X-Naut

Yeah that's a pretty annoying map, and I'm gonna vouch against the next map too: FE6 Chapter 6. While the enemies are certainly easier, there are two major nails in the map design. 1. There are eight treasure chests and one recruitable character scattered across eight locked rooms. You can skip some of the rooms (three are duds) but they're of the roofed-over variety so you may well open up one along the way, and these rooms contain enemies or reinforcement zones that can kill your one thief. Speaking of which, said thief is your only way of opening the chests; and unless you visited the Chapter 5 vendor your only other key is a single door key. This isn't helped by Cath's recruitment being multi-chapter as if to mock you. By the way, three of these chests are money; three of them. 2. The Hard-only reinforcements. They appear on turns 8, 12, 16 and 20 from the stairs flanking the boss; and chances are you're going to be fighting the boss around that time on a more casual run. I'm pretty tolerant of same-turn reinforcements but introducing entirely new reinforcement groups on Hard is a poor use for them. These are right there with the Echidna police squad for worst reinforcements in the game. As for how to improve this... replace the Chapter 4 door key with a chest key and add door keys to the vendor. Have a reinforcement trigger zone in the upper hallway that opens the top and bottom chambers and on Hard summons the stair reinforcements all at once. If the stairs repeat it's for one or two turns immediately after. One turn or two later the rear guard shows up. Add a left-right cross-section for faster travel between the two side halls. This isn't the first map that'll come to people's minds when thinking bad map design but I wanted to bring it up because I think it's worse than some of the more conventional options and would've flown under the radar otherwise.

Part of it has to do with how many enemy units the system can support, which naturally increases with hardware evolution. You see this with FE1 having at most 20 starting enemies; FE3 has a limit of 32 per map; FE4 thru GBA settle on a limit of 50; and Tellius can exceed that. It should be noted that the next game (Shadow Dragon) has much lower density and a lower enemy limit (60); New Mystery props it back up, particularly on Lunatic where it tends toward zerg rushing with reinforcements, but that's more to scare the player into wrapping up the map than being intended to fight them all. But it still doesn't go back up to FE9 Maniac/FE10's peaks, nor do the following games... correct if where I might be wrong here. Overall it does show a paradigm shift around the time of the GBA engine, perhaps to make the game feel more "epic" by making full use of the enemy counts the game can now handle. It also coincides with a lot of changes that make them more manageable, such as the peak 1-2 range meta, fewer same-turn reinforcements and as you said 2RN. This way of thinking seems to have peaked at Tellius though, with latter entries dialing it back for various reasons, although a focus on stronger enemy quality might be the biggest. High enemy density becomes suffocating if ORKOing isn't the norm.

Kliff is Linde's younger brother. Let's start with the obvious: Kliff is the only other male Aura wielder in the Arhcanea-Valentia canon. Sure it's said that Miloah locked it to women, and we see other off-gender spells in SoV (Celica and Sonya can Excalibur), but being his son is still a convenient explanation for why Kliff can use it. The fact we see several gender-exclusive or near exclusive spells also suggests Aura is indeed female-preferential and he was working off an existing restriction or simply reinstating it. There's also their parental situations. Kliff grew up with only his mother, his father split from her and all we know is the rumor he was a wealthy merchant. We only ever hear of Linde's father so it's possible she never really knew her mother. And they're close in age, Kliff being 15 in SoV and Linde looking about 15 in Shadow Dragon (two years ago). Which leads me to my theorycraft story...

Some Russian troops are becoming more vocal about opposition to the war. Hundreds of Russian Troops Are Refusing to Invade Ukraine: Lawyer (businessinsider.com)

Funny you should make this topic... Sunshine Protection Act approved by senate to make daylight saving permanent (chron.com) This happened yesterday.

