Part 4: Episode 3.5 Scheming in battle

Episode 3.5 Scheming in battle
In this mini update we will look at battle mechanics of this game. First lets look at all the consumable items available:

Scouter (Assist)
Shows the enemy's battle card(except those of bosses), HP and BP or shows Freeza cards on card draw screen.
Useful for seeing boss' HP. BP can be misleading in this game and fans know the rough BP value for bosses anyway.

Young man (Assist)
Adds a Namekian to fight beside our party for one battle. The Namekian is a NPC and will use his own card. His BP scales up with other party members but max out at 37000.
Pretty useless, we usually need help during boss fights only, this NPC rarely makes a difference.

Puar (Transform)
Exchanges one of our cards with one of the enemies'.
Extremely useful, this is the only way we can temper with enemy's battle card.

Oolong (Transform)
Replace all 5 battle cards with new ones.

Chi-Chi (Anger)
Changes one battle card into a Ki battle card.

Enma (Attack)
Changes the attack of one card to Z.

Baba (Defend)
Changes the defense of one card to Z.
Not as useful as Enma card because we don't know which enemy will attack which character, not all characters get attacked.

Senzu (Immortal)
Completely heal the HP and BE of one character.
Very useful, there are very few healing item cards in this game. It is odd that they use Korin for this in the first game.

Korin (Immortal)
Completely refill everyone's BE.

Kaio (Battle)
Increases attack power in a battle. Effect increases exponentially as more are used on the same character. (+87.5%, +200%, +337.5%, +500%)

Grandpa (Seal)
Stops the attack of one enemy for one turn, as well as reducing the defense of that character. The effect increases as more are used on the same character.

Mr. Popo (Art)
Transforms the Ki attacks of the enemies to normal attack for one turn.
None of the FAQs that I read has this information. Like the Baba card, if the enemy does not use Ki attack then it is wasted. Useful in one particular battle in this game.

Porunga (Dragon)
Grants the effects of 3 different cards. (Young man, Senzu, Puar, Grandpa, Enma, Baba, Kaio, Chi-chi, Oolong)
You can only get two of them in the whole game.

The formula of damage calculation is roughly like this:
BP(a)/BP(d) * Card(a)/Card(d) * Att(a)/Def(d) * Kaio * 8

BP(a) = BP of attacker
BP(d) = BP of defender
Card(a) = number of stars on the attacker's battle card + 4; Z = 10
Card(d) = the number written on the defender's battle card + 4; Z = 10
Att(a) = the attack rating of the attacker
Def(d) = the defense rating of the defender - number of Grandpa cards used
Kaio = Kaio card modifier

We know most of the numbers in the formula; the new parts are Att(a) and Def(d). All normal attack and Ki attacks have different attack ratings and the attack ratings differ between characters. All characters also have their own defense rating. The normal attack, the standard rating is 7 and the standard rating for defense is 4. By having a higher rating value, a character will have a higher effective BP. The ratings for our party members are very close to the standard ratings. On the other hand, the lower tier enemies tend to have higher attack rating. I guess it won't do if the enemies are outclassed too soon as the BP curve is very steep in this game.

We will how we use these info in the next episode of Dragon Ball Z2 LP!