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Fractured Fantasy: A CK2 Style Final Fantasy quest

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Third Time's The Charm: Squad Voting New
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    • Alright, third time is the charm. People were fairly unanimous about the preparations they wanted, but Squads have been giving us some issues. So, I'm locking in Blackjack Bomber and Medicine Production, and leaving the last preparation slot open. For the sake of simplicity, we won't be voting on starting positions. You'll start around the stairs in the First District.

    Squad Formations (Pick 1)


    [] Plan: True Specialization
    -[] Red Mage Squad: Selphie, Aerith, Eiko, Militia Archer
    -[] Ranged Bombardment Squad: Montblanc, Militia Archer, Militia Black Mage x2
    -[] Dragoon Squad: Freya, Cid, Kain, Militia Dragoon
    -[] Slayer Squad: Agnea, Krjn, Bangaa Monk, Viera Fencer
    -[] Heavy Infantry Squad: Alfyn, Shadow, Biggs, Wedge

    (Based on Sirrocco's Squad plan) This plan seeks to use the specializations of every character to their fullest. The Red Mage Squad is equally adept at healing and bombardment. The Ranged Bombardment Squad is almost nothing but magical artillery. The Dragoon Squad consists of every named dragoon, and one from the militia. The Slayer Squad can either attack wide to cut through entire squads of heartless, or attack center to pierce armor. Finally, the Heavy Infantry Squad has 2 forms of healing, and every single one is a capable frontline combatant.

    Pros: Prioritizes optimizing each party's outputs. Grouping together characters with the same capabilities means they synergize well and maximize damage output.
    Cons: Most teams are lacking in one area or another. The Red Mage and Bombardment Squads are fragile, and both melee squads would Skirmish at half efficiency or lower. They can cover for each other's weaknesses, just be careful.

    [] Plan: Balanced Specializations
    -[] Black Mage Squad: Aerith, Montblanc, Biggs, Militia Black Mage.
    -[] Mixed Combatant Squad: Krjn, Agnea, Bangaa Monk, Militia Archer
    -[] Medical Squad: Selphie, Alfyn, Eiko, Wedge
    -[] Swift Assault Squad: Freya, Shadow, Viera Fencer, Militia Archer
    -[] Dragoon Squad: Cid, Kain, Militia Dragoon x2

    (Based on FinaLapel's plan) This plan seeks to strike a balance between utilizing the specializations of the heroes without leaving them without any options. The Black Mage Squad has impressive offensive power, but Montblanc and Biggs do what they can to bolster the Martial in case of a close-range fight. The Mixed Combatant Squad can fight at close or long range, though with a preference for close-range. The Medical Squad is full of healers of course, but the only one with a low Marital stat is Eiko, and all but Wedge have a ranged attack. The Swift Assault Squad has Skirmish options if needed, but is equally adept at targeting groups and large monsters. The Dragoon Squad is the only one lacking in flexibility, but they make up for it by being a mighty strike force.

    Pros: Spreading out the party's abilities reduces their weaknesses, or potential to not contribute in a battle. No squad is without a tough frontline fighter, a ranged combatant, and at least one unit capable of healing (except Dragoon Squad. Nothing we can do about that)
    Cons: Spreading out the party's abilities slightly reduces their efficiency. The Medical Squad could heal better if Aerith were there, the Dragoon Squad would have a stronger first strike if Freya were there, and so on.

    [] Plan: Flexibility
    -[] Red Mage Squad #1: Selphie, Eiko, Krjn, Militia Blackmage
    -[] Red Mage Squad #2: Aerith, Shadow, Wedge, Militia Blackmage #2
    -[] Bombardment Squad: Montblanc, Biggs, Militia Archer x2
    -[] Assault Squad: Alfyn, Agnea, Bangaa Monk, Viera Fencer
    -[] Dragoon Squad: Cid, Kain, Freya, Militia Dragoon

    (My Plan) This plan seeks to balance out the parties to prioritize flexibility. With the exception of the dragoons, who must group up to fully utilize their jumping abilities, every squad is built with a variety of abilities. The Red Mage squads can attack at range or in melee, and heal. The Bombardment Squad is equipped for ranged combat but can dabble in melee, and while the Assault and Dragoon squads are more limited, they have have a healing option at the very least.

