Unit balance in unpromotes

[Breadophile]

(07-07-2014, 12:17 AM)leaf Wrote: @Fred: You do bring up a valid point. Buffing a unit for unpromo would mean also buffing them for promo. I don't know enough about promos to accurately access the balance problems at that level, so some care would have to go into not breaking promos in the process.

If a unit is already in a really good spot in promos, but is weak in unpromo, you could theoretically buff their unpromo form and then dock points from their promotion bonuses, leaving the promo form in roughly the same spot that it is now. I'm not sure how many cases are like this, though, where a unit is behind the curve in unpromo but is ahead of the curve in promos.

I'm not entirely sure if you mean to add stats (either to base forms or promotion bonuses) or to simply rearrange them. However, I feel like this is as good a time as any to explain something important.

All of the units in FETO can be divided into 4 groups by their BST (Base Stat Total). The BST is the sum of all 7 of the unit's stats at level 20 and level 20/20 (two different BSTs, obviously). HP if halved for this calculation.

I bolded that part to save you some trouble when you go to see that this checks out.

The four types are as follows: Clerics, Mounted, Armored, and... uh... Standard, I guess.

Standard is of course the standard. All units that are standard have the same BST (again, HP is halved for this calculation).

From this scale:

Clerics have +2 BST
Mounted have -2 BST (fliers are NOT considered mounted for this purpose; they are Standard)
Armored have +3 BST

A unit's grouping is decided by its unpromoted class. A sage promoted from mage has 2 less BST than a sage promoted from cleric. To balance that out all cleric promotions have a ton of forced RES and lower DEF.

Troubadours are technically Standard. They fall under both Clerics and Mounted, which cancel each other out.

This BST nonsense (as I'm sure you're thinking) is definitely not nonsense, and is one of the few ways that we can actually balance this god-forsaken game. It would be much too complicated to mess with it. So please spare us and yourself the trouble don't offer any solutions that alter the BST. Re-arranging stats however... do at your leisure.

PS: Changing the caps doesn't change the BST, which is why I proposed it even though it also feels like a very lopsided way to deal with this issue.

Edit: PPS: Mages (including clerics) originally had -2 BST, but this was changed in a balance patch way back when. Clerics have +2 BST in response to them being forced to endure staves all the way to promotion. It is rather unfitting at this point considering just how useful those units are.