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How many units do you think should be deployed max in a chapter?


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Man, the Fire Emblem games can be enough of a slog as-is.  Genealogy, of course, lets you field 24, and that coupled with the massive size of its maps makes it the biggest slogfest in all of Fire Emblem.  What really slows down the game is a combination of fielding liability units that need extra babysitting, figuring out who to feed kills to and how to facilitate such feedings, getting out of or around tricky situations, and even just preparing the most ideal way you can.  Maybe at one point I was reckless and just threw my lot in willy-nilly without much thought, but as a more experienced player I am better off taking my time in my considerations.  Anyway, all of that is tied into how many units you can deploy, as more units means more time needed to divide one's attention between units.

I think around 14-16 ought to be max.  And that's the utmost maximum cap - on average, the limit should be 10-12, the 14-16 unit deployment limits being preserved for the really big chapters.  It might also depend on the focus the scope of the cast and fights the individual game is going for.  For some games, there should be even lower limits.  But never higher than what I listed because, as I said, it just becomes a giant slogfest.  I think the only time a giant deployment really worked was in Echoes, and it was just because the vast majority of the game barely required much thought to beat (and the post-game only lets you deploy 10 units).

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I agree that the maximum should be no more than about 15. Any more than that can get really tedious (though you could make a case for the 3DS games with pair-up). I'd say a good spot to aim for on average is 8-12.

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I think that every once in a while, a game can get away with a massive amount of deployments; eighteen slots in Ch. 21 of Binding blade, for example. However, most chapters in general should have 10-12 slots, although 9 isn't too bad. However, anything less than that I consider to be cumbersome and aggravating. Heck, in my HHM ironman I killed off most of the cast and yet there's never enough deployment slots for everybody and in the case of a remake, I'd like to see expanded deployment for several chapters.

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I think 10 deployments is good. I wouldn't mind if you could bring more people tho, something like 12-14, because I tend to always try to figure out who I'm going to bench for the next chapter.

And of course, I still wanna see them give us some maps where you can deploy something like 18-20. I like bringing prepromotes that I never used before and watch be just as effective as my main team.

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9 hours ago, Fates-Blade said:

How many units do you think should be deployed max in a chapter?

it depends mainly on the kind of game, if it has deployment restrictions or not. both work in different ways.

in case of restrictions, it depends on the size of the map, the kind of enemy you're facing, and if there's reinforcements involved or not.

there's no perfect number for units deployment in a chapter. it all boils down to chapter difficulty itself.

otherwise, if having too many units to manage on the field can be considered tedious in terms of strategy planning/exp distribution, the most logical answer would be "just a single unit".

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Priam's paralogue also has a lot of units to field, not sure on the number, though. That said, I don't mind being able to use a lot of different units, personally, so I don't mind the system to field a lot of units. I would rather have more options than less.

Edited by lightcosmo
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44 minutes ago, Fenreir said:

if having too many units to manage on the field can be considered tedious in terms of strategy planning/exp distribution, the most logical answer would be "just a single unit".

Nooooooot really. What makes having too many units tedious is that it magnifies how annoying the lulls in combat can be. FE1 is a pacing nightmare because not only do you bring 16 units to every single goddamned map, but you don't actually have anything to make them do half the time except move forward, because the enemy distribution is just so inconsistent and bizarre that often there's just nobody around for anyone to attack, so you're just moving sixteen units across a massive, empty map for multiple turns in a row. If you really want to make having 16 units engaging, you have to make sure that the act of getting them from one destination to the next is always a constant act of strategy, and that there are minimal instances where someone is likely to be sending an entire army across empty stretches of terrain.

