Addressing Armored Mov

[Von Ithipathachai]

As we all know, the biggest issue with Armored units above all else is their lower Mov, which can cause them to fall behind your other units, making it harder for them to even see combat and bring their potentially useful Def stats to bear.  This is especially problematic in the more Mounted Emblem games such as the recent Three Houses.  So how can we fix it?

The solution I use for Sanctaea Chronicles is to make Armored units into what are essentially 'super Infantry' by giving them identical Mov to Infantry on top of a Class Skill called Guard that halves damage from both physical and magical attacks when it triggers.  But some might consider this solution a bit lazy.

A more ridiculous idea I came up with is to give Armored units access to their own version of Dismounting.  This would allow them to freely swap between a mobile stance with comparable stats to Infantry and a battle stance that sacrifices a point of Mov for significantly higher stats everywhere else.  The main issue with it would be story-related, i.e. how to explain where the unit would put away its extra armor weight upon entering mobile stance.

What would you guys suggest?

[AnonymousSpeed]

I think solutions to making armored units useful should not involve not making them armor units. Slapping extra move on them isn't making armored units better, it's taking away from what an armored unit should be. Solving the problem by ignoring it. Rescue chains are an option I'm fond of, because it makes their being behind the rest of the army an issue you actually work around, but their high constitution generally hampered the effectiveness of this. You could also just have armored units be very strong and have more fighting to be done near spawn or at the rear lines.

[Alastor15243]

Honestly, the main issue is that the movement difference is too much of a deal breaker because of how maps are designed. In games with a lot more defense maps, or in games with more coming-from-behind reinforcements, a knight's reduced movement wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue, and they'd see way more action even in optimized playthroughs. In the former there'd be more use for a unit that doesn't move much, and in the latter, being at the back of the group would be where they'd be the most useful.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Just because I've been playing it lately, two of TearRing Saga's three Armor units (minus the Wood Shooters/Artillerymen) have City Fighter/Urbanite. The skill, which plenty of other units have, increases Move by 1 (and +10 Hit/Avoid) when fighting on a map classified as a "city" environmentally. These just so happen to be maps where the chokepoint conditions which favor Armor use are present.

It's just an ounce of cure, but it could be a pinch of help.

 

21 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Rescue chains are an option I'm fond of, because it makes their being behind the rest of the army an issue you actually work around, but their high constitution generally hampered the effectiveness of this.

Perhaps add a dedicated medieval Armored Personnel Carrier (wordplay not intended) then?

An APC might be too good, but having a dedicated ferrybot would make bigger maps more bearable. Even if it would still take a turn to load and the unload the units. Just don't let it work indoors, or traverse particularly bad terrain.

Advance Wars always had APCs, but to be fair, you can't just drop a lone Mech into a horde of enemies and expect it to win out the way you could do that in FE. Although Valkyria Chronicles has made an APC work in post-1 installments, with units weaker than FE, but stronger than AW.

Edited August 30, 2019 by Interdimensional Observer

[Eltosian Kadath]

Alright time for an a bit of an odd and controversial opinion, I think the best way to handle it is to use the pair-up options of Fates, but remove ALL of the incentives for staying paired up, so no stat boosts, or guard gauge, or even support points, just have it be a more convenient and easier to use rescue command basically. The movement options the pair-up, switch, transfer, and separate commands give is remarkably useful, and more importantly the separate command ending a turn makes it such that using an allies better movement comes without penalty when there is nothing to threaten you, but if you need to attack, or take some action at the end of that movement, using the pairup for better mobility is going to cost somebody an action. The important thing here is once you are in the heat of battle, that lowered move will limit an armored or infantry unit, but not when there is nothing to do.

[Sire]

A crazy idea I had is to basically give Armored units Galeforce, going off of "an object in motion will stay in motion" mentality.

These armored knights take forever to get to places, but once they get there they become "Unstoppable" and can cut a path through enemy lines. Granted, this does nothing for their low movement or defensive capabilities, but it does help Armored units on the offensive. However, Galeforce has mostly been regulated to fast moving things (Dark Fliers), although Three Houses changes this up slightly by giving Edelgard a special combat art on her personal Relic that grants her another full action if her attack hits.

