FE8 Enemy Stats Generation [Hard]

[plusplus]

Hiya,

Who knows how the enemy stats on SS Hard are generated? Even when I turn off the enemy growth, there's still a chance the enemy would proc an extra point of a stat. With growth turned on, this variation can be up to 2 points for two enemies of the same class and level.

Also, who knows how to tweak the formula for the stats? Ideally, I want enemies to have the exact same stats with growth turned off, and with growth turned on, the stat variation should not be more than 1 point.

Thanks! I feel like this must be documented somewhere, there are some for the other 2 GBA games, but I just can't seem to find this one :(

[Primefusion]

Enemy growths run off of class growth rates.

[plusplus]

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, that I am aware of, however, do you know the specifics: i.e. how does a level X promoted/unpromoted enemy get its stat on Hard mode (assuming growth rate turned on)? It should be some variations of BASE + LEVEL x GROWTH% . And also where to change the formula?

Edit: Just to clarify, by "turning on/off enemy growths" I meant setting the enemy character's level parameter to use the one with no growth, the same way how bosses' stats are set.

Edited September 14, 2016 by plusplus

[Primefusion]

What you're referring to as "turning on/off enemy growths" is toggling whether or not they're auto-leveled.

I've got a strong hunch that the game rolls level ups for each enemy that has auto-level enabled.

Current level - base level = the number of level ups rolled per enemy. Each chapter also has a hard mode bonus you can change via the Chapter Data Editor. This gives all enemies an additional X level ups.

The reason you're seeing the variation is that enemies, like player units, don't always get the same stat procs per level (The RNG giveth and taketh away).

Hunting down any formulas would require using a debugger to do some tracing. I would ask around on FEU to see if anyone has notes.

[Deltre]

The numbers may not be exact here because I can't find the exact post, but to my knowledge Primefusion is mostly correct. I don't really understand what he means by "base level", because to my knowledge the game always calculates from level 1, at least for non-promotes. Promotes are a little bit weird. Basically, on easy and normal modes units in FE8 get a level penalty applied to their stats. I think (don't quote me here, numbers may vary) that on normal a level 10 unit has received roughly the same amount of levels as a level 5 in any other game, for example. On hard they get a bonus, as you would expect, of about 5 levels IIRC. Basically the discrepancy in stats comes from the fact that enemies are penalized below hard mode so a meager 5 level bonus seems huge in comparison to their neutered normal mode counterparts.

Promotes are a little weird, and admittedly my memory of how this works is a little hazy on the details. As best I can remember, there are actually 2 different leveling algorithms used here depending on the level of the promoted enemy. The direct consequence of this is that from level 1 to level 5 or so promoted enemies get a hell of a lot more bonus levels than that same unit would otherwise get at level 6+. It's a large part of the reason that lower-level promoted enemies are comparatively strong, but don't scale very well at higher levels. I think that the lower-level promotes actually take into account unpromoted levels as well, but my memory on this detail is very unclear so take it with a grain of salt. Again the numbers may not be exact but I'm sure you could find exactly where this occurs with some testing. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's the gist of it, anyways.

Only other thing I'd add is that in FE8 the bonuses are determined solely by mode, not chapter. The reason you might see wildly different stats between same level units of the same class in two different chapter is that most generic class IDs have built in bonuses, much like player units with their different bases. For example, the Fighter's in the prologue are programmed to be crap no matter how well they roll because of a built in base stat, not level, penalty that is assigned to that character ID. A few more examples are character ID 7F which can turn even a generic into a bonafide badass with it's very generous bonuses, as well as most Grado character classes receiving a modest 3 skill bonus.

[plusplus]

What you're referring to as "turning on/off enemy growths" is toggling whether or not they're auto-leveled.

I've got a strong hunch that the game rolls level ups for each enemy that has auto-level enabled.

Current level - base level = the number of level ups rolled per enemy. Each chapter also has a hard mode bonus you can change via the Chapter Data Editor. This gives all enemies an additional X level ups.

The reason you're seeing the variation is that enemies, like player units, don't always get the same stat procs per level (The RNG giveth and taketh away).

Hunting down any formulas would require using a debugger to do some tracing. I would ask around on FEU to see if anyone has notes.

This is interesting, I was not aware the bonuses are different for each chapter. So I did a search and I found a post that talks about hard mode bonuses on FEU http://feuniverse.us/t/fe7-fe8-difficulty-stat-changes/1295

Once I edited out the Hard Mode bonus by making it 0, the enemy stats are a lot more consistent:

- enemies with auto-level disabled no longer proc an extra point of stats sometimes (i.e. boss stats are now 100% consistent, at least based on my few resets, previously a boss would sometimes proc extra +1 stat)

- enemies with auto-level enabled now have their stats differ by no more than 1 point as far as I can tell

Based on what I've seen, it seems that enemies can potentially proc an extra point of stat (as long as they have a growth in that stat) with auto-level enabled. With hard-mode bonuses enabled, they can further proc another point. This led to enemies with same level, class and base stats potentially having stats that differ by 2 points.

Anyways, I added the Hard/Easy Mode Bonus to the "Chapter Data Editor.nmm" if anyone just want to copy and paste:

Hard/Easy Mode Bonus

20

1

NEHU

NULL

The numbers may not be exact here because I can't find the exact post, but to my knowledge Primefusion is mostly correct. I don't really understand what he means by "base level", because to my knowledge the game always calculates from level 1, at least for non-promotes. Promotes are a little bit weird. Basically, on easy and normal modes units in FE8 get a level penalty applied to their stats. I think (don't quote me here, numbers may vary) that on normal a level 10 unit has received roughly the same amount of levels as a level 5 in any other game, for example. On hard they get a bonus, as you would expect, of about 5 levels IIRC. Basically the discrepancy in stats comes from the fact that enemies are penalized below hard mode so a meager 5 level bonus seems huge in comparison to their neutered normal mode counterparts.

Only other thing I'd add is that in FE8 the bonuses are determined solely by mode, not chapter. The reason you might see wildly different stats between same level units of the same class in two different chapter is that most generic class IDs have built in bonuses, much like player units with their different bases. For example, the Fighter's in the prologue are programmed to be crap no matter how well they roll because of a built in base stat, not level, penalty that is assigned to that character ID. A few more examples are character ID 7F which can turn even a generic into a bonafide badass with it's very generous bonuses, as well as most Grado character classes receiving a modest 3 skill bonus.

Thanks! I found some link that talks about the bonus in more depth (see above). My issue with the Hard Mode enemy stats is that they are not very consistent, even bosses (who have auto-level turned off) can proc an extra point of stat somewhere. And enemies with the same class, ID and level in the same chapter can have their stats differ by 2 points.

These are caused by the Hard Mode bonuses. If you set the bonus to 0 in the Chapter Data Editor, then the stats are a lot more consistent (again, see above).

Edited September 17, 2016 by plusplus