Alternate Con System

[Von Ithipathachai]

Hello again, everyone.  While working out ideas for my own Fire Emblem: Ascension concept, I decided I wanted to use weapons with Fates stats, but replace all of the annoying secondary effects on each weapon with durability and a Con system.  However, I decided to use a new version that I thought would be a bit more forgiving towards units with lower Con.

Basically, in this alternate system, the 1-20 Weight/Con scale is replaced with a simpler 1-5 scale (XS, S, M, L, XL).  If the user's Con is lower than their weapon's weight, instead of having the extra weight deducted directly from their Speed, the user's speed will be reduced by 15% * (difference in Con and Weight).

For example, let's say Sophia has 26 Spd and 4 Con and is trying to wield Gleipnir, which has 20 Weight (just ignore the fact that Gleipnir isn't in Binding Blade, or that she somehow managed to cap Speed).  With the normal system, her Speed would be reduced to 10.

Under my proposed alternate system, Sophia would have XS Con and Gleipnir would have XL weight.  This would reduce her Speed by 60%, to 15.6 (or 16 if we're rounding up).  That sounds a bit more palatable, wouldn't you say?

So what do you guys think?

EDIT (3/18/18): Turns out my calculations were screwed up this whole time.  Under my proposed system, Sophia's Speed gets reduced to 10.4.  So it wasn't really an improvement at all.

Excuse me while I return to the drawing board.

Edited March 18, 2018 by Von Ithipathachai

[X-Naut]

That just sounds more convoluted than Constitution because now you're dealing with non-simple fractions.

[Captain Karnage]

I'd just prefer they have speed penalties like they did in Fates and Echoes

[Shoblongoo]

I really liked the old on system from the GBA era and think that without producing a convoluted alternative, it can be balanced with just the minimal change of adding in a few additional light-weight weapon options for certain units that are prone to getting dicked by a low con stat.

i.e. remember how the Tellius games had Iron/Steel/Silver greatlances, as a higher weight + slightly stronger alternative to normal lances?

Why not a full set of Iron/Steel/Silver Slim Lances (as opposed to just a single E-class Level "slim lance") as a lower weight + slightly weaker alternative to standard lances? For our petite peg knight friends? 

Why not bring back back hatchets as a weaker, more accurate, lighter weight alternative to the hand axe?

Remember mages in FE6? It didn't matter how shit their con was--Fire had a weight of one (1) and Aircalibur had a weight of two (2). They were fine. 

...You could also just lower the weight on certain particularly problematic weapons for low con uints, like javelins and the notoriously heavy high-end tomes (which by all operations of logic shouldn't weigh more than a heavy blade or a hammer to begin with). 
Those are the kind of simple tweaks you can make to run a balanced, traditional con system.

_____

Flavorwise and as an Element of Strategy: I do think it makes sense if you're in a class that wields big, bulky heavy weapons. And you're a giant fuck-off musclebound beast of a man with a bodybuilder's set of six-pack and abs. You should be better-suited to that role and be able to wield bigger, heavier weapons than a scrawny little kid.

It does not make sense that a Benny takes the same encumbrance penalty from lifting a steel  lance as a Mozu, or that a Fuga takes the same encumbrance penalty from lifting a great club as a Beruka.

A Camilla should not take the same encumbrance penalty from lifting a heavy tome as a Leo--she's physically bigger and stronger than he is. 

I do appreciate that the games at least attempted to have a sensible way to make the respective builds and bodytypes of its characters count for something.

Edited January 27, 2018 by Shoblongoo

[X-Naut]

My own thoughts for "fixing" Con involve normalizing it to classes (no personal Con differences) and having weapon ranks above the weapon's minimum reduce the burden. Lighter and heavier weapons with stat variances is also fine.

[Florete]

1 hour ago, X-Naut said:

That just sounds more convoluted than Constitution because now you're dealing with non-simple fractions.

This.

Part of the beauty of FE is not having to deal with (many) complicated calculations. Adding in a 15% variable will make mentally calculating speed much harder than it currently is.

22 minutes ago, X-Naut said:

My own thoughts for "fixing" Con involve normalizing it to classes (no personal Con differences) and having weapon ranks above the weapon's minimum reduce the burden. Lighter and heavier weapons with stat variances is also fine.

These are good ideas.

There's also just...using Con as it currently is and balancing characters and weapons around it. The system itself isn't flawed.

[Von Ithipathachai]

Well.  Screw me and my dumb ideas then.

Then again, I think another reason I thought of this system was that I was having trouble coming up for Weights for weapons with no GBA equivalent.

1 hour ago, Shoblongoo said:

Why not a full set of Iron/Steel/Silver Slim Lances (as opposed to just a single E-class Level "slim lance") as a lower weight + slightly weaker alternative to standard lances? For the our petite peg knight friends?

I did actually do that too, more or less, in the form of Slim/Mythril/Crystal weapons that were Rank D and had slightly more Might and Critical than Bronze weapons.

