Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
Yeah, that's a good game.
For a nice TAS, I guess the best option is a small team (3- 4 units) focused on physical damage.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
Was playing around a little yesterday completing some of the main quests only using Marche and Montblanc; it was quite tough going, I suggest using 4-5 people. With some luck manipulation on dispatch missions you could get massive rewards for sending people ill-suited to the task and succeeding (read the Game Mechanics guide on GameFAQs), learning abilities very fast. Obviously map placement is rather important too for certain items. Manipulating some expert classes to join you right away might also be useful.
Joined: 11/17/2005
Posts: 278
Location: Massachusetts, USA
Awww.. I was going to suggest using luck manipulation on the "Wanted: " missions to get the advanced classes.
As a half-aside, I once lent this game to one of my friends after beating it myself. He returned the game to me with the weirdest save file: 24 hours, beat the game, all party members are level 1, and none of the optional quests were done. I have neither my SP nor my DS here to load the game and check out his setup but I vaguely remember how he did it:
1) "Aw, I died." *reset* "Aw, I died." *reset* "Aw, I died." *reset* "Aw fk! I was close that time!" *reset* "Yes! I won and no one hit level 2!" He had 24-odd hours on the game clock. This took him weeks.
2) Random encounter with thieves. Disable all of their abilities except steal XP. Kill all but one of the theives. Strip all of everyone's armor. Get the shit beat out of your characters. Once everyone is back to the beginning of level 1 then kill the last enemy. Meanwhile, farm JP.
3) If anyone reaches level 2, they're fired. (Obvious.) He saved Montblanc.
4) And this is important part that I forget: how he actually killed things. I know that he had high evade and that he was essentially manipulating luck in step one. I just can't imagine how a team of lvl 1s took down Adramelek let alone any of the later bosses. He was probably casting Holy and stuff. But it's good to know that skills and equipment can compensate for levels.
(Forgive me if I get the real Tactics confused with Tactics Lite occasionally. Sometimes I was playing FFT while he played FFTA in the same room. Tactics party!)
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
That is interesting... I'll try it.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Bisqwit wrote:
would parley work? then marche can sweep everything
| UNIQUE EFFECT: Parley's chance of success depends on the number of KOs |
| the caster has been responsible for, and the percentage of HP the |
| target has left. |
| Chance of success is equal to: |
| MinHP% = 50 - Number of Units Caster has KOed |
| HP% = [Target's Max HP * MinHP% / 100] |
| Hit% = [(HP% - Target's HP) * 100 / HP%] |
| If Parley succeeds, the Remove Unit effect will be used on the target. |
I'm not exactly familiar with the Parley A ability, or Paladins in general. While it does sound useful, there are many enemies later on that can't be dealt with Last breath, Rockseal, and similar 1HKO moves, so what could Marche (or a recruited Paladin) do to infict lots of damage? Holy Blade?
Fighters, what with Air Render, Far Fist, and Beatdown, are a great human tool for a TAS. Since Fighters and Paladins branch off of the same class tree (Soldier), Marche could jump between the 2 any time. Now a recruited Paladin would have some disadvantages and advantages to a Marche Paladin. Mainly it is disposable, so just recruit a Dragoon or something when it's useless. Downside is it can only change to a basic class and can't change back in a way to warrent doing so...
Interesting idea, if anything it could be used until Assasins and Rockseal are avalible since Barong (teaches Parley) is purchasable ffrom the start.
I play it atm and i really can't think of any good TAS that would
beath the game in somewhat under 10 HOURS.
Nearly every normal Match need about 5-10 minutes.
And to get the needed Abilitys to swtich to a Paladin oder Fighter
needs a few battles.
In FFTA2 this would be no big deal beacuse you get EXP. at the end of a battle... But here you only get EXP. with actions...
And i really don't think you can beat the game with a low-leveled Party.
But it would be interessting as hell to see what someone could do.
ANd... How far you can get...
Well I beat the game in about 12:30 a while ago. It really was more to just test out ideas, and no real menu optimization. The middle third battles were optimised some, but even they could have been pushed more...
I'm not sure how low level this is, but I averaged level 22 by the end of the game. I was not trying to get low levels, nor was I power leveling much, if I recall correctly. I was however disbanding units that were falling behind level wise and recruiting once the average clan level was that much higher...
