Character "Overall Power" Calculation Factors.

[Alondite]

Ok, so I was trying to make a balanced edit of Blazing Sword and I ran into a roadblock when I came to the conclusion that all stats are not equal. Luck is not as important as Strength, there's just no way. So when trying to decide how to balance character stats/growths I decided to do this:

Find out exactly how much each stat effects the amount of damage done or reduced (or in the case of luck and speed, both) in a round of battle. HP calculation was a little bit different (and it took me even longer to get it where it seemed right), and Resistance was based on the percentage of magic users compared to non-magic users.

This is what I came up with:

*note* I'm not claiming this to be perfect. Most of the calculations I did were fairly simple, and I'm decent with math, but certainly no math whiz. This is only my first set of calculations that I'm using for the first build of my game.

*note* The actual numbers don't matter. What matters is how they are proportionally to the other stats.

*note* HP is an average. It effects the percentage of total health taken as damage more at lower levels, and less at higher.

*note* Calculating the Magic is dependent on the stats of the characters/enemies in the game, so for the purpose of this post I just left it equal to Strength. Resistance is less important because there are far fewer magic users.

*note* Just because some stats are more important than others doesn't mean that a theoretical character with nothing but Strength and Defense is going to be better. All values are above zero, so all stats are important.

HP Str/Mag Skill Speed Luck Defense Resistance

10.94% 52.50% 21.50% 23.90% 7.09% 52.50% 10.50%

To calculate character overall power, just multiply their stats by the corresponding values, and add them together. Again, I'm sure it's not perfect, but it should be close. This could also be useful in tier debates, and I think I'll post it in the ROM hacking section, since it should be useful for anyone looking to make a more balanced game.

[Tables]

Uh, I don't see how this really makes any sense.

Firstly, what's important varies between pretty much every chapter, and against every enemy. In a chapter where enemies mostly have Speed around 12-14, then a character with 13 STR and 18 SPD is doing far, far better than one with 18 STR and 13 SPD (assuming other stats are fairly reasonable). But on the other hand, if it's a chapter where enemy speed is around 14-16 (ergo, just a little later in the game) then suddenly the second character has a significant advantage. So universally trying to weigh stats isn't very fair.

If you have to, try doing something like this:

SPD has the highest weighting when it's making the difference between doubling and not or stopping being doubled, but excess speed beyond that is less valuable (e.g. against 10-12 SPD enemies, a unit with 15 SPD wants extra SPD, but one with 16 SPD would probably prefer STR or DEF)

STR is next most valuable, assuming you're not already cleanly 2HKOing most enemies and still far away from 1HKOing (e.g. if you deal 20 damage to 30 HP enemies, extra strength probably means little to you).

DEF comes next, but again, with the same stipulations as the above two. Still, DEF is almost always useful because, in general, you take less damage at a time than enemies do, so reducing the damage you take by 1 means you can survive longer.

The other four stats are less valuable, but...

SKL is useful if you need CRIT, or have low hit rate (e.g. axe users). Otherwise it's not very important

LUK is useful far enough that you don't take criticals from most enemies (about 10 LUK at endgame should do, give or take, assuming you have no crit evade supports)

RES is good, but only against mages, who are rarer than physical units.

HP is important but only in large quantities, assuming you're already at a moderately high HP (going from 15 to 16 HP probably makes more of a difference than going from 35 to 36)

That's my take on the weighting of different stats.

[Alondite]

Uh, I don't see how this really makes any sense.

Firstly, what's important varies between pretty much every chapter, and against every enemy. In a chapter where enemies mostly have Speed around 12-14, then a character with 13 STR and 18 SPD is doing far, far better than one with 18 STR and 13 SPD (assuming other stats are fairly reasonable). But on the other hand, if it's a chapter where enemy speed is around 14-16 (ergo, just a little later in the game) then suddenly the second character has a significant advantage. So universally trying to weigh stats isn't very fair.

That's why you have multiple units who serve a different purpose. Weighing stats is to find OVERALL strength, not situational usefulness.

If you have to, try doing something like this:

SPD has the highest weighting when it's making the difference between doubling and not or stopping being doubled, but excess speed beyond that is less valuable (e.g. against 10-12 SPD enemies, a unit with 15 SPD wants extra SPD, but one with 16 SPD would probably prefer STR or DEF)

STR is next most valuable, assuming you're not already cleanly 2HKOing most enemies and still far away from 1HKOing (e.g. if you deal 20 damage to 30 HP enemies, extra strength probably means little to you).

DEF comes next, but again, with the same stipulations as the above two. Still, DEF is almost always useful because, in general, you take less damage at a time than enemies do, so reducing the damage you take by 1 means you can survive longer.

Yes, speed gives a HUGE bonus when doubling. The factor for it was over 100% when I did the calculation, but it's all based on average. Offensively, having an attack speed of more than 4 more than your opponent has absolutely zero value, and the defensive value of speed is only like 10%. My factor is an average of the overall offensive and defensive value of speed. One point of Strength on average has a greater effect on damage dealt than one point of speed on average. And 4 points of Strength (since 4 points of speed increases AS by 4, the difference needed to double) does more on average than being able to double.

And Defence is always useful, but when enemes do zero damage, MORE defense is pointless, and thus has no value. In effect, one point of defense does the same as one point of strength. It effects damage by one point. On average it's not 100% because it ceases to decrease damage when the enemy is already doing 0, so those extra points in defense would have more use elsewhere. Strength isn't 100% because it is dependent on hit percentage.

The other four stats are less valuable, but...

SKL is useful if you need CRIT, or have low hit rate (e.g. axe users). Otherwise it's not very important

LUK is useful far enough that you don't take criticals from most enemies (about 10 LUK at endgame should do, give or take, assuming you have no crit evade supports)

RES is good, but only against mages, who are rarer than physical units.

HP is important but only in large quantities, assuming you're already at a moderately high HP (going from 15 to 16 HP probably makes more of a difference than going from 35 to 36)

I believe I mentioned almost all of that haha. And it was all included in my calculations.

That's my take on the weighting of different stats.

Well, see how I have responded, and then tell me what you think. Also note that weapons matter some too, but I haven't included the average weapon in my calculations yet because I haven't finished weapon stats. Again, they aren't final. I can give you some actual examples to support them though if you wish.

[WeaponsofMassConstruction]

Cool. May I ask to see the math behind this?

[Balcerzak]

First of all, just giving us the results of your calculations is borderline meaningless. If you want actual discussion, I'd suggest you actually provide the formulae used, and we can all make a more informed discussion on your assumptions, whether they were well-founded or not.

Yes, speed gives a HUGE bonus when doubling. The factor for it was over 100% when I did the calculation, but it's all based on average. Offensively, having an attack speed of more than 4 more than your opponent has absolutely zero value, and the defensive value of speed is only like 10%. My factor is an average of the overall offensive and defensive value of speed. One point of Strength on average has a greater effect on damage dealt than one point of speed on average. And 4 points of Strength (since 4 points of speed increases AS by 4, the difference needed to double) does more on average than being able to double.

This is not the case if you have skills whose activation rate relies on speed (e.g. FE4 continue).

Yes this is relevant, because you posted in the General Fire Emblem section, and not the Blazing Sword section.

[Tables]

I'm going to have to know how you worked out all of your factors. SPD is, I would say, far more valuable than STR in general, assuming you have moderate quantities of both. Excess SPD can be converted into extra STR by means of using Steel or better weapons, and if you can still double, then great. Excess STR can't do anything, and if you can't double, then the extra is somewhat meaningless. I didn't say it before, but most of the time, a majority of your team will be at a place where they can double some enemies but not all of them, and except for a few outliers (Myrmidons and Knights), the range of enemy speeds isn't actually that huge, about 4-6 points between the fastest and slowest enemies in a chapter.

If you are faster than that, then extra SPD boosts your avoid - and if your avoid is already good, due to the 2RN system extra avoid is even more valuable (say you're 2HKOed - changing enemy hit rate from 30% to 28% makes you go from dying on average in 11 attacks to dying in 13. Of course, that's just an average, but you still avoid about 13% of attacks that would have hit you before). It also means you can perhaps switch to a Steel weapon, or another weapon, to deal more damage, without losing the ability to double.