That could be said about a lot of enemy armors in general. The highest enemy Generals ever go is 17-18 Def in Chapter 20, aside from Nerring who hits 20. Bishops are also like -5 Res on FE3, and many generics have negative base Def up to Chapter 8 on higher difficulties. And let's not forget Roderick and Cecil's negative personal Defs, or the clerics' negative personal Res... I get that the devs wanted to keep defenses on generics low, and that most class bases in DS are awfully bottom-heavy. But constantly dialing back defenses is such an inefficient way to do it. They should have tweaked class bases more like with Fighter/Pirate and given classes that need lower Def lower Def. Even Armors could probably be dialed back provided by scale up better later on. If the extra bulk is too tough to handle then shave some HP off the top of their heaping Hard+ bonuses. I don't know where you get the idea that General bosses are that slow and frail though. Enemy armors are awfully fast for something with 0/4 base Speed on Lunatic. They tend to be on par with or faster than Bishops. The Chapter 15 boss has capped Speed! Sure you can one-round them with effective weaponry when you double but that's par for course on effective weaponry, you'd need to make a pretty drastic change to fix that. With all that HP you generally aren't one-shotting them on Luantic without a big hammer forge. But on the topic of playable Ballisticians... if balance matters to you then it's a bad idea, unless you can enforce being unable to move and attack at 3-10 range in a single action. There's a reason enemy siege weapons are stationary in half the games (12 among them) and I for one think it should just be baked in already. Even the longbow was apparently too much because you don't get one until the post-endgame... speaking of which, are you gonna add an early longbow? It'd make your unpromoted Archers a bit meaningful vs Hunters with mixed male reclass.

Volunteers cross Polish border into Ukraine to fight Russian forces (msn.com) On top of the humanitarian aid and weapons, Ukraine is starting to receive more manpower to fend off the Russians.

Chalk up another mark on the list of recent Russian blunders: Russian state news accidentally publishes article saying Russia has defeated Ukraine and restored its 'historical borders' (msn.com) In actual news, the first round of ceasefire talks has been largely unsuccessful and Ukraine is starting down the road to EU membership.

Yeah, that video provides great context for Russia's situation, and the history behind said situation. Thanks for posting it. In other news... Turkey, overseeing passage to Black Sea, calls Russian invasion 'war' | Reuters Previously Turkey stated that they could not block passage of Russian ships through the Dardanelled and Bosphorus. This might indicate a change in action.

Flesh out the existing categories with sub-types to make them more distinct. Bring back blades as a power option for sword infantry, split spears and lances with the latter being geared more toward mounts, add a distinction between short and long axes, and bows have longbows and crossbows to examine.

Camilla's availability lead gives her the edge over Xander.

Left is tricky with the ears, but it looks like a Beast Triber and the wide outfit's making it hard to tell their girth. But I'm still thinking a bulkier character like Mordecai or Skrimir. Right could be a girl or a long-haired guy like Lucius, Libra, Izana... hair leans female but otherwise that silhouette is pretty androgynous.

Evolving weapon sounds a lot better on paper but it's significantly hampered by durability. If you give it durability then there's a chance it'll break before you can evolve it, otherwise there's a tricky balancing act of making it reasonably useful without overshadowing other weapons. This gets easier if you don't have durability but that's a whole 'nother discussion. A compromise might be if broken weapons exist, then your weapon is auto-repaired whenever it evolves. I'm indifferent overall, I care more that the weapon is useful when you have it.

Instead of empty gauge start Laguz with full gauge and move the transformation time to start of the action (i.e. before moving). Also use the unit's transformed state for the stat baseline and apply an untransformed penalty, it makes the stat maths easier to work out. Also enables milder penalties like say, only having three-quarters or two-thirds of your full stats while untransformed.

That actually sounds fairly unique if you capitalize on the persecuted group angle for turning the usual hero popularity on its head. Instead of being widely respected, he/she has a limited appreciation and has to earn it. Some may join out of sympathy, but it might be muddied by doubts, conscious or subconscious. Others may simply join out of pragmatism due to not liking the other side, and a few might even join as moles with the intention of turning at the right moment! Playing poorly could result in defections, and moles might require exceptional play to keep around until the end. You might have to be careful with that though, forced unit loss is always a touchy subject in this series.

Binding Blade Maddening mode RNG is 1 RN above 50 hit and 2 RN below for the player, and the opposite for the enemy. No, not just hit RNG. Crit rolls before hit and ignores the accuracy check, also uses FE5's hit/crit formulas (Crit = Skill, Dodge = Luck/2). EXP gain is cut in half and you lose between 1-3 deployment slots on every map. Double Hard Mode bonuses is no longer a glitch and the routine to scrub recruitable enemy bonuses now properly works. Each map has a soft time limit in the form of new reinforcements whose spawn position is tied to Roy.

Lundgren's small time, the true antagonist of Lyn's tale is "You have too many items. Select one to discard." I've been thinking if they bring back dedicated thieves then your thief could have FE7 Merlinus style deployment, possibly with a small monetary price to be thematic. Maybe wrap the mid-map convoy utility into them as well?