    Pros: The two Red Mage Squads can heal and attack with equal fervor, and other than the Dragoon Squad none of the squads are lacking in ranged options. Enables quite a bit of flexibility.
    Cons: None of these squads are optimized for their role. My goal was to make them flexible and capable in many aspects, not really really good at one thing.

    Preparations (Pick 1)

    Blackjack Bomber and Medical Production were the two clear winners (giving the defenders a once per game chance to summon the Blackjack for a bombing run, and giving all defenders potions respectively) but the third slot was hotly contested.

    [ ] Crystal Barricade: Putting a barricade around the crystal won't help you defend the town itself, but it'll provide one last line of defense against the heartless. Hopefully things don't get that bad, but if the heartless get that close, you'll want there to be something protecting the crystal. [Create a 25 HP barricade around the Holy Crystal, preventing the heartless from attacking it directly]
    [ ] 1st District Barricade: The narrowest point of the 1st District is the stairs. By putting a barricade at the top of the stairs, you'll be able to rain down fire on the Heartless as they trudge up the stairs. It won't help against fliers, of course. [Create a 25 HP barricade at the top of the 1st District's stairs, to absorb the damage from the first wave of heartless]
    [ ] Siege Ladders: While the Dragoons can jump, the rest of you would be severely limited when it came to climbing up to the crystal's perch, or the rooftops. By strategically placing ladders around the districts, everyone will have plenty of vertical mobility. [Rather than taking an entire turn to climb up to a rooftop, it'll only take half the squad's movement.]
     
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    • griffinlw said:
    I wasn't sure if we would get another contender for the Garnet competition, so I enjoyed this. It feels very natural for Garnet to walk back and forth on her decision, because it really is a hard one. Despite his rough exterior, Baku is a pretty good person to ask, and so is Ramuh. Truth be told, I expected petitioning Dalmasca to be the first/most popular decision, I was a bit surprised when the first (and for a long time only) contender was advocating for her to go to Yevon.

    (To clarify, this Omake is in favor of her petitioning Dalmasca, right? The ending seems a little ambiguous.)
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    Yes, it is in favor of the Princess route. Sorry if that was unclear.
     
    [x] Plan: True Specialization
    [x] 1st District Barricade

    The way the tactical system works heavily advantages specialists over generalists. In any given turn, a team will produce effective value based on whatever its most effective move is - so minmaxxing (when you can in a reasonable way without being dumb about it) results in real gains to overall effectiveness.

    Further, the chances of simply running out of things to do are relatively low. Everyone gets a free move every turn, everyone gets a single turn of potion use, and even with this plan there's a fair amount of flexibility in those squads so they're not entirely stick with nothing even if that's enough. Basically, though, there's enough flexibility in the system that with decent tactics we shouldn't have many turns, if any, when the various squads can't find something useful to do even in this most specialized arrangement, and in all of the turns when they can take one of the actions they're meant to take, they hit that much harder and do that much better.

    As for preparations... I find that I dislike ladders in particular, mostly because I'm not impressed by the value of putting anyone on the rooftops in the first place. I suspect we'll be better off instead clustering our squads together more, and using the melee squads to block for the ranged squads. That's more of a hunch, though. I'm quite a lot more certain of the importance of going true specialization. That's just, you know, how games like this work.
     
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    griffinlw said:
    I wasn't sure if we would get another contender for the Garnet competition, so I enjoyed this. It feels very natural for Garnet to walk back and forth on her decision, because it really is a hard one. Despite his rough exterior, Baku is a pretty good person to ask, and so is Ramuh. Truth be told, I expected petitioning Dalmasca to be the first/most popular decision, I was a bit surprised when the first (and for a long time only) contender was advocating for her to go to Yevon.
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    I tried to make her go for petitioning Dalmasca, but by the end of the conversation with Ashe it didn't feel right.

    Exatto said:
    This is my take on the Garnet bounty. I'm not sure I got Baku's voice down and I wanted Garnet and Ramuh's conversation to be longer but I'm almost out of time and fresh out of ideas. Overall, I'm still satisfied with how this turned out but thoughts and advice is always appreciated.

    Ramuh's hex color is B4C424: Peridot
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    I think you did great. Baku and Garnet's conversation was really good and mixing in Ramuh as well was a nice touch.
    Exatto said:
    Yes, it is in favor of the Princess route. Sorry if that was unclear.
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    I do find it funny though that where I had her talk with Ashe expecting the shared Princessing would get her to petition Dalmasca and wound up sending her to Yevon, you had her talk with Baku who spent the conversation talking up joining Tantalus got her to petition Dalmasca instead. Seems like a bit of a theme where the character you wouldn't expect to push them that direction does so.