If you're in that SPD range, then one point of SPD means you're doubling about 20% more enemies on the map - a significant increase in damage output. Unless you're typically dealing about 5 damage (hint: You're not, you're probably dealing about 10-20 or so per hit), that increase in doubling is far more than 1 extra damage.

If you're below that SPD range, then extra SPD can stop you getting doubled (perhaps), or move you towards doubling - which, again, will increase your offence. It also gives you more options against the slower enemies. In this case, though, extra STR in general might be more valuable than extra SPD.

That's basically a summary of SPD against STR. Extra avoid, extra AS and being able to use heavier weapons is far more valuable in general than extra STR - because, while STR is clearly important, a single point only occasionally makes a difference, and you can still leave enemies in range of other units killing them, while extra AS doubles your offensive output against large numbers of enemies, while simultaneously boosting avoid.

As for defence against strength: The thing to be aware of is that you get hit a lot less than you hit opponents, which means your defence comes into play less often than your strength. Asides from that, STR always increases your damage output, often by 2 as you double more often than not, but DEF only decreases damage taken against about 80% of the enemies, and that's if they even hit you first.

[dondon151]

What about movement?

[Alondite]

Cool. May I ask to see the math behind this?

I would love to show you, but it's mostly Excel formulas. Basically, it's an average of how much 1 point in a stat effects damage dealt/reduced, average from 5 (since going to 1 was pointless) to 30. Like Strength has a 100% effect on damage (1 point) when at 100% Hit. I also did 75% hit, 50% hit, 25% hit, and 0% hit since they all have an effect. I did the same sort of thing for each stat, including relevant variables. I may not have included everything I could have to get to most accurate results, but in practice they have worked out pretty well so far.

For example, here is a list of "Overall Power" for GROWTHS (and ONLY growths) from Blazing Sword:

Hector 90.39

Oswin 78.97

Heath 75.78

Eliwood 75.3

Dart 74.98

Nino 74.75

Raven 74.71

Lyn 73.45

Farina 73.28

Bartre 73.14

Sain 72.42

Dorcas 71.52

Lucius 70.8

Wil 70.73

Kent 68.97

Wallace 68.84

Fiora 68.76

Matthew 68.06

Canas 67.87

Rebecca 67.22

Geitz 67

Lowen 66.91

Florina 66.55

Serra 65.63

Rath 65.55

Erk 65.49

Guy 65.13

Priscilla 63.97

Legault 63.71

Harken 62.93

Vaida 61.95

Louise 61.5

Isadora 59.75

Renault 58.14

Pent 57.34

Hawkeye 55.91

Karel 55.06

Marcus 53.26

Karla 52.7

Jaffar 52.27

It should come at no surprise to see Hector and Oswin at the top. Now of course growths aren't everything, but it is interesting to look at. This obviously doesn't denote actual usefulness, but it's something to consider.

[Alondite]

First of all, just giving us the results of your calculations is borderline meaningless. If you want actual discussion, I'd suggest you actually provide the formulae used, and we can all make a more informed discussion on your assumptions, whether they were well-founded or not.

This is not the case if you have skills whose activation rate relies on speed (e.g. FE4 continue).

Yes this is relevant, because you posted in the General Fire Emblem section, and not the Blazing Sword section.

I posted a simple explanation of how I got these values in my last post. It basically boiled down to using the damage calculation formula and plugging in different stats and recording the outcome, then averaging it.

And I'm aware that this doesn't apply to EVER Fire Emblem, but it does apply to a few. I'm hacking FE7 currently, so I did it for that.

I'm going to have to know how you worked out all of your factors. SPD is, I would say, far more valuable than STR in general, assuming you have moderate quantities of both. Excess SPD can be converted into extra STR by means of using Steel or better weapons, and if you can still double, then great. Excess STR can't do anything, and if you can't double, then the extra is somewhat meaningless. I didn't say it before, but most of the time, a majority of your team will be at a place where they can double some enemies but not all of them, and except for a few outliers (Myrmidons and Knights), the range of enemy speeds isn't actually that huge, about 4-6 points between the fastest and slowest enemies in a chapter.

Like I said, I haven't figured in weapons just yet. You could also give the higher Strength unit a steel weapon...Excess Strength only becomes pointless when you OHKO everything. I didn't base my calculations on how long it takes to kill an opponent, I based it on damage.

Your last bit applies to FE7, sure, but my goal is to make a balanced Fire Emblem. I don't WANT Oswin to be able to double anything (aside from another Knight). That gives him far too much versatility and destroys balance, because his combined offensive and defensive power is too great. I want characters and classes to have more specific uses, hopefully opening up more strategic options rather than "let Oswin run through everything." I want Oswin to take a hit, and counter for a good chuck of damage, while someone else finshes off the enemy. Obviously this wouldn't be the case in every situation, but it's the general idea.

If you are faster than that, then extra SPD boosts your avoid - and if your avoid is already good, due to the 2RN system extra avoid is even more valuable (say you're 2HKOed - changing enemy hit rate from 30% to 28% makes you go from dying on average in 11 attacks to dying in 13. Of course, that's just an average, but you still avoid about 13% of attacks that would have hit you before). It also means you can perhaps switch to a Steel weapon, or another weapon, to deal more damage, without losing the ability to double.

I figured in the Avoid boost from Speed, from stats of 5-30, averaged it, and added it to the offensive value (not averaged). I haven't figured in the 2RN system because I don't quite know how I would do it. Like I said, these numbers are like a "first draft." I posted them here looking for critique and criticism, and to hopefully give something useful to the community. I never said they were exact. They are a starting point, and where they go from here depends on discussion and methods.

If you're in that SPD range, then one point of SPD means you're doubling about 20% more enemies on the map - a significant increase in damage output. Unless you're typically dealing about 5 damage (hint: You're not, you're probably dealing about 10-20 or so per hit), that increase in doubling is far more than 1 extra damage.

If you're below that SPD range, then extra SPD can stop you getting doubled (perhaps), or move you towards doubling - which, again, will increase your offence. It also gives you more options against the slower enemies. In this case, though, extra STR in general might be more valuable than extra SPD.

Avoiding enemy doubles really depends on enemy speed, and since I don't have enemy stats completed yet, I didn't include it (and I don't know the stats for every enemy in Blazing Sword by default). Also, I'm not 100% sure how I would calculate it.

That's basically a summary of SPD against STR. Extra avoid, extra AS and being able to use heavier weapons is far more valuable in general than extra STR - because, while STR is clearly important, a single point only occasionally makes a difference, and you can still leave enemies in range of other units killing them, while extra AS doubles your offensive output against large numbers of enemies, while simultaneously boosting avoid.

On the contrary. One point of Strength always translates into more damage (unless you have 0 hit of course), but one point of speed doesn't. Like I said, once your attack speed is 4 points higher than your opponent, more speed has no use in terms of offense (though it still does defensively). Here is a hypothetical situation:

Two units do one damage with 100% hit against an enemy. Both units are 4 Speed away from being able to double said enemy. You add 4 points of Strength to one unit, and 4 points of Speed to the other. They now do 5 and 2 damage respectively. What's 5/2? 2.5. What's 52.5/23.9 (my factors for each)? 2.19. Different due to some of the other calculations involved (like Speed's defensive value), but that simple comparison is the basis behind my calculations. Obviously I used more calculations, but that's the simple version.

As for defence against strength: The thing to be aware of is that you get hit a lot less than you hit opponents, which means your defence comes into play less often than your strength. Asides from that, STR always increases your damage output, often by 2 as you double more often than not, but DEF only decreases damage taken against about 80% of the enemies, and that's if they even hit you first.

Calculating the exact value of defense is tough. I wasn't sure how to do it, and since +1 Strength means +1 damage (in theory) and +1 Defense means -1 damage (again, in theory) I used the same value until I could find a way to calculate a more accurate value. I also tried to value each stat as exclusively as possible. I.e. I gave the ability to double to Speed and left it out of the Strength calculation since Speed is responsible for doubling. I also have been toying with including how Avoid influences Defense, but for now I gave Avoid solely to Speed.