Edited by Alastor15243
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40 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

What makes having too many units tedious is that it magnifies how annoying the lulls in combat can be. FE1 is a pacing nightmare because not only do you bring 16 units to every single goddamned map, but you don't actually have anything to make them do half the time except move forward, because the enemy distribution is just so inconsistent and bizarre that often there's just nobody around for anyone to attack, so you're just moving sixteen units across a massive, empty map for multiple turns in a row. If you really want to make having 16 units engaging, you have to make sure that the act of getting them from one destination to the next is always a constant act of strategy, and that there are minimal instances where someone is likely to be sending an entire army across empty stretches of terrain.

you should have read my post as a whole, not picking just a single line. that's exactly why i said:

Quote

there's no perfect number for units deployment in a chapter. it all boils down to chapter difficulty itself.

i thought it was pretty obvious that if you field more than 10 units on a map where only half of them are really needed, it can become quite annoying in the long run.

another issue that comes with units deployment/placement is that when there's multiple objectives to fullfill on a map and you have scattered units all over the place, this can lead the player to forget about using some of them during his own phase, and eventually get punished by overlooking them even if that wasn't intended.

Edited by Fenreir
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14 minutes ago, Fenreir said:

you should have read my post as a whole, not picking just a single line. that's exactly why i said

I shouldn't have assumed there. It sounded like you were responding (without quoting) to someone earlier in the thread who complained about the tedium of a large roster, and I just wanted to point out that while, like you said, strategizing with a huge roster really can't be considered tedium, the main issue is that once you stop strategizing and start just moving pieces around, that is where having a huge roster can really magnify those flaws, while having fewer deployment slots is kind of a safety net against screwing that up. That specific point wasn't made by you, what you were saying looks like you were just talking about whether or not you need that many units in terms of difficulty and challenge, not map pacing. I guess I should have added it as an addendum to your point rather than a contradiction.

Edited by Alastor15243
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Kinda depends on the game but for most games I’d say 16 max for like the big late game chapters. Because in some games, if you could bring every unit, you could start the map with just as many units as the enemy (which sounds pretty cool actually) but I feel like it would be overwhelming and slow with that many units to move around. 

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As someone who plays Conquest on Hard and Lunatic with ten units, no royals and no "backpacks", this topic draw my attention. Not about my own campaigns, but about the testing and balancing during development. The map designers do have a minimum set of characters and might when they created the maps, and they balanced them with this minimum in mind. And when you see people doing crazy stuff like 0 % Growths Conquest on Lunatic, whatever notion you had about that threshold falls apart.

It would be interesting if higher difficulties limited the number of deployments (and limit the minimum level of the fielded units, to prevent "backpacks".) The game could even reward you if you did not use the "overpowered" units that exist on every entry. It could grant you something simple as a badge, maybe a special weapon, or something more elaborate like different endings or hidden maps.
I remember Metroid: Zero Mission asking you to complete two completely different challenges: 100 % items on the one hand, or 15 % or less items on the other. Note that all items are weapons and weapon upgrades. Therefore, while getting all items is an exploration and platforming achievement, completing the game with only 15 % of the arsenal is an entirely different kind of challenge.

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Most FE games were fine with the deployment slots being fine at the maximum value with a few of the hard mode maps in FE7 being the exception.
Though what I think is the  worst maps for excessive deployment slots is the Priam level in Awakening and Clash in Path of Radiance. The problem is the games never made it possible to grow your army in size gradually and then this level shows up and you just don't have units that can contribute properly. Awakening is a game where low manning is heavily encouraged because of the stupid reinforcements and fast enemy scaling especially in lunatic mode. Clash doesn't work as units you would have for filler don't exist. There's no tier 2 magic unit that uses staffs for some reason and your laguz units fell off. 

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The sweetspot is 12-15 around lategame. It can go lower in the early chapters but anything below six feels like I'm being shortchanged.

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I'm gonna echo a bunch of others here and say 12-15 works for bigger casts on most maps. If the capacity is too high, you'd have to go out of your way to balance the maps around players having an absurd number of units. It doesn't help that playable units tend to be a lot stronger than generic enemies in most FEs.

At the same time, I hate the fact that most FEs incentive using the same dozen or so people over and over. It leads to too many bench-warmers who, depending on what kind of player you are, you may never find time to use. I'm all for bringing back the fatigue mechanic (or a variation thereof) to encourage players to use units beyond the same squad they like to default to. 