10 hours seems like a very high estimate to me. There aren't really that many "normal" matches if you just played the required missions, from what I remember. The small percentage of Kill the boss missions shouldn't take more than a turn or two. I believe there's only 24 necessary missions, as well. I'd guess under two hours depending on the cutscenes.
I know that you receive EXP based on the difference in levels between you and who you performed the action on. 10 for the same level or yourself... I don't know what the limit is for EXP given though.
You can beat the game with whatever level party you want, since you can pretty much make any attack miss you or crit the enemy, unless there's something that I'm forgetting.
I guess I was hoping you could manipulate the AI? Is that connected to a RNG somehow or can you not change what they do without doing something different?
Edit: I just checked, and it seems you can get the the computer to do something different by waiting frames before deciding which direction to face after your turn. It seems to only take different two or three options by doing that though.
I was also thinking that the 100% accuracy abilities were very weak, as that one Archer skill is the only one I can think of... I guess I don't know as much about the game as I thought. I've only ever played with all Bangaa teams, so that probably has something to do with it.
Yeah, all the guaranteed hit A-abilities are low damage (single to low double digits, depending on stats)
But you also get 100% hitrate on sleeping or stopped enemies- doesn't work for Capture or Parley or similar moves, though, because they have their own to-hit formula. It's been a while...
I don't know if AI is manipulable. A lot of what it did was obvious (heal/esuna party for WhM, nuke as many as possible for BlM/other AoE users), but that doesn't necessarily mean anything...
If you can manipulate to hit on any % though, you'd get great advantage of using those double-damage low accuracy moves.
A possible strategy is using Blue Mage's Night to put everyone to sleep to avoid extraneous (yours and enemies') turns, as well as up your hit rate to 100% (for one attack, since it'll wake them up- you might Stop them to prevent this wakeup, perhaps with Juggler's Ring, then you don't have to spend turns re-sleeping).
A possible strategy is using Blue Mage's Night to put everyone to sleep to avoid extraneous (yours and enemies') turns, as well as up your hit rate to 100% (for one attack, since it'll wake them up- you might Stop them to prevent this wakeup, perhaps with Juggler's Ring, then you don't have to spend turns re-sleeping).
I think Gadgeteers and the Chroma gem A Ability are a better way to do that. The weapon to teach it is available really early, if not at the start. Also there are options to cast Haste on your own team as well, or even doom. If the TAS involves really low levels, then even casting Poison on the enemies could be useful. Some downsides are the Gadgeteer's lack of speed and offensive A Abilities, but you could switch to a Black Mage after learning the abilities you want. The unit's Fight power is not that bad, considering it is a Illusionist type unit...
With Night you have a lot of luck manipulating to manage, what with making it hit all the enemies but not your own. Also you do not run into a storyline mission that has a Night caster until I think 13, the first Jagd mission (Blue Mage)...
This run is interesting - level up at the beginning and then one-shot everything with Air Render, only requiring a Black Mage to deal with Flans. I wonder how much less leveling and how many fighters required for a TAS?
http://www.youtube.com/user/GalleonLogic
I'm starting a TAS of this.
The beginning will be more or less this:
Every character waits during the Snowball Fight. Change settings during the first character's turn.
2-turn Lizard Men!? fight. Montblanc may or may not need his second turn, depending on how much I can do with a critical hit.
(No idea where to place Sprohm. If anyone has any ideas for region setups, please let me know. I can provide links to existing setups and general information about how region create works to anybody interested)
Expel either the Nu Mou or the Viera before Herb Picking to trigger Human Wanted afterwards. I'm leaning towards the Nu Mou so I don't have to buy a Rod from the shop, change his class, and equip him. The Viera might be faster simply because she isn't that useful. It will probably depend on whether her critical hits do decent damage.
(No idea where to place Lutia Pass)
Expel whichever member you did not before, raising the average level of the clan to 3. Buy Dueling Sub (3day dispatch, human soldier, Kaiser Knuckle as a reward), Thesis Hunt (Atmos Blade, Firewheel Rod, or Thunder Rod as a reward) and Human Wanted (5day dispatch, Bangaa white monk, guaranteed recruit from the Human set).
From Dueling Sub, you also want to pick up a recruit (this will be from the Basic set). For now, I'm planning on a level 3 Nu Mou with high Matk to replace the level 2 I start with.