To test my values, I pitted "equal" units (equal using my factors) with different stat types (like high Str/Def vs high Ski/Spd) against each other using a constant weapon and they both averaged very similar, if not exact damage against each other. I would like to use an "average weapon," but I haven't finished doing weapons yet.

What about movement?

I have no idea how that figures in yet, or how I would calculate it. My figures are based solely on battle at the moment. I also have not figured in CON, since it is dependent on weapons, and I haven't finished them yet (again, this data is originally for my hack). I have a fairly good idea how I would do it. Average the wt of each weapon type, and then use that to calculate the value of CON for users of each weapon. I.e. CON would be less important for classes who use lighter weapons, and more important for those who use heavier weapons. I would use how it impacts attack speed to calculate the value.

[Tables]

I think our problem lies in theoretical values vs. practice. In theory, your method is nice, but in practice, what I've said is more true. How often do you have an army who's speed ranges from 5 to 30? Not very. Perhaps your Generals are low down at about 12 SPD when your Swordmasters hit 30, but even that's not strictly representative, because the rest of your army asides from the General and Swordmaster have 16-24 SPD. On top of that, our hit rates tend to be (except against bosses) very good - 80%+ unless we have WTD, while enemy hit tends to be 50%-, except against armoured units. When you factor in your units being better, the relative values of stats tends to change - DEF becomes less important that STR, because you're getting hit less and for lower damage anyway. SPD becomes valuable, because you suddenly go from hitting once each, to being able to hit twice, provided you have enough SPD to do so. SKL and LUK become less valuable - because they do very little. It's seeing the value of stats in practice that you should really base your ratings on.

For reference, when I made an FE8 hack, here's how I weighted the stats:

HP: 3.5

S/M: 9

SKL: 5

SPD: 12

LUK: 4

DEF: 8

RES: 5 (My hack had a larger proportion of enemy mages than normal and enemies were generally better, so RES became a fair bit more valuable and DEF stayed about the same (stronger enemies, but less hitting DEF). For FE7 as it normally is, I'd give it a 3.5 or 4)

[Alondite]

I think our problem lies in theoretical values vs. practice. In theory, your method is nice, but in practice, what I've said is more true. How often do you have an army who's speed ranges from 5 to 30? Not very. Perhaps your Generals are low down at about 12 SPD when your Swordmasters hit 30, but even that's not strictly representative, because the rest of your army asides from the General and Swordmaster have 16-24 SPD. On top of that, our hit rates tend to be (except against bosses) very good - 80%+ unless we have WTD, while enemy hit tends to be 50%-, except against armoured units. When you factor in your units being better, the relative values of stats tends to change - DEF becomes less important that STR, because you're getting hit less and for lower damage anyway. SPD becomes valuable, because you suddenly go from hitting once each, to being able to hit twice, provided you have enough SPD to do so. SKL and LUK become less valuable - because they do very little. It's seeing the value of stats in practice that you should really base your ratings on.

For reference, when I made an FE8 hack, here's how I weighted the stats:

HP: 3.5

S/M: 9

SKL: 5

SPD: 12

LUK: 4

DEF: 8

RES: 5 (My hack had a larger proportion of enemy mages than normal and enemies were generally better, so RES became a fair bit more valuable and DEF stayed about the same (stronger enemies, but less hitting DEF). For FE7 as it normally is, I'd give it a 3.5 or 4)

How often does your army have stats that range from 5-30? Well...the entire game. Early on stats are low, maybe not exactly 5, but around there, and by end game they can go up to 30. My calculations are not just for 20/20 characters, they are for characters at EVERY level. My goal is to find out how much each stat directly and independently impacts the amount of damage given or taken by a particular unit. The total value of your weighted stats is higher than mine, so let's scale mine up to where they match yours (we'll ignore Res and pit physical units against each other) That brings my totals to:

HP-28.43% Str-136.44% Ski-55.87% Speed-62.11% Luck -18.43% Def- 136.44% Res- 27.29%

*note* I used your values times 10 as a percent (35%, 90%, 120%...) to compare. They both total 465%. Now let's make two characters who are "equal." One using my values, one using yours.

Here is your character:

40 12 15 17 10 12

And here is mine:

40 14 10 15 10 14

They are weighted equals within two hundredths of a percent (I couldn't get them exact).

I used an item with 9 Mt and 80 Hit, as that seemed pretty reasonable. The weapon is largely irrelevant here.

Your character averages 5.25 damage per hit, mine averages 6.71. Yes, yours would do more damage with a double attack, but think about this: Speed needs to be 4 points higher to double, so only the 4th addition point actually does anything offensively. Therefore, 1/4. So let's use this example. Two characters each will do 1 damage to an enemy. We'll add 3 points of strength to one, and 3 of speed to the other. Their damages will look like this

Str

1

2

3

4

Spd

1

1

1

2

Strength averages 2.5, speed average 1.25. Speed is roughly half as important as Strength, only slightly more because it also has defensive uses (though not as much as defense itself).

My value for speed looked very similar to yours...but that was because I was including various strength values in my calculations, but speed and strength are two separate values and should be calculated as such.

If you add 4 points of strength AND speed, the average is 3.5. Now if you scale the 2.5 value for strength, and the 3.5 value for speed and strength, they come pretty close to your weighted values of 9 and 12. My goal was to look at each stat on its own, not with another. However, that doesn't matter! I'll show you why.

If you weigh them together, you get 3.5. Let's multiply this by 20 to make it an even 60. That's easy. Now let's do them separately. 2.5*20=50, and 1.25*20=25. Now multiply 50*1.25 (to figure in speed)and you get 62.5. Very close! In fact, it even gives MORE value to speed because it figures in a possibly double attack for EACH value of strength as well! So you see, I'm not undervaluing speed at all, but what you're doing is essentially adding in another invisible strength stat, which is going to make your speed/skill characters weak and frail because too much value is given to speed.

Edited August 9, 2010 by Alondite

[Narga_Rocks]

Except you are ignoring the part where they do 15 damage to an enemy. Think about 30 hp enemies. Compare 30 damage (death) to 19 damage. This is what happens if you add 4 speed or 4 strength when your AS = enemy AS. Basically, there is a point at which spd vastly overpowers strength. Now, when you look at amounts of damage that will never ever happen in game, sure, +1 strength may appear to help more. But when is that ever relevant? Assuming the ability to actually win (your characters aren't sucking completely doing 1 damage), 1 speed is better. Keep in mind, he gave strength a 9. That indicates a fair amount of importance. Meaning he is valuing it enough that there will be respectable damage done. At the point your damage is respectable, speed wins.

Consider it like this, try to build a character with, say, 100 total "points". Then use your ratios to determine stats.

I eat tables uses:

3.5/46.5

9/46.5

5/46.5

12/46.5

4/46.5

8/46.5

5/46.5

His resulting stats are:

7.5 -> 8 hp

19.3 -> 19 str

10.75 -> 11 skill

25.8 -> 26 spd

8.6 -> 8 luck

17.2 -> 17 def

10.75 -> 11 res

Now, let's give you the same 100 points

10.94% 52.50% 21.50% 23.90% 7.09% 52.50% 10.50%

178.93 total

1094/17893

5250/17893

2150/17893

2390/17893

0709/17893

5250/17893

1050/17893

And your stats are:

6.1 -> 6 hp

29.3 -> 29 str

12 -> 12 skill

13.3 -> 13 spd

3.96 -> 4 lck

29.3 -> 29 def

5.86 -> 6 res

(your total is 99 so you can add 1 to either str, spd, or def, since they came equally close to the next value so one of them has to round up rather than any other number)

Frankly, you'll both die in fe6. Not sure about fe7 as I haven't played. You both have pretty bad accuracy and hp. You'll die from anything with 35 attack, and you have just 26 base hit and 30 avo. He will die earlier (25 attack) and only has 26 base hit, but at least he has 60 avo. I'm not sure how much you can double in fe7 and how much you can OHKO, but 26 spd doubles nearly everything in fe6 (just a few bosses in Sacae don't get doubled, I think) and 19 strength is pretty respectable.

