Part 11: Bonus Feature A1: Mr. S Explains It All—Combat and Stats
Bonus Feature A1: Mr. S Explains It All—Combat and Stats
Ah! Pardon, I didn't expect you so soon. One moment.
There we are. Now. It's come to our attention that the director of this endeavour has made a number of errors in his explanations. I'm sure he meant well, but let's be honest, there's only so much we can expect from him.
Yeah, I appreciate the—hey! Not to worry, though! It turns out several members of our viewing audience are SaGa veterans, and they're willing to share their extensive knowledge with us. Sadly, there won't be much in the way of jokes or flashy graphics or what-have-you. If you're into that sort of thing, you may want to hold out until our next update, where I assume Miss DiMarco will commit some violent atrocity and Mr. Sigma will make a glib joke about it.
You better believe it, buddy! Hmm. Well, let's start with some mathematical information from Choco1980:Choco1980 posted:
One thing people haven't talked about here is the bizarre way the random encounters work. See, the big secret to the game is they aren't actually random. Instead, the battle setups (ie, what enemies you fight and how many) are determined by an incredibly complex set of variables that are difficult-to-impossible to orchestrate deliberately.
This is quite the salient point. For those of you from worlds with a higher technology level, you may be aware of "pseudo-randomness." Computers are deterministic machines and cannot pick purely random numbers the same way humans, monsters, &c. can. If one simulates the original "seed," or start, of a pseudorandom chain, every "random" number that follows will be the same as before. This is by and large negated by using the computer's internal clock as the starting seed, thus ensuring every run-through starts on a different seed. In theory, it's possible to recreate a pseudorandom chain by resetting the clock—but there are so many factors, not the least of which is execution order and time, that it might as well be purely random. This does not take into account supposed "clumping" that arises from non-complex pseudorandom chain caclulations, but that's another subject entirely, and one that you won't find here. The ultimate point is this: the original Game Boy didn't have an onboard clock to use as a pseudo-randomization seed. And so, the seed had to be cobbled together based on the one unpredictable factor it could find: user input. It really was the best option available, but unfortunately, the programmers thought it an excellent idea to store the randomization seed into the battery backup whenever the user saved. The repercussions of this will be left as an exercise to the reader, but I assure you: this won't be the last time you hear about this. Now, on to some corrections! Sadly, the author was not 100% accurate in his assessment of SaGa combat. Fortunately, we have Gabriel Pope, an expert in the matter. I assume Pope is ex-military, as his knowledge of the battle field is quite exceptional.Gabriel Pope posted:
You're working too hard, unfortunately. FFL2 just keeps track of your most recent action, so only the last attack you use counts for stat ups--trying to drag out the fight is pointless as long as everyone has a turn.
Unfortunate, but not too far off from what was stated—and the original point of not wasting weapon uses still stands. However, Chokes was catastrophically incorrect that one cannot train defense. In fact, not more than a day after that claim was made, Miss DiMarco gained a point of defense from all the shield work she was doing while Sara and Zero trained.
I didn't tell him because it was totally funnier that way! 
And if that weren't enough, gatesealer provides the final nail in the coffin:gatesealer posted:
You can actually level up defense. It mostly involves just using a shield in combat and then you get a chances at increasing your defense. Mutants have a better chance of this than humans do. [...] The trick is that you need to take off all your other armor so that your chance increases since the math includes your current defense rating with armor included to determine your chance (low defense = higher chance of a level).
So, there you have it. Strip naked and dare someone to hit your shield. It's good for personal growth. Finally, we round out the discussion by visiting a few glitches brought to our attention by Gabriel Pope. First is basic racial predispositions. I'm not a believer in eugenics, but there are notable DNA differences between our various races that can't be denied.GabrielPope posted:
-Humans have all-around better stat growth than mutants
-Mutant agility growth supposed to be on par with mutant defense/mana/HP but due to a bug it's somewhat slower
-Human defense and mutant strength have near-zero growth (on purpose for humans, by accident for mutants)
So, one can see that humans will evolve every stat but Defense quite quickly, whereas Espers can make tremendous defensive gains but will hardly ever increase strength. Quite frankly, this makes Heather's defense gains even more baffling. Like, my mom always said I was exceptional!
I think the word you're looking for is "special." Hey! No one mentioned you this update. Ladies, please. Furthermore, Pope seems to know a little something about magi that we don't:Gabriel Pope posted:
It gets even better! The code for the elemental boost is bugged, so Fire and Thunder magi actually boost all attack spells including non-elemental ones (Poison and Ice magi boost fire spells only.) It's nice having what amounts to 3 copies of the Mana magi--Fire/Thunder magi don't apply to healing or physical mana-based weapons, but those aren't what you're using Mana magi for in the first place.
The resistances mostly work as intended, except Thunder and Ice are flipped. Whoops.
A nasty surprise for people who think they're electricity-proof, I should think. This is particularly relevant in lieu of the following information from UmbreonMessiah:UmbreonMessiah posted:
Realistically, Agility and Mana are the only important stats...and even then, Mana is the god-stat. [...] Why? Because Mana doesn't just determine how much damage you deal with magic attacks, it also determines how much healing spells heal you for.
[...] As well, agility affects your hit rate in some...odd fashion. Meaning if you're going to use weapons, just use agility weapons so you don't have to raise TWO separate stats to do your job.
Or just use magic, which is all based on Mana and can't miss.
I think UmbreonMessiah does discount some rather fine strength weapons, but the overall point is sound. Problems, however, quickly become apparent when one realizes Mr. Butte does not have a mana rating.
Huh. So that explains why you let me skip spellcasting last spring. Indeed. One cannot squeeze blood from a stone, and on a teacher's salary, I'm not inclined to try. ... At any rate, Umbreon does the math for us:UmbreonMessiah posted:
Just to take the Cure Book as an example of the game's healing formula, the book heals for MANA(Caster's + Target's)*4. So if you were a 90 Mana mutant healing an 80 Mana whatever, you'd restore ~680 HP. However, since poor Roy has 0 mana, the same cure book used on him would only restore 360 HP
AUGH Augh, indeed. Is that what I have to look forward to in this LP?! Probably! 
Well, that's all for now! Thanks so much for your time; we'll be returning to the ongoing story after this. However, should you see anything else awry, please don't hesitate to let us know. I'm quite confident there'll be at least one mistake between now and the end. Seriously, I'm your writer. Stop making me look bad. You can't do a thing about it. I'm union.Next Time: True Eye? More Like True Lies