I also brought back the heavy weapon variants.  In my concept they have lower Weapon Ranks than normal (equal to normal Iron/Steel/Silver weapons as opposed to one rank higher), but only infantry can use them.  The latter addition was an idea I had for nerfing mounted units.

[Shadow Mir]

This is a bad idea - not only does it complicate things, it doesn't address the issues that made Con fail as a system in the first place.

2 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

Remember mages in FE6? It didn't matter how shit their con was--Fire had a weight of one (1) and Aircalibur had a weight of two (2). They were fine. 

They were fine... in FE6. Not so much in Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones, where anything over D rank was heavy to the point of impracticality.

[Slumber]

2 hours ago, X-Naut said:

My own thoughts for "fixing" Con involve normalizing it to classes (no personal Con differences) and having weapon ranks above the weapon's minimum reduce the burden. Lighter and heavier weapons with stat variances is also fine.

I do like the idea of each unit having their own Con. Having some sort of normalization within classes seems odd to me, since of course a unit like Ogier would be noticeably smaller than Dieck, and thus have a much lower con.

Though there should be more consideration from the devs when it comes to balancing this kind of thing.

Ogier is such a downgrade from Dieck. There should have been more care into balancing these two, with maybe Ogier starting out with a point or two of speed(Rather than 1 point less) above Dieck that would have allowed him to outspeed Dieck with lighter swords that were more common in the earlier game. Then, once the later game rolled around and your army was using heavier weapons, Dieck's speed deficit would be less noticeable. There'd be a bit more consideration to "Do I use Ogier for speed now, or Dieck for speed later?"

I mean, there are more things wrong with the balance between Dieck and Ogier than this, but the way the game is, you'll practically never notice a speed advantage with Ogier because his con is so much lower. By the time Ogier catches up, heavier swords will be more common and weighing him down.

I do agree with the idea that your weapon rank can offset the weight of weapons. I proposed the idea in some other thread not too long ago, and it makes sense to me.

I think also tiering by weight would be nice. The idea of Iron/Steel/Silver Slim weapons being lighter with higher hits and crits would be nice to see, on top of RD's system of also having heavier, stronger, and less accurate Blades/Longspears/Poleaxes would help a lot, with the standard weapons being in the middle. It'd add a bit more consideration to giving units weapons.

[SavageVolug]

I think your system would take a little getting used to, but I also think it could work quite nicely. I would certainly be willing to give it a try.

[Von Ithipathachai]

23 minutes ago, SavageVolug said:

I think your system would take a little getting used to, but I also think it could work quite nicely. I would certainly be willing to give it a try.

Yeah.  This system was designed with helping low-Con units in mind and not so much ease of calculation.

[Shadow Mir]

35 minutes ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

Yeah.  This system was designed with helping low-Con units in mind and not so much ease of calculation.

Which you failed miserably at, as far as I'm concerned. Looking at your example, you're still losing far too much speed for me to think it's acceptable.

Edited January 27, 2018 by Levant Mir Celestia

[link16hit]

well, does weight will affect avoid? because in Mystery of the emblem, Weight only affect Attack Speed.

also Weapon Rank can affect weapon WT, which was suggest above

[Shadow Mir]

4 minutes ago, link16hit said:

well, does weight will affect avoid? because in Mystery of the emblem, Weight only affect Attack Speed.

also Weapon Rank can affect weapon WT, which was suggest above

It did. 

I think that's pretty idealistic to see implemented...

[Vaximillian]

What if the buffer was half your preferred attacking stat?

Effective Wt would be reduced by Str/2 if wielding weapons, Mag/2 if wielding tomes. This way Wt wouldn’t become irrelevant as quickly as it did in Tellius, and not nerf mages too much.

[Codename Shrimp]

19 hours ago, Captain Karnage said:

I'd just prefer they have speed penalties like they did in Fates and Echoes

This. Con is one of the things i really hate in GBAFE, especially poor Women getting screwed over. 

I wouldn't mind Con if there was a Con growth, and one that isn't super low so units don't get -15 speed late game.

The way Tellius did it is also fine, altough it screwed mages a bit over in PoR.

Edited January 27, 2018 by Shrimperor

[henrymidfields]

I do agree that Constitution should both be a factor, but at the same time, also be more forgiving/balanced unlike the GBA/Tellius games. However, I'd like to see constitution simply be a factor for weapon agility, with strength (muscles)/magic (mind concentration, or proficency in reading tomes) and weapon skill level (how much are you used in using a particular type of tool/weapon) also reducing effective weapon weight. I didn't mind too much for the Constitution in the GBA games, but gameplay-wise, I'd rather that characters are also able to become more agile with their weapons training. Because, to some extent, isn't this the case with any sort of tools that you use, whether military or otherwise? The other issue is that with the GBA format, some units with lower constitution are more likely to remain screwed in terms of attack speed when their pure speed stat could have been otherwise viable.

Also, Constitution should undergo temporary boosts like the stats in Awakening/Fates to represent adrenaline.

Edited January 28, 2018 by henrymidfields