If you were to fight each other, he'd need a 13 mt weapon to kill you in 2 hits and a 16 mt weapon to do so in 1 hit. Your base hit on him is -34, so pick up a weapon, subtract 34 hit, and that's your chance to kill him. He has -4 hit, so if he can get his hands on a 13 mt weapon then he can kill you in 2 hits. It depends on the weapons, of course, and if you ignore magic then there are many weapons against which you are invulnerable. Still, if you use Goldie's "more spd = go first" then give you both a 16 mt weapon and he will win most of the time. Give you both a 13 mt weapon and he may still win more often depending on the accuracy of the weapon. Particularly with 2 RNs, since a 65 acc weapon gives him 61 hit and gives you 31 hit, which translates into 69.96% for him and 19.53% for you. In two rounds, he needs to hit 2 of 4 to kill you and you need 1 of 2. However, order matters so it isn't easy to calculate chance of victory.

You have a 19.53% chance to win outright.

If you fail, he has a ~48.944% chance to win in the first round. Which is a ~39.4% chance to win overall.

Failing both of those (~41.07% chance to reach the second round), you then need to make the next hit (19.53%) since you go first in the second round. ~8.021% to win.

He then gets two swings, and if at least 2 of his total 4 hit, he wins. However, he hit at most 1 of 2 in the first round, so I'd need to calculate his chances of:

win: 1 of 2 + 1 or 2 of 2

win: 0 of 2 + 2 of 2

move on to third round: 1 of 2 + 0 of 2

move on to third round: 0 of 2 + 0 or 1 of 2

Anyway, he's leading right now 39.4 to 27.551 and he's just going to go up from the above 3 ways of winning. Might even get over 50 already. Meaning with a 65 hit weapon he has an advantage with 13 or more mt. You probably have an advantage for 12 mt weapons (he needs 3 hits and you need only 1) unless the hit rate is particularly bad (if anything has 55 hit and 12 mt, he may win). 10 mt and below you auto-win since there are no 34 hit or less weapons (you OHKO and he does 0 damage, so eventually you'll hit). 11 mt he needs 6 hits, so I find it hard to believe that any existing weapons would give him an advantage. Even 55 hit hammers probably don't give him an advantage (and they only have 10 mt anyway).

I have to ask where this:

Here is my you character:

40 12 15 17 10 12

And here is mine:

40 14 10 15 10 14

came from. I know you ignored res, but what are the basic statistics? And why so many hp if you don't value them at all? Did you use base numbers (with hp way higher than the rest) and then give additions?

If we gave you both 30, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 to work with and divided my above numbers by 2 and added it to those bases, then you'll have 140 total and I eat tables has:

34 hp, 20 str, 15 skl, 23 spd, 14 luck, 19 def, 15 res

37 hit, 60 avo

And you have:

33 hp, 25 str, 16 skl, 17 spd, 12 luck, 25 def, 13 res

38 hit, 46 avo

Oh, and now you have 141 so either str, spd, or def needs to drop (they are the closest values to being one less than what is written)

I don't know about fe7, but I'd take the top one in fe6 before I take the bottom one. Maybe in fe7 you can double enough with 17 spd (though con now plays a big role), but wandering around with either a killer or silver weapon with the top unit is much better than the bottom one in fe6.

If you go against each other, it is of course much harder to determine victory. He has -9 hit, you have -22 hit. He has a 13 hit advantage with whatever weapons you use. In order to 2HKO him, you'd need an 11 mt weapon. If he has an 11 mt weapon, then he can only do 12 damage to you in a round. You might actually be in a better position to win going head-to-head than before. Oh, and if you both are given magic tomes, he will probably destroy you. You have a 3 mt advantage on him, however even with 0 mt tomes he does 14 damage to your 10. Granted hit rates won't be perfect, but as you make the weapons stronger he'll just hit you harder and harder. Actually, if we accept a 4:1 ratio of magic weapons to physical weapons, then if you both have a blended weapon that gives 20% of its power with magic and 80% with physical, then he does:

(1.4 + .2x) x 2 magic damage + (-4 + .8x) * 2 phsyical damage.

You do

(2 + .2x) x 1 magic damage + (4.8 + .8x) * 1 physical damage.

per round, he does:

-4.6 + 2x damage (-2.3 + x per hit) to your

6.8 + x damage.

Any x value of at least 12 is required for him to win, sadly. You win with 11 or less. Well, he still has a 13 hit advantage so it depends on what the actual hit rate is. A 65 hit weapon still gives him 56 to your 43 listed, which punishes you and benefits him resulting in 61.72 to 37.41. He only barely hits twice more often than you hit once, however on a per round basis you only do .3741y (y = your damage per hit) and he does

2 hits: ~.381

1 hit: ~.4725

0 hits: ~.1465

so .381 x 2 + .4725 = 1.2345z (z = his damage per hit) per round.

Now, I'm sticking with my blended weapon because you are giving a value to res so and so is he so it had better play a role. You can change the ratio (4:1, currently), but you can't pretend that magic weapons don't exist.

So, 10 mt weapon. He does 7.7 per hit. You do 16.8 per hit. Rounding up (say the game does that), 8 compared to 17. Congrats, btw, since you 2HKO. He falls just short of the 4HKO. Lucky you. Keep in mind 11 mt isn't as generous to you as he'd then be 4HKOing.

8 * 1.2345 = 9.876

17 * .3741 = 6.3597

You will probably lose most of the time, though, since on average per round he does considerably more than you. With a 10 mt weapon he probably kills you in 4 rounds, and it probably takes you 6 rounds to kill him. Even a 9 mt weapon will likely give him more victories in 100 combats than you would get. Also, he goes first, so it benefits him sometimes. h, y, h, y, h, h, h, y, h, y, h, h, etc. y is when you swing, h is when he swings. He gets 5 swings before you get 3, and 9 before you get 5. However, you get 2 before he gets even 3, and you get 4 before he gets 7. Depending on hit rate the advantage could swing either way for 7 and 8 mt weapons. However, you don't OHKO until the weapon has massive attack power so that can pretty much be ignored. You'll only ever 2HKO at best and he has an advantage even when you 2HKO to his 5HKO. Anything stronger than 10 mt will see him win more.

You may be pretty evenly matched, though, when you consider the number of weapons with less than 9 mt and the number with more than 9 mt. However, seeing as how you appear to be pretty evenly matched over time, I think it is safe to say that highly valuing speed is a reasonable thing to do. Maybe you aren't exactly wrong (you can still win more often with the weaker weapons), but he isn't wrong either.

The thing is, most enemies don't have that kind of crazy defence so the head-to-head isn't even a good indication of effectiveness of stats in particular games. With 20 str and 23 spd, he will be ORKOing far more than your 25 str and 17 spd in most games. Now, in some games 17 spd is enough to double a fair amount even later on, but not in all of them (I'm obviously ignoring RD, where you both get destroyed mid-way through part 3).

[Anouleth]

Well, part of the issue with a calculation like that is that defense is inevitably going to be less valuable than HP because if you want to avoid a OHKO, HP = Defence and for any nHKO with n > 1, Defence is more valuable. But on the other hand, HP is generally 'cheaper', since units generally start with more HP and higher HP growth and Robes give out 7 HP to a Draco's 2 DEF and the cap is 60 instead of 20-30.

[Alondite]

It's too bad that most of what you wrote is completely irrelevant to what I am saying here. I'm not talking against in game enemies, I am talking pure value of a stat against ANY any, from one with 0 in every stat to one with every stat maxed. I don't care about the stats of enemies in the game.

Except you are ignoring the part where they do 15 damage to an enemy. Think about 30 hp enemies. Compare 30 damage (death) to 19 damage. This is what happens if you add 4 speed or 4 strength when your AS = enemy AS. Basically, there is a point at which spd vastly overpowers strength. Now, when you look at amounts of damage that will never ever happen in game, sure, +1 strength may appear to help more. But when is that ever relevant? Assuming the ability to actually win (your characters aren't sucking completely doing 1 damage), 1 speed is better. Keep in mind, he gave strength a 9. That indicates a fair amount of importance. Meaning he is valuing it enough that there will be respectable damage done. At the point your damage is respectable, speed wins.

