranks (e.g. funds matters so you're not spending all stat boosters, or exp matters so your overleveled units don't aizenstomp every map)

2) Not using solely top/high tiers (which is probably for the best, as if the game was actually hard while using the best units, using the mid and low tiers would be almost impossible, e.g. the DS games)

FE6 ranks are fine as is.

Edited December 11, 2011 by smash fanatic

[Toothache]

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=27950&st=0

This playthrough lends evidence to the fact the turn counts need tightening. 343 turns, no arena use at all, and he even went for the highest funds requirement possible. To put that in context, the vanilla requirement is around 630 turns.

Edited December 11, 2011 by Toothache

[Progenitus]

Ah, that is a lot. Still, GE was doing things that I would certainly not argue for in a tier list/ranking, like using save states, as even though he didn't abuse them for risky strats and was using fixed growths (which also was a benefit to his playthrough, as having RNG screwed units sucks way more than RNG blessed units can make up for, as due to exp rank you still have to deal with those RNG screwed units anyway), allowing resets in general opens a whole new can of worms that really should be avoided.

Still, I don't really see a point in tightening the requirements. If you want to make the game harder I would personally do things like buff enemies or nerf PCs first.

[General Horace]

Still, he could have taken like, 60ish extra turns throuought all the chapters, and then abused the arena for 230 turns. That's only like 100 less turns required for HHM, and that's just arena use alone. The tactics ranks is far too lenient.

Edited December 11, 2011 by General Horace

[Toothache]

Let's get back to the matter at hand. The following table lists the current target for an A rank in tactics, and from here I'll add any proposed sensible suggestions for the turn limits.

Also, does the requirement for B/C/D tactics need to change? Currently, they are all +5/+15/+25 turns from the base A rank respectively, but even those are overly generous.

Chapter Current Proposed
1       12      6
2       13      7
3       15      9
4       15
5       15
6       20
7       20
8       25
8x      20
9       20
10A     25
10B     25
11A     25
11B     25
12      15
12x     20
13      20
14      25
14x     20
15      20
16      25
16x     25
17A     20
17B     20
18A     20
18B     25
19A     20
19B     25
20A     25
20B     25
20xA    20
20xB    25
21      30
21x     20
22      25
23      20
24      25
Final   10

Totals - Current: 630 turns Ilia/650 turns Sacae (includes all gaidens)

Totals - Proposed:

Edited December 31, 2011 by Toothache

[zahlman]

Also, does the requirement for B/C/D tactics need to change? Currently, they are all +5/+15/+25 turns from the base A rank respectively, but even those are overly generous.

I would say it should be more like a percentage basis.

[Anouleth]

I think that most of the chapers in the game fall around the 15 turn mark, personally, with a few exceptions such as Chapter 8 and Chapter 16 that would need more turns.

[dondon151]

I'd say screw the ranks and make them like FE5 rankings: 190 turns and 51 characters alive by the end of the game.

EDIT: +5 for Bartre's route. Maybe another +5 for going Sacae since you get a shittier Niime and chapter 19 is a veritable pain in the ass.

Edited December 12, 2011 by dondon151

[Mekkah]

Only if Ellen joins with B staves and an infinite range Warp.

[Toothache]

People, people. I don't need generic, sweeping, non-committal statements. I need specifics.

[Toothache]

So, Chapter 1 I managed to complete in 6 turns, while killing all the enemies and getting the 5k gold village. Marcus has perfect stats for weakening enemies, and this allowed me to feed all the other units pretty nicely. I did have to do a fair bit of testing in order to make some hits connect, Wolt missing with his ~75 hit was frustrating at first, but I learned which order to move people and it all came together in the end. I tried to distribute the kills so that only L1 units got most of the experience, but I probably don't need to be so anal about losing a few exp here and there. I still ended with 563 exp gained, levelling up 3 of the 5 non-Marcus units, which is a good start imo.

6 turns for Chapter 1 rank target seems a good threshold to aim for. Marcus does trivialise feeding kill exp to your other units, and he can easily reach the boss at turn 4 while softening the majority of things on the map. Roy can seize on turn 6 without needing ferrying, which allows him to get some early exp. The main issue is getting Bors experience, since he has coinflip hits on the fighters (~56 hit), and they do have a chance of doubling him at base. He'll have a much better opportunity in Ch2 though, since he won't be facing WTA all the time on the soldiers.

[Toothache]

Chapter 2 had me stumped for a while. My early tests gave me a result of 10 turns, which was pretty bad. After having a rethink, and looking at other playthroughs, I found a 6 turn strategy. It did require a lot of testing to find the right order with which to attack with people. Took a few risks that paid off too, such as leaving Ellen in attack range of a Hand Axe fighter. The enemies prefer to attack the fighters over Marcus, I found, so by having Ward move onto the far right forest tiles, they left a nice gap that Marcus can bypass most of the enemies and make his way to the throne. Roy was shuffled around a bit, eventually getting rescue dropped by Thany (who got a pair of kills fed to her too). Lot, Ward and Dieck make great use of the forts to clean up the enemies around there, and I did have to dip into the Silver Lance so Marcus wasn't hindered on his route to the throne. Getting the armorslayer to Marcus was an exercise in itself too, requiring the cavs to take part in little combat this time.