    Wonder who'd work for the last path?

    Anyway, onto the vote:

    [X] Plan: Balanced Specializations
    -[X] Black Mage Squad: Aerith, Montblanc, Biggs, Militia Black Mage.
    -[X] Mixed Combatant Squad: Krjn, Agnea, Bangaa Monk, Militia Archer
    -[X] Medical Squad: Selphie, Alfyn, Eiko, Wedge
    -[X] Swift Assault Squad: Freya, Shadow, Viera Fencer, Militia Archer
    -[X] Dragoon Squad: Cid, Kain, Militia Dragoon x2

    [X] Siege Ladders: While the Dragoons can jump, the rest of you would be severely limited when it came to climbing up to the crystal's perch, or the rooftops. By strategically placing ladders around the districts, everyone will have plenty of vertical mobility. [Rather than taking an entire turn to climb up to a rooftop, it'll only take half the squad's movement.]
     
    [X] Plan: Balanced Specialization

    [X] Siege Ladders.

    While I agree that Fully specialized squads excell in their roles and would be my go to in games like Unicorn Overlord we don't have the benefit of having so many units we can swap them in as needed therefore minimizing the dead turns will likely benefit us the most. Also since we don't pick locations and might need to reposition our squads the Ladders make the most sense.
     
    [X] Plan: Balanced Specialization
    [X] 1st District Barricade

    I will admit, with all of us starting near the stairs, I've been swayed into considering the barricade that lets our mages pepper the incoming enemies without a need for strict adherence to choking the point.
     
    MagewyrmMira said:
    ... Wait, what? At least, by my estimation, the only way we're going to run into dead turns is if the heartless are either approaching or dead.
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    Maybe not the best choice of words from me. What I meant is that we won't always be able to utilize the strong points from all the squads if we were to pick Full Specialization. Our Red Mages or even Black Mages will sometimes be put in melee Range while Melee fighters will sometimes need to act as supports or engage from range or against purely flying enemies.
     
    [x] Plan: True Specialization

    Unsure on third prep action, but this system and Final Fantasy in general encourages us to maximize specialization in combat roles.
     
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    Kirya said:
    Maybe not the best choice of words from me. What I meant is that we won't always be able to utilize the strong points from all the squads if we were to pick Full Specialization. Our Red Mages or even Black Mages will sometimes be put in melee Range while Melee fighters will sometimes need to act as supports or engage from range or against purely flying enemies.
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    Even if it's against purely flying enemies, then shuffling the ranged characters around won't actually help? You don't have any more ranged firepower than you have. For flying enemies, if you focus it into fewer groups, then the other groups get to do other things. at absolute worst case, that's "sit there and do nothing because there's literally nothing useful to do" but it's still not costing you extra. They'd *still* be doing nothing if they were spread out more - just in more groups.

    ...and it's actually worse than that, because Balanced Specialization takes Freya out of the dragoon squad. In Focused Specialization, as part of the dragoon squad, she can attack flying enemies. In Balanced Specialization, having been pulled from that squad, she can't... or, rather, you have to pick for her squad to either Jump (where she's the *only* one who can attack) or Skirmish (allowing Shadow and the Militia Archer to attack). Oh, and Balanced Specialization has a militia dragoon where True Specialization has a militia black mage. The black mage is goign to be a *lot* more useful in general, but against fliers in particular. The Militia dragoon stats are just... bad.

    As for red and black mages being forced into melee... if we have a barricade, and a decent front line of melee troops, then no... not really. our ability to give protected space to squads that are set up to live in protected spaces is going to be at least as good as our ability to give protected space to individual weak casters in other more forward-deployed squads. Then, too, even in True Specialization every squad has at least one solid melee fighter, so the squads aren't completely useless in melee. Selphie and Montblanc are both pretty solid.
     
    i'm definitely favoring true specialisation for reasons above. i'm not expecting much downtime since units *should* be able to attack in some form regardless of the situation, or reposition to do so? and they wouldn't if they're in a group that's mostly for a different purpose since they'd be unable to go to their niche, or such
    might be worth noting using potions/calling in the air strike could be an action if others aren't an option for whatever reason, if those are warranted? so due to the prep actions we've picked there may be less chance of actions being wasted


    one question i had, what re the martial stats on each prospective leader like? iirc the party leader's matrial is important for some things, so does everyone have someone competent there? if a party member's got higher martial than the leader they might want to swap, actually?
    like for instance seems like in the first plan Krjn has 25 martial when Agnea has 18 but the latter's the party leader? or is this not an issue and the party leader's automatically the one with the most martial/there's another reason for Agnea being first?
     