Consider it like this, try to build a character with, say, 100 total "points". Then use your ratios to determine stats.

I eat tables uses:

3.5/46.5

9/46.5

5/46.5

12/46.5

4/46.5

8/46.5

5/46.5

His resulting stats are:

7.5 -> 8 hp

19.3 -> 19 str

10.75 -> 11 skill

25.8 -> 26 spd

8.6 -> 8 luck

17.2 -> 17 def

10.75 -> 11 res

Now, let's give you the same 100 points

10.94% 52.50% 21.50% 23.90% 7.09% 52.50% 10.50%

178.93 total

1094/17893

5250/17893

2150/17893

2390/17893

0709/17893

5250/17893

1050/17893

And your stats are:

6.1 -> 6 hp

29.3 -> 29 str

12 -> 12 skill

13.3 -> 13 spd

3.96 -> 4 lck

29.3 -> 29 def

5.86 -> 6 res

(your total is 99 so you can add 1 to either str, spd, or def, since they came equally close to the next value so one of them has to round up rather than any other number)

Frankly, you'll both die in fe6. Not sure about fe7 as I haven't played. You both have pretty bad accuracy and hp. You'll die from anything with 35 attack, and you have just 26 base hit and 30 avo. He will die earlier (25 attack) and only has 26 base hit, but at least he has 60 avo. I'm not sure how much you can double in fe7 and how much you can OHKO, but 26 spd doubles nearly everything in fe6 (just a few bosses in Sacae don't get doubled, I think) and 19 strength is pretty respectable.

If you were to fight each other, he'd need a 13 mt weapon to kill you in 2 hits and a 16 mt weapon to do so in 1 hit. Your base hit on him is -34, so pick up a weapon, subtract 34 hit, and that's your chance to kill him. He has -4 hit, so if he can get his hands on a 13 mt weapon then he can kill you in 2 hits. It depends on the weapons, of course, and if you ignore magic then there are many weapons against which you are invulnerable. Still, if you use Goldie's "more spd = go first" then give you both a 16 mt weapon and he will win most of the time. Give you both a 13 mt weapon and he may still win more often depending on the accuracy of the weapon. Particularly with 2 RNs, since a 65 acc weapon gives him 61 hit and gives you 31 hit, which translates into 69.96% for him and 19.53% for you. In two rounds, he needs to hit 2 of 4 to kill you and you need 1 of 2. However, order matters so it isn't easy to calculate chance of victory.

You have a 19.53% chance to win outright.

If you fail, he has a ~48.944% chance to win in the first round. Which is a ~39.4% chance to win overall.

Failing both of those (~41.07% chance to reach the second round), you then need to make the next hit (19.53%) since you go first in the second round. ~8.021% to win.

He then gets two swings, and if at least 2 of his total 4 hit, he wins. However, he hit at most 1 of 2 in the first round, so I'd need to calculate his chances of:

win: 1 of 2 + 1 or 2 of 2

win: 0 of 2 + 2 of 2

move on to third round: 1 of 2 + 0 of 2

move on to third round: 0 of 2 + 0 or 1 of 2

Anyway, he's leading right now 39.4 to 27.551 and he's just going to go up from the above 3 ways of winning. Might even get over 50 already. Meaning with a 65 hit weapon he has an advantage with 13 or more mt. You probably have an advantage for 12 mt weapons (he needs 3 hits and you need only 1) unless the hit rate is particularly bad (if anything has 55 hit and 12 mt, he may win). 10 mt and below you auto-win since there are no 34 hit or less weapons (you OHKO and he does 0 damage, so eventually you'll hit). 11 mt he needs 6 hits, so I find it hard to believe that any existing weapons would give him an advantage. Even 55 hit hammers probably don't give him an advantage (and they only have 10 mt anyway).

Ah, you've pointed out something for me. His character wins most of the time because he places less value on more important stats, so he can raise them higher. However, your hypothetical characters aren't showing what I'm saying. Let's take two characters, and you can tell me who you think is the better of the two. We'll call them 1 and 2.

1|2

HP -40|40

Str -30|20

Ski -14|25

Spd -12|30

Luck-15|17

Def -30|20

Res -15|15

My values say that character one is better by 4.57 points (points are simply the sum of the stats times weighted values), and his values say that character 2 is better by 5.88. Now sure, his character has a higher stat total, but look at how they fare in combat against each other. His character needs a weapon with at least 11 mt to even damage mine, and even then it's only 1 damage.

I have to ask where this:

Here is my you character:

40 12 15 17 10 12

And here is mine:

40 14 10 15 10 14

came from. I know you ignored res, but what are the basic statistics? And why so many hp if you don't value them at all? Did you use base numbers (with hp way higher than the rest) and then give additions?

It was HP, Srt, Ski, Spd, Res, Def. And you can ignore it because I was mistaken in what I was trying to show.

If we gave you both 30, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 to work with and divided my above numbers by 2 and added it to those bases, then you'll have 140 total and I eat tables has:

34 hp, 20 str, 15 skl, 23 spd, 14 luck, 19 def, 15 res

37 hit, 60 avo

And you have:

33 hp, 25 str, 16 skl, 17 spd, 12 luck, 25 def, 13 res

38 hit, 46 avo

Oh, and now you have 141 so either str, spd, or def needs to drop (they are the closest values to being one less than what is written)

I don't know about fe7, but I'd take the top one in fe6 before I take the bottom one. Maybe in fe7 you can double enough with 17 spd (though con now plays a big role), but wandering around with either a killer or silver weapon with the top unit is much better than the bottom one in fe6.

If you go against each other, it is of course much harder to determine victory. He has -9 hit, you have -22 hit. He has a 13 hit advantage with whatever weapons you use. In order to 2HKO him, you'd need an 11 mt weapon. If he has an 11 mt weapon, then he can only do 12 damage to you in a round. You might actually be in a better position to win going head-to-head than before. Oh, and if you both are given magic tomes, he will probably destroy you. You have a 3 mt advantage on him, however even with 0 mt tomes he does 14 damage to your 10. Granted hit rates won't be perfect, but as you make the weapons stronger he'll just hit you harder and harder. Actually, if we accept a 4:1 ratio of magic weapons to physical weapons, then if you both have a blended weapon that gives 20% of its power with magic and 80% with physical, then he does:

(1.4 + .2x) x 2 magic damage + (-4 + .8x) * 2 phsyical damage.

You do

(2 + .2x) x 1 magic damage + (4.8 + .8x) * 1 physical damage.

per round, he does:

-4.6 + 2x damage (-2.3 + x per hit) to your

6.8 + x damage.

Any x value of at least 12 is required for him to win, sadly. You win with 11 or less. Well, he still has a 13 hit advantage so it depends on what the actual hit rate is. A 65 hit weapon still gives him 56 to your 43 listed, which punishes you and benefits him resulting in 61.72 to 37.41. He only barely hits twice more often than you hit once, however on a per round basis you only do .3741y (y = your damage per hit) and he does

2 hits: ~.381

1 hit: ~.4725

0 hits: ~.1465

so .381 x 2 + .4725 = 1.2345z (z = his damage per hit) per round.

Now, I'm sticking with my blended weapon because you are giving a value to res so and so is he so it had better play a role. You can change the ratio (4:1, currently), but you can't pretend that magic weapons don't exist.

So, 10 mt weapon. He does 7.7 per hit. You do 16.8 per hit. Rounding up (say the game does that), 8 compared to 17. Congrats, btw, since you 2HKO. He falls just short of the 4HKO. Lucky you. Keep in mind 11 mt isn't as generous to you as he'd then be 4HKOing.