I think perhaps for the rank requirement, 7 turns would be more reasonable. It rewards strategy, by finding a way past the group to allow Marcus throne access, and gives you plenty of time to clean up the large batch of units near the forts.

Exp gained: 1290

Edited December 23, 2011 by Toothache

[Toothache]

Chapter 3: 9 turns, 2707 exp total

This was a pain to plan out. Lot of rescue chaining to get Chad close enough to get both chests in time. Didn't kill the archer near Lugh, I just recruited the mini-mage, but if I'd moved Bors a bit closer in time I could have managed it. Basic plan of attack was to have Marcus charge for the chest area, with the other cavs following behind picking up kills as they go. Chad and Ellen got a lot of rescue action to manage this, and I even managed to nab a few kills for Thany. As for the boss, I managed to get Lot to weaken with the Hammer, before Marcus traded the Armorslayer to Dieck so he could finish him off.

9 turns is a good target for this map, I feel. There's a lot of planning needed to get everything done in that time, but it is possible.

[General Horace]

Are you attempting to base this on a similar difficulty to HHM? Because if you take a similarish chapter in FE7 (Chapter 16, Whereabouts Unknown), it gives you a ton of turns to get all the chests and such. The funds/exp requirements may not be as tough in FE6, but just something to take into consideration.

[Toothache]

Having never actually getting around to beating HHM, that isn't really the basis of these new rank targets. I'm testing things from a lot of angles, and probably not seeing everything possible, but I'm trying to set a target for tactics in each chapter that is fair, but does require some strategy to achieve, given all the other factors in the game (like average enemy stats, weapon accuracy and so on). Rank play, from what I'm seeing is all about balance, and that's the main thing I'm trying to keep in mind while doing this.

[Toothache]

I have a confirmed strategy for a 7 turn completion of Chapter 3, getting both chests, but this requires use of heavy RNG manipulation, and the glitch which allows two units to occupy the same square (double occupancy glitch, or DOG). 8 turns is possible without the DOG. Since the DOG requires 1-frame movement precision, that's unreasonable for any standard playthrough, so almost limited to TAS only. I'll work on my 8 turn strat to determine how much exp I can get in that time, but it shouldn't be too bad.

[Toothache]

So, I decided to log my ranked playthrough in video format. This should also help people who struggle with the start of FE6; by replicating the exact moves I do here in the same order, you should get the same outcome for accuracy and level ups I manage, since the RNG starts the same way every time you start the game. I did a lot of experimenting to pull off some of the combat results here, like Alan pulling off two critical hits, and Roy and Lance surviving at low HP, but this is by no means relying on any sort of extreme RNG manipulation - by just changing the order in which I attack, I get to manipulate the RNG to my favour.

This isn't the only approach, of course, but it is one that works and gives a good solid start for the two cavaliers as well as feeding early experience around, which makes hitting the experience rank easier in the long term.

[Balcerzak]

Okay, this is ancient data, but these were my completions on a default S-rank, prior to the data for ranking being widely known.

[spoiler=perhaps irrelevant because I spent way too many turns]

	Turns	XP gained
Chap   1	10	615
Chap   2	11	983
Chap   3	16	1356
Chap   4	15	1797
Chap   5	16	1703
Chap   6	22	2457
Chap   7	12	1871
Chap   8	28	3270
Chap  8x	18	1501
Chap   9	22	3307
Chap  10	20	2240
Chap  11	17	2906
Chap  12	20	2116
Chap 12x	15	1552
Chap  13	20	3143
Chap  14	25	3882
Chap 14x	20	1509
Chap  15	16	1155
Chap  16	22	2221
Chap 16x	15	1458
Chap  17	17	3007
Chap  18	18	1410
Chap  19	19	1833
Chap  20	20	1640
Chap 20x	14	1446
Chap  21	21	3176
Chap 21x	22	1560
Chap  22	18	2962
Chap  23	17	1233
Chap  24	23	1509
Final   	3	150
Total	552	

We should be wary of making the new turn requirements too tight however, as you can see in a successful run of 7 you can pretty consistently score 1-2 turns below the A rank threshold. I just spent about an hour searching for the non-programming-error Hector rank TC ranking data to see what those 0 chapters should be looking like, but all I found was a vague comment that it definitely exists by Nitrodon, and nothing explicit, so I guess I have to hold off there.