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    [X] Plan: True Specialization

    Not going to lie, a factor in this is that Selphie and Aerith are on a team, and it might give Selphie more screentime.
     
    Kirya said:
    Maybe not the best choice of words from me. What I meant is that we won't always be able to utilize the strong points from all the squads if we were to pick Full Specialization. Our Red Mages or even Black Mages will sometimes be put in melee Range while Melee fighters will sometimes need to act as supports or engage from range or against purely flying enemies.
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    Personally--That doesn't really seem like a problem. Yes, while those sorts of things can end up happening, it's more something to adjust to during the conflict itself rather than trying to account for ahead of time... If that makes any sense.

    From my experience, what really matters in this style is action economy--how many actions you need to achieve something. If you end up needing 3-4 actions to do something that could have been otherwise achieved in 1-2 actions, the former strategy will always end up worst in the course of the fight.
    Hence why I'm a proponent of specializing. If we have, functionally, only 1 action per unit, we want to make that 1 action count, rather than spread out too much and do sorta-okay-ish at multiple things.
     
    It's currently tied. If we end up in a tie, I'm just going to flip a coin/roll a d2. 1 is True Specialization, 2 is Balanced specialization.

    Also, I think since I used the Voting threadmark instead of the main threadmark, the automatic vote counter is doing it wrong. But the vote count I made should be good.
     
    Well, I guess I'll tip the scales a little.
    Shogeton said:
    [X] Plan: True Specialization

    Not going to lie, a factor in this is that Selphie and Aerith are on a team, and it might give Selphie more screentime.
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    Since... Now I think about this, considering my own equivalent of "get a keyblade" is "obtain/junction Eden," a good first step to that is probably "talk to a person who has a GF."
    [X] Plan: True Specialization

    Maybe:
    > Talk to [FF8 character] to learn GFs exist
    > Learn where GFs can usually be found
    > Learn how to use [Draw]
    > Get a way to undo memory loss
    > Get a GF
    - Sub with magicite?
    > Research areas that Eden Big Scary Monsters can be found
    > Find and Draw from and beat Ultima Weapon?
    > Profit!

    Speaking of summons--
    Exatto said:
    Motes of electricity began to flicker around the levitating figure. "Whatever path you pick, Garnet Alexandros, know that so long as you stay true to yourself, we will follow you every step of the way."
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    \o/ Yay~ Lovely to see Garnet having Ramuh's (and the rest of her summons, I suppose!) support. She certainly seems like she needs it. In general, seeing her getting advice and a warm, if slightly crude, hand is nice to see, especially after the horror that is Hojo.
     
    Sirrocco said:
    Is it rude of me to give you a nudge on this one?
    My apologies, if so
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    not offended.
    to clear up why i didn't vote before, i was originally thinking both that true specialisation was getting so many votes so it was unneeded and since i wasn't sure about the exact difference between them (especially regarding party leader strength) i didn't want to submit a misinformed/bandwagony vote.
    my fault for not paying attention and not committing, though thankfully looks like the problem's solved regardless?

    just in case i'll add this, though i'm still mostly just going off of broad understanding rather than the specifics, admittedly...

    [X] Plan: True Specialization
     
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    Selphie is also a good person to talk to, since she managed to find a GF when she was 12 year old.

    Mind you, Guardian Forces do come with their own cost, though that is more of a long term one.
     
    So... it's an interesting question. How easy is it to get access to the power sources of other Final Fantasy games? Like, the whole GF/Junction system is some pretty potent stuff, even with relatively weak GFs, and it seems like in-game it was mostly a matter of having learned the skills? It maybe required some inherent ability that everyone there had but no one else did? Meanwhile, attaching a secondary class a la Octopath Traveler requires finding an appropriate shrine, and gear from FF9 will teach you skills if you wear it through enough fights. FF7 characters get limit breaks, and FF9 characters get Trance, and I'm not convinced that there's any way for people who don't start with those to learn them.

    So...?
     
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