Marine unit

[drattakbowser]

I wonder if a future game can create a marine unit or class.

 

Marine : Can cross only a sea or river.

[Acacia Sgt]

Sacred Stones has the Fleet class, which was basically a ballista on a ship.

A water-only class would be quite limited, though, considering things. Unless the entire game always had water on every map...

[Shadow Mir]

Those types of units would probably be limited to the point of being nigh useless, because needless to say, not every map will have seas or rivers (thus they'd have to be really really good to justify using them instead of another unit). That said, Sacred Stones did have a Fleet unit.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Many lord classes in the past have had water-walking.:

Spoiler

• FE1 Marth
• FE2 Alm
• FE2 Celica
• FE3 Marth
• Roy
• Eliwood unpromoted
• Hector unpromoted 
• Lyn both ways
• Eirika unpromoted
• Ephraim unpromoted
• RD Ike
• Micaiah
• FE11 Marth
• FE 12 Marth
• FE13- Lord/Great Lord & Tactician/Grandmaster
• FE15 Alm
• FE15 Celica

 

And few other non-Pirate/Berserker and non-Flier classes have had river-crossing as well, albeit at the cost of practically all their movement.:

Spoiler

• FE1- Heroes, Snipers, Thieves, Chameleons
• FE2- Gold Knight, the entire line that leads to Dread Fighter (minus Villager)
• FE3- Same as FE1 + Manaketes & Dancers, and Ice Dragons if you turn Tiki into one
• FE6- Heroes, Swordmasters, Snipers, Thieves, and Nomad Troopers
• FE7- Swordmaster, Hero, Sniper, Thief, Assassin, Nomad (but not Nomad Trooper?)
• FE8- Same as FE7, except add Rogue, and substitute Ranger for Nomad
• FE10- The entire Myrm, Soldier, Fighter, Archer, Armored, the three playable thievery-related classes, all Beast and Dragon Laguz, Rafiel, and all magical classes.
• FE11- Snipers, Heroes, Thieves, Chameleons, Swordmasters, Fighters, Warriors, Hunters, Paladins, and Horsemen.
• FE12- Same as FE3, minus Manaketes.

I don't have easy data for post-FE12.

-I interpreted "marine" as amphibious units.

As for purely naval units, or amphibious units who can walk on land but with penalties of some kind compared to being in water, they aren't worth including.

As said above, water would have to be included on every map, which is unnatural, barring maybe an archipelagic FE. The naval units would be mandatory on some maps, and absolutely worthless or almost useless on others. Given units that aren't being used aren't getting EXP, it would mean every map where they weren't fielded would fall behind in stats, not helping them when they are necessary.

Air units can fly over ground, naval units can't sail on land. And ground is where the majority of action in almost every SRPG takes place, where the majority of unit diversity and strategy and tactics is developed by the developer. FE's dead relative Advance Wars never achieved flawless integration of sea with land. Once you won the sea battle, you've basically won the map, and your naval units, besides those carrying air & land units and Battleships for bombarding the coastlines, did nothing. Meanwhile, land mixed with air units in AW was perfectly good, as it has been in FE.

[lenticular]

Mermaid? Narwhal Rider? Walrus Laguz?

Seriously, though, as others have said, purely aquatic units would probably be a mess. The only way they'd actually work would be if the game was designed from its inception to be able to feature them. If we had an archipelago setting and a maritime theme and a lot of the maps were on boats at sea and even the land maps were all on the coast and there were specific mechanics in place for marine units... then maybe. Maybe. I'm not even 100% convinced that it would work then, but it might. Except that it would also be a huge divergence from standard Fire Emblem fare, so isn't something we're likely to ever see.

[Armchair General]

If you want sea units in an RPG, Wesnoth has am entire faction of them.

[Sooks]

Everyone gangster talking about how useless a water only unit would be until they make pirate emblem. Make it happen IS!

Seriously, they could make a game where a water only unit is feasible.