It is the fourth dimension of our known universe that represents the ever-changing distribution of matter and energy within its indeterminate boundaries. Units of time are an arbitrary, uniform measurement to track this constant unidirectional flow of events and were developed within the contexts of our experiences on our home planet based on relatively stable cycle of changes as it rotates on its axis and orbits its parent star.

Speaking of infinite reinforcements, I find repeating the same reinforcements turn after turn is the worst type of reinforcements. It's just really lazy and it promotes turtling no matter what phase they appear on.

Goddess in the Professor's Head casually conversing with the students and Ashe being halfway across the year in wardrobe from everyone else are amusing.

FE6's RNG formula is slightly off in that it can generate 100s when it's only supposed to roll 0-99. You probably had a 100 on queue lined up with the crit check.

Personally I'd like to see the emphasis on customization dialed back a bit in lieu of more functionally distinct characters. Bring back personal skill sets as in Jugdral/Tellius, throw in scrolls/manuals and being able to learn new skills by level for some progression. Push reclassing to the backburner, still there for players who want to but requiring more effort and commitment, and you aren't explicitly missing out for opting out. Also focus on quality over quantity in the skill pool, we have too many of them nowadays and many amount to pork. Three Houses might as well have been this. Classes felt more like they were there for enemy conformity, you could have generic enemies use classes while player characters and named characters get epithets.

I'm going to refer to reinforcements as enemy phase and player phase because what I have to say here touches on both. While they can be annoying at times, I think they have their place in Fire Emblem and can be used well. Having to wait a turn to act is a huge detriment in Fire Emblem; one turn can mean the difference between life and death. If you know where they're coming from you can literally sit next to their spawn point and farm them for free EXP as they come. You could say "just add more of them" but you have to draw the line at some point, unless you want to go full PoR Maniac Mode. Enemy phase reinforcements punish spawncamping a lot more concisely than player phase reinforcements ever could... or if the reinforcements are meant to punish you at all. I don't think punishing the player is that bad for making the wrong move is that bad, provided they can discern the wrong move. IMO the biggest problem with enemy phase reinforcements is how IntSys has been using them. They've settled into a terrible pattern, which can be described as: It has to be either one or the other. Now, this has been a thing since FE began, and it's a shame because the two timings would be great if used in tandem. In fact, use them both in the same reinforcement groups. Have the first wave of fort reinforcements be player phase and the rest be enemy phase, or have one or two "scouts" appear on player phase joined by the rest on enemy phase. There are 2-3 ways you can approach these, only one of them gets you ambushed on and it's on you if it happened. Likewise groups that wouldn't be fair going first can be all player phase, or all enemy phase if they're in a spot where it really shouldn't matter. Only on Hard, Maniac, etc. This "they're too hard for normal" way of thinking is the root of most problems and it's what makes #1 a lot more damning. Enemy phase reinforcements require a different enough approach that it's effectively a new game mechanic, and the consequences of playing poorly are not something to throw at new players on a higher difficulty. There's also the issue that reinforcements frequently only work one way or the other, and maybe arguments about going from coddling to sink-or-swim. We can add new reinforcement patterns on Hard and up. This speaks for itself and it's a dick move in tandem with the last two points. That's how it started in Shadow Dragon, and while the DS games have map saves I don't believe they excuse poor or lazy reinforcement design, neither do rewind mechanics. I think New Mystery's the worse of the two though because a few of its Maniac+ patterns could be described as kaizo traps. I also have to give Fates credit where it's due, not for buying "ambush spawn bad" but for being consistent with the timings across difficulties. If it didn't commit to player phase only I fully believe Conquest could have used enemy phase reinforcements fairly.

Basically this. It provides some insurance to "safe" plays, which is key in a game where hit rates may not always be 100 and the stakes of missing are higher than most RPGs. I also agree with @pong but more on the grounds that pushing low hits down more isn't healthy. Hit rates below 50 are already ill-regarded and they become downright insufferable to play with under 2 RN (see: FE6 throne hogs). This isn't an issue with enemies but deflating their hit rates can leave the player feeling overconfident. You know the story: someone puts a unit into too many enemies' range, they get hit too many times and die, and then the player blames it on the RNG when they had a hand in their own bad luck. Conceptually I like Fates RN the most because it pads high hit rates, but less than 2 RN, and it doesn't punish low hit rates so you have to be mindful of non-zero hit rates.

If pirates come back for a third year then Echidna would be a nice pick, specifically with a Prf sword as a reference to her unused Prf concept in Binding Blade. Being the leader of a rebellion to free her colonized island home she has a great background for the banner too.