8 * 1.2345 = 9.876

17 * .3741 = 6.3597

You will probably lose most of the time, though, since on average per round he does considerably more than you. With a 10 mt weapon he probably kills you in 4 rounds, and it probably takes you 6 rounds to kill him. Even a 9 mt weapon will likely give him more victories in 100 combats than you would get. Also, he goes first, so it benefits him sometimes. h, y, h, y, h, h, h, y, h, y, h, h, etc. y is when you swing, h is when he swings. He gets 5 swings before you get 3, and 9 before you get 5. However, you get 2 before he gets even 3, and you get 4 before he gets 7. Depending on hit rate the advantage could swing either way for 7 and 8 mt weapons. However, you don't OHKO until the weapon has massive attack power so that can pretty much be ignored. You'll only ever 2HKO at best and he has an advantage even when you 2HKO to his 5HKO. Anything stronger than 10 mt will see him win more.

You may be pretty evenly matched, though, when you consider the number of weapons with less than 9 mt and the number with more than 9 mt. However, seeing as how you appear to be pretty evenly matched over time, I think it is safe to say that highly valuing speed is a reasonable thing to do. Maybe you aren't exactly wrong (you can still win more often with the weaker weapons), but he isn't wrong either.

The thing is, most enemies don't have that kind of crazy defence so the head-to-head isn't even a good indication of effectiveness of stats in particular games. With 20 str and 23 spd, he will be ORKOing far more than your 25 str and 17 spd in most games. Now, in some games 17 spd is enough to double a fair amount even later on, but not in all of them (I'm obviously ignoring RD, where you both get destroyed mid-way through part 3).

This is not a way of calculating "perfect bases" as you seem to think it is. It's a way to measure a characters relative power, or create characters who are equal.

[dondon151]

It's too bad that most of what you wrote is completely irrelevant to what I am saying here. I'm not talking against in game enemies, I am talking pure value of a stat against ANY any, from one with 0 in every stat to one with every stat maxed. I don't care about the stats of enemies in the game.

This is not a way of calculating "perfect bases" as you seem to think it is. It's a way to measure a characters relative power, or create characters who are equal.

I'm a bit confused. You seek to create characters who are "equal." How are you comparing them if it's not to in-game enemies?

[Rewjeo]

Against each other, apparently.

[Charpig]

Wouldn't some stats be more important than others, depending on the Fire Emblem? Although most Fire Emblems use the same general mechanics, the damage/accuracy formulae does change between some of the games, and sometimes it's a significant change. I realize that the topic creator is trying to compare player units to player units, but even if you create characters who happen to have the same "overall power," they may still not be equal. One may be preferred over the other in a given situation. You can't play Fire Emblem while ignoring the strength of enemy units. Usually characters are considered useful because they fare well against enemies at any given point in the game. But even simply comparing player units to player units, you have to take into account the following, maybe even more than what I list:

Base Stats (How well the unit starts out)

Starting Level (which affects how many levels and stats could possibly be gained)

Growth Rates (The chances of getting said stats during said levels)

Starting Weapons/Items (which can sometimes be traded and used by another unit)

Useable Weapons/Items (either at the very start or later on as the unit gains weapon levels or a prf weapon)

The Unit's Class (which affects the unit's maximum stats, he can't go beyond these caps without certain items/weapons)

Availability (how many chapters the unit is available for, or how much opportunity you have to train the unit)

Supports (How the unit's stats are enhanced by supports with other units)

The following is a hypothetical example, I know full well that Kent and Sain aren't like this in the actual FE7 game.

Let's take two random Cavaliers, Kent and Sain. I could give Kent and Sain 50% growth rates in every stat and give them the exact same levels and base stats. Are they both gonna be exactly the same as they level up? Are they both gonna be equal once they hit level 20 Paladin? No, it's not guaranteed, not unless a growth rate happens to be 0% or 100%. Also, Kent might be able to support with characters that give him better stat boosts as opposed to Sain. Kent might also get a Prf Sword, while Sain gets a Prf Lance, but the two weapons have different statistics. Character equality is based on more than just stats. Stats are very important, of course. But they are not the only thing that determines if one player unit is better than or equal to another.

[Narga_Rocks]

It's too bad that most of what you wrote is completely irrelevant to what I am saying here. I'm not talking against in game enemies, I am talking pure value of a stat against ANY any, from one with 0 in every stat to one with every stat maxed. I don't care about the stats of enemies in the game.

I agree with dondon. I don't see how what you are doing possibly determines which characters have equal "power". How about you make two characters on your own scale that have equal "power", but one has 4 more speed than the other. Considering how little you value speed, this can probably be accomplished quite easily by dropping str and def by 1 each and giving +4 speed. I guarantee you that the character with +4 speed will obliterate the character with more str/def, yet your character with more str/def will actually likely be a little more valued by you.

Are you simply looking at the ability of these units against any enemy that has hp between 0 and 60, str/skl/spd/lck/def/res between 0 and 30? There are 61 * 31⁶ different enemies they need to perform against. Wait, 0hp enemies are already dead. 60 * 31⁶ enemies. That's a lot of different enemies to perform against. Are you certain that your unit performs better against more of those random enemies than tables' unit does?

Ah, you've pointed out something for me. His character wins most of the time because he places less value on more important stats, so he can raise them higher. However, your hypothetical characters aren't showing what I'm saying. Let's take two characters, and you can tell me who you think is the better of the two. We'll call them 1 and 2.

1|2

HP -40|40

Str -30|20

Ski -14|25

Spd -12|30

Luck-15|17

Def -30|20

Res -15|15

My values say that character one is better by 4.57 points (points are simply the sum of the stats times weighted values), and his values say that character 2 is better by 5.88. Now sure, his character has a higher stat total, but look at how they fare in combat against each other. His character needs a weapon with at least 11 mt to even damage mine, and even then it's only 1 damage.

Now, back to the numbers you gave, your character has only 35 base hit and 39 base avo in fe7. His unit has 58 base hit and 77 base avo. All weapons given actually have -42 hit for you and +19 hit for him. Let's take a weapon with 70 hit. You have 28 listed (15.96%). He has 89 listed hit (97.69%). If you both have a 12 mt weapon, you kill him in 2 hits. How long do you think it will take for you to hit twice? In 20 swings, he has over 62% chance of making each swing hit. He'll kill you.

In 10 swings, you need to hit at least twice.

your probability of never hitting is:

~17.57%

your probability of hitting only once is:

10 * .1596 * .8404⁹

= ~33.4%

You have, roughly, a 50% chance of actually killing him in 10 rounds (either before the 10th round starts or before). He has a 62% chance of killing you in 10 rounds. It takes him 20 hits to kill you so he gets 10 rounds as well. In that time, he has a 62% chance. Think about it. With a 12 mt weapon he is probably more likely to win than you are. And yours is better by 4.57 points. (okay, this may not be entirely accurate, given how if you pull it off in 9 rounds he can never win at that point. You have a ~ 1 - 0.209 - .357 = ~43.4% chance of killing him before he can possibly reach 40 damage on you. In the 20th round, he doesn't quite get the full 62% chance of killing you because you still have a chance of hitting to kill in the 40th round (.791 * .0666 = ~5.27% chance of victory in the 40th round). He has a 31.6% chance of winning in the 40th round. You should get past 50% in round 41, but he's still in the 30s.)

If we lower the hit rate you start doing even worse. At 60 hit, you have 18 -> 6.66% and he has 79 -> 91.39%.

Now lets make it an 11 mt weapon and he needs 40 swings (20 rounds).

In 20 swings, you need to hit at least twice.

your probability of never hitting is:

~25.2%

your probability of hitting only once is:

20 * .0666 * .9334¹⁹

= ~36.0%

You only have a 38.8% chance of winning in 20 rounds. Granted, he now has a terrible winning percentage in 20 rounds (2.7%), but neither of you are particularly likely to win any time soon. Not who will hit 50 first, though (as in, add 1 round at a time and which units gets to 50% first), and I'm not certain how to even go about calculating it without making hundreds of calculations. But if he needs to hit, say, 40 out of 50 and you need to hit 2 of 50, I'm not certain you'd come out on top of that one. On average, in 40 rounds, you would hit an average of 2.664 times and that only gave you a 38.8% chance of victory. In 40 rounds, he would hit an average of 36.556 and that gave him a 2.7% chance of victory. In 50 rounds, you would hit an average of 3.33 times but I have no idea if that puts you over 50% to hit twice. Maybe it does. In 50 rounds, he would hit 46.695 times on average. I strongly suspect that this would put him over 50%. Granted, due to what happened in the calculations previously, you would likely hit 50% first if we do it properly.