[spoiler=fe7 tcs for reference]

Ch	Actual	5*
11	10	0
12	6	8
13	9	12
13x	8	7
14	9	10
15	8	0
16	8	7
17	12	18
17x	5	10
18	11	11
19	8	10
19x	10	10
19xx	7	0
20	11	16
21	8	9
22	11	11
23	8	9
23x	11	25
24 Lloyd	DNP	11
24 Linus	11	22
25	9	0
26	12	11
27 Kenneth	14	18
27 Jerme	DNP	25
28	16	15
28x	16	28
29	12	20
30	11	0
31	12	11
31x	6	5
32	11	15
32x	15	0
Final	9	10

I've put off helping you long enough, I'll start a new FE6 ranked run, and work on it off and on between my current FE4 project and various other things. I am still very interested in looking into this matter. A second head and a second set of numbers should definitely help keep things in perspective.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Balcerzak

[Toothache]

I definitely appreciate the help. Between work and other things, I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like to devote to work on this.

[Scarlet]

by replicating the exact moves I do here in the same order, you should get the same outcome for accuracy and level ups I manage, since the RNG starts the same way every time you start the game. I did a lot of experimenting to pull off some of the combat results here, like Alan pulling off two critical hits, and Roy and Lance surviving at low HP, but this is by no means relying on any sort of extreme RNG manipulation - by just changing the order in which I attack, I get to manipulate the RNG to my favour.

This isn't the only approach, of course, but it is one that works and gives a good solid start for the two cavaliers as well as feeding early experience around, which makes hitting the experience rank easier in the long term.

Maybe I'm just misinterpreting this, but...

I don't care that much for ranks, but am I really the only one to think that having to manipulate the RNG (or at the very least know how it works) to reach the A-rank requirements is incredibly stupid and completely misses the point of a ranked run? For me, the point of a ranked run is to test your skill in the game, not your skill in manipulating the RNG to pull off completely ridiculous moves that would either be stupidly risky in regular gameplay, or just simply never work.

[Balcerzak]

Maybe I'm just misinterpreting this, but...

I don't care that much for ranks, but am I really the only one to think that having to manipulate the RNG (or at the very least know how it works) to reach the A-rank requirements is incredibly stupid and completely misses the point of a ranked run? For me, the point of a ranked run is to test your skill in the game, not your skill in manipulating the RNG to pull off completely ridiculous moves that would either be stupidly risky in regular gameplay, or just simply never work.

I didn't interpret it that way personally, and in fact, I took a completely different approach for my 6 turn of Ch1, which didn't have the sort of crit reliance shown. (I did fail to kill one fighter, but got hopefully competitive XP elsewhere by managing to feed Lance the bosskill instead of Marcus: ~650.)

I think his intent was just showing anybody one of the many decent ways to complete the chapter. Maybe I'll record mine a little later.

[Toothache]

Maybe I'm just misinterpreting this, but...

I don't care that much for ranks, but am I really the only one to think that having to manipulate the RNG (or at the very least know how it works) to reach the A-rank requirements is incredibly stupid and completely misses the point of a ranked run? For me, the point of a ranked run is to test your skill in the game, not your skill in manipulating the RNG to pull off completely ridiculous moves that would either be stupidly risky in regular gameplay, or just simply never work.

How do you define skill at Fire Emblem? This is not an attempt at dismissing your comments, but just a general inquiry.

Since the games are all dependant on the RNG, it may not be a skill in the traditional sense that people learn when playing these games. It may be that people learn to evaluate acceptable risk. Maybe this is just the way I've learned to play, but since you can repeat the same moves in order to get the same results, it really is just a case of learning to navigate the random number generator. The "skill" comes more from learning when a particular set of actions gives you the desired results or not. Over expose a particular unit, and by the odds they are going to die on a particular enemy phase, but maybe you can set them in the right place that they survive, and open up new options for your units. Whatever actions you end up doing or not doing, this is all determined by the RNG. An RNG that is fixed, and manipulable. So, with that understanding in mind, the real skill in Fire Emblem comes from learning what 'risk' is acceptable or not, and learning when you can take the risks to reap the rewards.

[Espinosa]

I agree with Toothache to an extent. If you don't manipulate the RNG, it will manipulate you. If somebody found a way to hack the ROMs in a way that excludes the RNG entirely (so that every time an action is performed, a roll is carried out each time independently of what you did), I'm sure I'd play those old games in this way, but I don't believe anybody's ever done that.

And I do think it takes quite a bit of skill to plan chapter strategies - say, low turns, speedrunning or ranks - since the goal is more ambitious than the usual ("beat the game as safely as possible" - which many players still violate by relying on high speed/low defence units to dodge stuff), so I'd imagine a player who plays with those restrictions still has more fun than one who likes to train his Ests and abuse the arena.

[Balcerzak]

Chapter 2 ...

I think perhaps for the rank requirement, 7 turns would be more reasonable. It rewards strategy, by finding a way past the group to allow Marcus throne access, and gives you plenty of time to clean up the large batch of units near the forts.

Exp gained: 1290

I also managed a 7 turn without too much struggle and all enemies killed. I did take a few risks, and Ward actually managed to connect with Hammer, meaning Thany could get more kills fed, instead of ferrying the armorslayer, netting me about ~850 chapter XP (for ~1500 total in chs 1 and 2). Marcus had to finish the boss with Silver Lance after Ward was rescued out of the way, but all told it was still a good run for XP, with Dieck not hogging too many.