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1 hour ago, Deenward said:

I'm all for bringing back the fatigue mechanic (or a variation thereof) to encourage players to use units beyond the same squad they like to default to. 

Shouldnt this be the choice of the player, though? Forcing it only achieves the opposite effect, I think.

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11 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

Shouldnt this be the choice of the player, though? Forcing it only achieves the opposite effect, I think.

I'm not for removing player agency on that front entirely. Stamina drinks still allowed people to prioritize certain units over others. I think there are a number of Fire Emblem players who'd like to use certain units, but either don't want to dedicate the time to another play-through or don't want to go through the tedium of training them over someone you're already using them. Fatigue with a sufficient but not unlimited supply of stamina drinks strikes a fine line between these two philosophies. As long as the other units aren't complete garbage, newer players especially who are familiar with more traditional rpgs like experimenting with all the tools in their box if they have the time. I think Fire Emblem benefits from further motivate people to do this through a system that forces them to think more about unit deployment during battle preps. In other RPGs, the big reason I don't experiment with other units is because they don't autolevel. If they do, I take them out for a spin every now and then just to see how they work. Since it takes only one chapter for a unit to bounce back, it's not that punishing either.

Another thing to keep in mind is a modern FE is NOT gonna be as punishing or obtuse as Thracia can be. 

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Well, what about the players that simply prefer their favorites? It doesnt have to be designed around difficulty, in my opinion. If anything, make that an option you could toggle on/off.

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13 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

Well, what about the players that simply prefer their favorites? It doesnt have to be designed around difficulty, in my opinion. If anything, make that an option you could toggle on/off.

That's a compromise I can get behind. I just believe that kind of system would benefit larger cast FEs, especially since they spend so much time on developing the characters and the world through said characters. Not only does fatigue add verisimilitude to the "war is cruel and exhausting" theme underlying most FEs through gameplay and story integration, but it organically offers players opportunities to try other units out. While less linear FEs (8, 13, 2 out of 3 routes of 14, 15, and 16) give you ample time to use everyone if you so desire, I think these random battle opportunities disassociated from the main story that give you said opportunities are a tedious grind that are unrewarding to play. Another potential idea is adding one paralogue for each character that gives players a more engaging level that lets them make a more informed decision about whether they're interested in the unit or not. 

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12-ish minimum I guess?

I get about having low numbers, kinda but you reach a point eventually where it's restrictive frankly.

I could take a weak character who'll probably get one-shot....or I could just take a strong character, again.

Due to character stats, I very rarely used Donnel and Fiora for instance, since they felt like glorified tissue paper that'd have incredibly low chances of actually being useful. (Donnel especially, seriously even Archers can 1-round him, I'm pretty sure he must be the weakest unit in the series that's an actual combat unit, insert Gordon Ramsey clip of him calling someone useless.)

During Echoes plot battles though, where I have my whole army deployed, I find myself actually having my weaker units chipping in, I can keep one of my weak Pegasus Riders off to the side, then when a guy is badly hurt enough, have them swoop in and get some EXP and kinda the same for other characters, Yeah I do mostly side-line them but if there's an actual unexpected opprotunity to have them chip in, in a way that doesn't get themselves killed, I can take it, got a weak mage? have them heal other units when they fall back.

So yeah I think a unit cap above 10 is needed.

 

 

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A lot of this depends on the size of the map for me, but 10+ for almost all maps and 15-20 at the end.

Some of the most fun things were being able to sweep through multiple sections of the map simultaneously by splitting up my army. It also feels nicer when you can field all of your strong units, while also bringing along people who you intend to train up. Sometimes they'll even shock you with incredibly good levels or a new use that wasn't expected before. 

Also, large deployment sizes mean that the enormous cast of recent games can see the field. Having... ~30-40% deployed feels a lot better to me. 

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It depends on the type of map. I would say  around 1/3 of the enemy count is a good count to aim for - a map with 40 enemies (including reinforcements) could allot 13 slots, while one with 20 enemies would give you 7. There are exceptions, of course, in cases where enemies tend particularly weak or especially strong.

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