That's a 60 hit, 11 mt weapon. As you increase damage, he starts winning more and more easily. By 12 mt, I suspect his wins are easily over 50 for hit values of 60 or less on the weapon. For 65 or 70, it is tougher to say. At 70, 13 mt would mean he needs 7 rounds instead of the 10 previously, In 10 rounds you easily got over 50% chance of victory. But in 7 rounds? I suspect he's winning at least 60% of the matches. Also, 14 hits with 97.69% hit means ~72.1% chance of killing in 14 hits. 5 rounds is all that is needed for 14 mt.

How much are these worth:

40 hp, 28 str, 14 skl, 16 spd, 15 luck, 30 def, 15 res.

40 hp, 30 str, 14 skl, 12 spd, 15 luck, 30 def, 15 res.

Which is worth more by your system? Which one do you think will win? With any weapon that has at least 4 mt, the first is almost guaranteed to win.

The trouble here is an assumption of linearity. For big differences, def becomes extremely important because if you do 0 damage you can't ever win. A unit that does even 1 damage with 0.01% chance of hitting will eventually win against a unit that does 0 damage (even if it takes a month of one attack per second to pull it off). As the mt vs. def gap gets smaller and smaller, the importance of defence becomes greater and greater. Also, spd has a massive spike at the point at which it has a 4 spd difference between unit A's AS and unit B's AS. Every other point of difference improves avo (and proc rate in certain games) so it is still helpful, but not nearly as much as the 4th point (and assuming reasonable damage and not the completely irrelevant 1 mt per hit you were using before, this 4th point of speed is greater than any other single point of improvement to any other stat aside from the difference between 0 hp (dead) and 1 hp (not dead)).

This is not a way of calculating "perfect bases" as you seem to think it is. It's a way to measure a characters relative power, or create characters who are equal.

What is "equal"? I'd think that "equal" would be determined by each having a 50% chance to win against the other. You might need to allow each to go first 50% of the time to achieve equality, but under some conditions, shouldn't "equal" characters have the same chance of killing each other? Or shouldn't they perform equally against the enemies in a particular game? By equally, I don't mean they do the same against each and every enemy, but on average (weighted based on # of each enemy in the game) they should perform equally. How else would you define "equal" characters or their relative powers?

Power relative to what?

each other? Then 50% chance of victory each.

enemies? Then equal performance against them.

what else is there?

Edited August 10, 2010 by Narga_Rocks

[Anouleth]

Unless you actually plan to make the enemies in Blazing Sword have a spread of stats from 1 to 30, I don't see how this is relevant to making the game balanced, or indeed any hack balanced.

[Alondite]

I'm a bit confused. You seek to create characters who are "equal." How are you comparing them if it's not to in-game enemies?

If all characters are roughly 50/50 in battle with each other, they can be considered to have equal combat capabilities.

Wouldn't some stats be more important than others, depending on the Fire Emblem? Although most Fire Emblems use the same general mechanics, the damage/accuracy formulae does change between some of the games, and sometimes it's a significant change. I realize that the topic creator is trying to compare player units to player units, but even if you create characters who happen to have the same "overall power," they may still not be equal. One may be preferred over the other in a given situation. You can't play Fire Emblem while ignoring the strength of enemy units. Usually characters are considered useful because they fare well against enemies at any given point in the game. But even simply comparing player units to player units, you have to take into account the following, maybe even more than what I list:

Exactly, there are MULTIPLE situations, and MULTIPLE character types. They won't all be equal in every situation, but when considering every unit in every possible situation they should be equal on average.

Base Stats (How well the unit starts out)

Starting Level (which affects how many levels and stats could possibly be gained)

Growth Rates (The chances of getting said stats during said levels)

Starting Weapons/Items (which can sometimes be traded and used by another unit)

Useable Weapons/Items (either at the very start or later on as the unit gains weapon levels or a prf weapon)

The Unit's Class (which affects the unit's maximum stats, he can't go beyond these caps without certain items/weapons)

Availability (how many chapters the unit is available for, or how much opportunity you have to train the unit)

Supports (How the unit's stats are enhanced by supports with other units)

I'm aware of this. I multiply EVERY aspect of a characters stat by the weighted values. Growths, bases, promotion gains, caps. And I'm working on creating weapons that have the same average damage within a class (Iron, Steel, Silver, etc..).

Supports and availability can only be accommodated for in practice, since they are not constant values across all characters. Of course I need to finish everything else first.

The following is a hypothetical example, I know full well that Kent and Sain aren't like this in the actual FE7 game.

Let's take two random Cavaliers, Kent and Sain. I could give Kent and Sain 50% growth rates in every stat and give them the exact same levels and base stats. Are they both gonna be exactly the same as they level up? Are they both gonna be equal once they hit level 20 Paladin? No, it's not guaranteed, not unless a growth rate happens to be 0% or 100%. Also, Kent might be able to support with characters that give him better stat boosts as opposed to Sain. Kent might also get a Prf Sword, while Sain gets a Prf Lance, but the two weapons have different statistics. Character equality is based on more than just stats. Stats are very important, of course. But they are not the only thing that determines if one player unit is better than or equal to another.

It's about AVERAGES. On average, a 50% growth rate will be +1 50% of the time. If you do 10 million trials, they will approach being exactly the same.

And again, supports are a factor outside of core character stats that effect battle damage. I haven't gotten there yet. My goal is to find...and make sure everyone pays attention to this...HOW 1 POINT IN EACH STAT DIRECTLY EFFECTS THE AMOUNT OF DAMAGE GIVEN OR TAKEN IN BATTLE -ON AVERAGE-. That's the point you all seem to be missing. Yes, if you have two virtually identical characters but one has 4 more points of speed and one has 2 more points of strength, the faster character is going to win. But with speed differences of 1,2, or 3 the stronger character is going to win. Only 1/4 points for speed actually matters offensively, because it's only that 4th point that gives the double attack. ON AVERAGE 1 point of strength is worth more than one point of speed.

I agree with dondon. I don't see how what you are doing possibly determines which characters have equal "power". How about you make two characters on your own scale that have equal "power", but one has 4 more speed than the other. Considering how little you value speed, this can probably be accomplished quite easily by dropping str and def by 1 each and giving +4 speed. I guarantee you that the character with +4 speed will obliterate the character with more str/def, yet your character with more str/def will actually likely be a little more valued by you.

That's like special pleading. You're making a specific case where a speed character wins. What if their speed is only 3 points higher? Or 2? Or 1? The stronger character wins in all of those situations. Now if the speed value creeps higher and higher above a 4 point difference, the Strength character will win again, because additional speed over a 4 point difference has zero offensive value in a given matchup. And anything below a 4 point difference the Strength character wins too. It's ONLY at the point where the speed grants a double attack that it has more value than strength, but on AVERAGE, one point of strength has more value.

Are you simply looking at the ability of these units against any enemy that has hp between 0 and 60, str/skl/spd/lck/def/res between 0 and 30? There are 61 * 31⁶ different enemies they need to perform against. Wait, 0hp enemies are already dead. 60 * 31⁶ enemies. That's a lot of different enemies to perform against. Are you certain that your unit performs better against more of those random enemies than tables' unit does?

The goal was not to make characters who perform better against enemies, it's to find the average combat value of every single point of a stat, not just 4 points of each, because then speed clearly wins, but there aren't 4 points there are 30 and when you include all 30 speed is NOT weighed the highest. Even if enemies stats don't range from 0-30 in game, the point was the create the ABSOLUTE value of a single point in every stat. The value being how much it independently and directly effects the amount of damage given or taken in any battle situation. Do it yourself if you want to see. Take characters with 5 in all stats, give them the same weapon, and find how much damage they do.

Let's take this for example. I'm not going to use the double RNG right now, because it's not worked into my formula currently, and highly doubt it will end with relatively different results. Again, if my battle formula is a bit off (it's tough to keep track of how all your formulas are working together in Excel sometimes) then please, by all means correct me.