[Benice]

I think that having a marine-only unit would work just fine, so long as the game's designed around having that sort of stuff-Especially if stat inflation is kept to a minimum, so not being deployed doesn't instantly cause a unit to be bad. Having an aquatic ballista in Berwick Saga would have worked quite well, for example.

 

Almost entirely unrelated, but something I've wanted in FE for a long time is a boat map, except at the start of your turn you move your boat, which adjusts the map, and then you move the units on the boat, so it's kinda a multi-layered strategy map.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

How about a Mermaid Jagen, who is super useful on the first few island maps, but then falls off once you travel to the mainland?

[Dark Holy Elf]

I definitely think a marine-focused unit could work but it would either have to be in a game where water is almost ever-present (not crazy, an archipelago or giant river delta both provide settings where such things are possible).

It could also work in a game which encourages you to use different units for different maps. Fire Emblem currently doesn't do this, but in theory it could if progression were less tied to how often you used a unit (e.g. exp could be heavilly curved like in Conquest, with training for things like weapon ranks occuring entirely between battles). This would also make it more practical to deploy your archer(s) in maps with many enemy fliers, to deploy low-move units in defend maps, etc.

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Sooks said:

Everyone gangster talking about how useless a water only unit would be until they make pirate emblem. Make it happen IS!

Seriously, they could make a game where a water only unit is feasible.

It doesn't have to be pirate emblem. The ancient Greeks had some cool naval battles, I think they boiled down to "shank the enemy with your bronze-tipped galleys before they shank you".

Or we do Fire Emblem Under the Sea! In which case, every unit is a water unit! Fire and Wind magic are gonna need replacements then.😛

 

-More seriously, some games in a variety of genres do attempt to add alternate forms of gameplay as a gimmick for that particular game, if not the entire franchise going forward. Mario & Luigi had Giant Bower/Luigi/Papercraft battles, Skies of Arcadia had airship battles, Suikoden had war battles and duels, Kirby games nowadays always do something different.

I've named mostly RPGs, but there are other genres too. Alternate gameplay forms don't always work out, Sonic Unleashed was criticized for the Werehog segments. And some people will complain regardless of quality that the gimmick gameplay segments take away from the franchise's core experience, which should be stressed above all else. -But you never know until you try and if 3H's school-monastery counts as a "try" for FE, you'll get mixed answers on that. As the saying goes, the evil cult is in the details!

 

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

How about a Mermaid Jagen, who is super useful on the first few island maps, but then falls off once you travel to the mainland?

Unless you do the thing that gives them feet. But that abolishes their mermaid abilities forever, and departing from Disney, it means their life shall be cut short and soon end in tragedy.

Edited March 20, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer

[Sooks]

31 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

to deploy low-move units in defend maps, etc.

Why? Low movement is still a problem then, if it’s like Conquest chapter 10 or something you’ll need all hands on deck at the end, and low move doesn’t help with that.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah low move is always worse (so my comments should be taken assuming the low-move unit has advantages to offset their poor mobility), but it's less bad relatively on defend maps where you don't need to move as much. If you're rushing towards offensive objectives instead of facing down an enemy that is coming to you, low move is going to be far more of a hindrance. In a defend map, on the other hand, if you can anticipate where a low-move unit is needed they can put in good work since the enemy has to come towards you. Despite your comments I personally find Effie pretty useful in Conquest 10, find Brom quite useful in 2-Endgame of Radiant Dawn (assuming I'm playing it as a defend map and not a boss kill), etc.

[NinjaMonkey]

There's a skill in Awakening called Acrobat that negates all terrain penalties, including those of water tiles.

Edited March 20, 2021 by NinjaMonkey

[Sooks]

8 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Despite your comments I personally find Effie pretty useful in Conquest 10

Oh yeah, me too. But she can pretty successfully stay in one place the whole map.

[MidoriChan]

Not sure if this would work but maybe a mermaid/merman/siren class. I would love to see it but I don't know about anyone else.