Honestly though, another part of the problem comes down to map design. If the objective is always going to be "Rout" or "Get to Point A from Point B," then yeah, Knights are going to suck. They shine best in defensive missions or in sieges where they need to tank hits from high ranged weaponry.
* * * * *
As I was writing this, another variant of my idea popped into my head. Give Armored Units a variant of Canto called "Unstoppable." After attacking an enemy, the Knight gets another full action to do whatever it wants (compared to Canto which simply uses up remaining moves to do whatever.) So, the Knight can move and attack again, move and use an item, just stay put, and so on.

Again, this doesn't help the Knight's mobility, but once they get to their target, they can wreck faces.

Edited August 30, 2019 by Sire

[Von Ithipathachai]

One other idea I had was giving Armored units Pivot as a Class Skill, with other movement Skills like Swap, Draw Back, Reposition, etc. also being present elsewhere.  In this case, they would normally have their typical 1 less Mov than infantry, but if they can find a buddy to Pivot around, they can effectively get +2 Mov just for that turn.  Of course, you would have to carefully plan your initial formations and unit movements around this.

The idea comes from a hack I played called Faith and Blood where your Knight character (I think his name was Bryce) has this as one of his Skills.  It helped him significantly in getting around and he became one of my best units.

[redlight]

Armored units having Wary Fighter as a class skill and more stat growths attached to the class might be a good start

[Flere210]

Every way of giving them more move is basically a non fix because it does not adress the problem "how to make low mov units valuable?" It's giving up on balancing movement entirely.

I think there are 2 separste issues.

1) defense is overvalued. Intsys just does not want you to stonwall the game taking 0 or 1 damage to everything, so it saddled armors whit 4 different weaknesses: low mov, low speed, low res and armorslayers. Poison strike, taking always at least 1 damage, and a few Luna users can keep even 999 defense in check, so they should be used instead. Armors should have quick riposte(and maybe bold fighter in lategame) and high res, with movement being the only  real weakness.

2)Stats benchmark to orko, survive enemies, and double are too easy to met, so any mouted generalist class, and all mounted are generalist to a degree, usually met all of them, wich turn them in the main fighting force. Harder benchmarks would make specialists more valuable and would prevent paladins from doing all the job, simply because they have not the stats to do so. Basically you either wait for the armor, or you have to be very careful about aggroing because no one else can take more than 2 enemies.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Armor units are pretty bad in the newest game. Especially with their lack of dedicated Master class. Horse units get four. One of which is the great knight which is the best option for an armored knight anyway. I will point out that most people dropped Lysithea into S Tier and she has the exact same movement until the end of the game. Not trying to suggest she has the same strengths and weaknesses as an armor knight, just pointing out what it takes for people to overlook a unit's crippling Mov stat. 

Anyway I forget my years-held arguments and theories to make armor knights good. Mmm...I remember wanting them to have obstruct so that they can properly stand as a wall in an open space for other units. I want Fire Emblem to have objectives on the map you explicitly capture and leave a unit to defend. I also want more ways of aggroing enemies or taking the aggro off allies, which I think armor knights would appreciate in order to force enemies to fight them. That last one seems within reach after seeing Three Houses' Monster battles.

[Fates-Blade]

My only issue personally with Knights is they never have enough Defense for me. If they had really high defense and HP but really low Spd and Res I wouldn't have a problem, but they seem to always have not quite enough Defense, or there are mages mixed with physical fighters in a chapter.

Edited August 30, 2019 by Fates-Blade

[Jotari]

I've always advocated the Hector approach. Give them the standard infantry move at tier 1, but don't give them any increase in move upon promotion. Yes, this basically solves the issue by removing it entirely, but I don't think it makes them any less armoured in concept if they have equal move to infantry at tier 1. The idea of them having less move is still there after promotion. It still fits in to the same concept. Hector is not an armoured unit for the majority of his game, but he's still viewed and conceptualized a one. That's why all his variations in Heroes are armoured. Would this just delay the problem until after promotion? I don't think so. Because generally speaking it's only Knights people complain about. Generals are useually pretty decent units because they'd had a chance to snowball their stats and become rather powerful. The issue is getting a knight to general is needlessly difficult because reduced move means they see less combat. Although it's unrelated to movement, giving them an extra weapon at tier 1 would be helpful too as it'd give them more Weapon Triangle control. Completely unfair that cavalries get more move and an extra weapon over all other tier 1 classes.