*note* this is going to a be a simplified version of what I did

So we have two characters with 5 in all stats, with a weapon that has 10 mt and 80 hit.

With one RNG, they average 7.75 damage against each other, correct?

Ok, now let's add 25 Strength to the attacking unit to make it 30. Now he does 27.13 damage Subtract from that the damage we started with and you get 19.38.

Now let's divide 19.38 by 25 (since we added 25 points) to find the average damage that each point of Strength adds. We come up with 0.78, right? Now for time's sake pit the same character against an enemy he can't hit. Obviously the average damage is going to be 0, so let's average 0.78 and 0. It comes to 0.39. Obviously there will be some average damage with a hit of anything above 0, so if you take all of those into account it will boost our average and give us a more accurate result. Again, this is just a quick example.

Setting strength back to 5 and upping speed to 30 brings our damage to 15.5. That gives us a gain of 7.75. Divide that by 25 and we get .31. That's pretty close to strength. Now what if we figure in an enemy that we cannot double? Well then we get a 0 average gain. Now let's average those two and we get .16. Now what is the ratio between .39 and .16? 2.44:1. What's the ratio between my values? 2.2:1. What accounts for the other .24? The avoid boost from speed.

How much are these worth:

40 hp, 28 str, 14 skl, 16 spd, 15 luck, 30 def, 15 res.

40 hp, 30 str, 14 skl, 12 spd, 15 luck, 30 def, 15 res.

Which is worth more by your system? Which one do you think will win? With any weapon that has at least 4 mt, the first is almost guaranteed to win.

The second is like a tenth of a point stronger overall, but the first wins because the average damage increase from 4 points of speed over your opponent is higher than 2 points of strength. But stats don't cap at 4 obviously. What about a speed difference of 8 and a strength difference of 4? Same difference proportionally, but I bet the outcome may be different. If speed really is more important, than the advantage should be fairly constant, but it's not. What about each of them against an enemy with these stats?

40 hp, 29 str, 14 ski, 14 spd, 15 luck, 30 def, 15 res.

I bet the stronger character fares better. That's because speed ONLY gives you an offensive bonus when the difference between attack speeds is 4 (or higher, but that gives you the same bonus, not an additional one, so it increases average damage by 0). Assuming the characters remain "equal" for every variation, and speed difference below or above 4 presents NO offensive bonus. Therefor, on average, one point of strength is worth more than one point of speed.

The trouble here is an assumption of linearity. For big differences, def becomes extremely important because if you do 0 damage you can't ever win. A unit that does even 1 damage with 0.01% chance of hitting will eventually win against a unit that does 0 damage (even if it takes a month of one attack per second to pull it off). As the mt vs. def gap gets smaller and smaller, the importance of defence becomes greater and greater. Also, spd has a massive spike at the point at which it has a 4 spd difference between unit A's AS and unit B's AS. Every other point of difference improves avo (and proc rate in certain games) so it is still helpful, but not nearly as much as the 4th point (and assuming reasonable damage and not the completely irrelevant 1 mt per hit you were using before, this 4th point of speed is greater than any other single point of improvement

Agreed, but the first 3 points and points 5+ of speed mean nothing offensively, so on average the improvement is not as good as strength

I made defense equal in value to strength for the best reason I could think of. They have exact opposite effects in battle. With a hit of 100, +1 strength adds 1 damage, +1 defense subtracts 1 point of damage. Of course strength is useless if you can't hit your opponent, and defense is pointless if your opponent cant hit you. They are equal in that sense too. More strength when you already ohko an opponent is also useless, and when you take 0 damage more defense is useless. They seem like they are very similar in value to me.

What is "equal"? I'd think that "equal" would be determined by each having a 50% chance to win against the other. You might need to allow each to go first 50% of the time to achieve equality, but under some conditions, shouldn't "equal" characters have the same chance of killing each other? Or shouldn't they perform equally against the enemies in a particular game? By equally, I don't mean they do the same against each and every enemy, but on average (weighted based on # of each enemy in the game) they should perform equally. How else would you define "equal" characters or their relative powers?

Yes, the goal is to have characters being 50/50 with each other on average, not just one instance, but including every character in a "round robin" sort of tournament, the average win percentage for each character should be about 50%. I'm applying the values to enemies also, so while each character won't be as good against every enemy as all the others, on average they should perform about the same when considering every enemy. And I would love to weigh stats and weapons based on the numbers of each enemy in the game, but I don't know how many of each there are, so for now it's impossible.

Unless you actually plan to make the enemies in Blazing Sword have a spread of stats from 1 to 30, I don't see how this is relevant to making the game balanced, or indeed any hack balanced.

It's not about how they perform against enemies, it's about how much one point of each stat directly and independently effects that amount of damage given or taken by a unit in combat. If characters are weighted equals in that sense (and enemies as well), then they should perform equally on average against all enemies.

And I apologize for the lack of quotes. It kept telling me the number of opening and closing quote tags were not equal, when they clearly were

Edited August 10, 2010 by Alondite

[Narga_Rocks]

And I apologize for the lack of quotes. It kept telling me the number of opening and closing quote tags were not equal, when they clearly were[/b]

I've thought that before, too, and been wrong. Trust me, if it says that then it is right. I've had all sorts of problems that I just couldn't see because there was too much to look at.

I've had things like this

[quote[

(at a glance this might look okay)

(other permutations of this)

ending tags without the /

Having one extra quote tag of either kind that I just couldn't find.

probably other things I can't remember. It's tough to find one small mistake in a 1000+ word post. I know. Unfortunately the thing doesn't actually help you find it. Before the update you'd at least get your post to show up in preview and at a glance you could narrow down the location of the mistake by seeing something of yours in quotes when it shouldn't be or somebody else's stuff not in quotes when it should be. Now you can't so it is harder.

Edited August 10, 2010 by Narga_Rocks

[Alondite]

I've thought that before, too, and been wrong. Trust me, if it says that then it is right. I've had all sorts of problems that I just couldn't see because there was too much to look at.

I've had things like this

[quote[

(at a glance this might look okay)

(other permutations of this)

ending tags without the /

Having one extra quote tag of either kind that I just couldn't find.

probably other things I can't remember. It's tough to find one small mistake in a 1000+ word post. I know. Unfortunately the thing doesn't actually help you find it. Before the update you'd at least get your post to show up in preview and at a glance you could narrow down the location of the mistake by seeing something of yours in quotes when it shouldn't be or somebody else's stuff not in quotes when it should be. Now you can't so it is harder.

Yeah that could have been the case. I just got rid of them all and bolded my response. Also, if you're interested, my post of this topic in ROM hacking seems to be heading in a different direction and I posted some things that I haven't posted here if you would like to take a look.

[Anouleth]

It's not about how they perform against enemies, it's about how much one point of each stat directly and independently effects that amount of damage given or taken by a unit in combat. If characters are weighted equals in that sense (and enemies as well), then they should perform equally on average against all enemies.

And I apologize for the lack of quotes. It kept telling me the number of opening and closing quote tags were not equal, when they clearly were

ONLY if the enemies conform to your assumption and have statistics that are always spread between 1 and 30 with completely uniform distribution.

So wait, the enemies are also going to have stats weighted in this fashion? As in, high scores in low weighted stats like HP, Skill, Luck, Resistance, and low scores in high weighted stats like Strength, Defense, Speed? How exactly would that balance the game?

Edited August 10, 2010 by Slowking

[Alondite]

ONLY if the enemies conform to your assumption and have statistics that are always spread between 1 and 30 with completely uniform distribution.

So wait, the enemies are also going to have stats weighted in this fashion? As in, high scores in low weighted stats like HP, Skill, Luck, Resistance, and low scores in high weighted stats like Strength, Defense, Speed? How exactly would that balance the game?

Because if my weighted values are correct (and I have numerous trials that suggest they are very close) then all enemies will have the same average combat abilities, and all player characters will have the same average combat abilities.

I don't know why you brought up a 1-30 enemy stat spread. I never said I was doing that. Using a 1-30 stat spread would only be to calculate the average value of a stat, and that's it.

[dondon151]

I don't think that I've ever before gotten sick of seeing the word "average" used so many times.