From Human Wanted, I'm planning on getting a level 3 Fighter.
Go to the shop, buy a Rod and a Sweep Blade. Equip both, and give the Kaiser Knuckles to the White Monk (NOTE: If testing proves it to be more efficient, I will get an Atmos Blade instead of Kaiser Knuckles, ignore the sweep blade, and keep the Hard Knuckles on the white monk. this is a matter of whether I need the extra money, and whether the Sweep Blade is useless. I forget how much Watk it gives, and its ability is useless since I can manipulate critical hits).
Just checking Watk, I think I'm going to stick with Kaiser Knuckles first. I'm going to change Montblanc into an Animist and give him a Glass Bell for Sheep Count. This means I only need one Atmos Blade and one Level 2 Rod (for now), so that's what I'll get from The Cheetahs.
A minimum of 9 days will have passed by the time I finish Thesis Hunt, making it Kingmoon 10. If I have to avoid laws or need to get a certain Treasure Hunt result, the highest would be Kingmoon 12, I believe. Getting back to a town will be either 1 or 2 steps, I think, making it Kingmoon 11-14.
So apparently someone made a full game TAS of this very recently:
Link to video
The author said about improving it with better RNG, and I have no idea if it's optimal overall, nor the route being the best, but hey... it's a start I guess considering he got a sub-4 time.
On the fight against the 2 Bangaas early game (around 00:10:00), either he could have had better RNG and crit earlier, or with the same crits he could have OHKO the white Bangaa while the Moogle achieves the red one.
I think that he puts extra fighters so that they learn their first moves and switch to another job more quickly. That means all his actual party members are going to see play in every mission…
On the 2nd mission, at the mountain, near the end he could have done self-damage on the Moogle to avoid having to move. Those two opponents didn't got the chance to play anyway, so that could have saved around a second.
At the 3rd mission around 00:28:00, the allies' AI is so terribad… If only we could prevent the AI from doing such bad moves.
The last mission before going to Ambervale, the one where they're fighting Ritz and her lackeys... it occurs to me that it may be better in the long run to eat a slower battle here and save the totema bombs for during the boss rush. Especially if Ritz can be manipulated into standing right next to the cliff and getting a crit/using knockback. I'm fairly certain I got a quick kill on her once doing that.
Yeah, he often throws up every totema bombs as earlier as possible. I don't remember every fight he uses them but he sometimes has missions with more ennemies that could be sped up thanks to saving the bombs.
So, in the end, the white mage ended up as a bait target and nothing else. The only use I see is to manipulate enemies' positions, like against the 3rd totema. Although in this fight, only 2 or 3 characters at most could hit the boss, so maybe that white mage could be completely skipped?
3rd totema could have been better manipulated so to deliver it more hits per turn - at the fight's end he ends up in a corner and could be hit only once or two per turn at most.
Otherwise he seems to have a quite good RNG manipulation. Montblanc gets to learn how to boost speed for all the team and then how to put asleep the opponent team (thanks to RNG manipulation). Other characters are just at their bulkiest classes with all-or-nothing attacks and ATK-boosting moves when possible, and the Bangaa makes Montblanc attack more quickly (or instant attack? I forgot which one it is). That's a quick setup to compensate the lack of xp starting mid-game, the longest to reach being the speed related attacks.
Well the White Mage could have found use as a time mage, depending on factors, but without the input file I can't science around with it and this may end up being faster to use the nu mou as bait anyway.
i kinda agree with totemas on ritz instead of the royal valley,because the map has a tendency to get clogged with the viers movement,if you can manipulate that to not happen it would be nice,but i don't really see the totemas too much better for the final battles when u can manipulate miss and crits
is there any easy OHKO or setdamage skill early in the game?i mean like roullete ohko or demi(takes half of current HP),i managed to get demi in my time mage late in the game but i didn't do many mission besides the required ones. i can post my savefile to show items
the objective of those skills would be to quickly ohko normal enemies,because bosses never seem to get affected by that
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
The few OHKO skills I can think of are either with Blue Mage (one one-eye flying monster has a "roulette OHKO on either team" move on the 1st totema fight) or the Assassin (viers).
The Ultima moves that deal a ton of damages cost 86 MP (at the end of the run they barely have half that, except the Black mage moogle, even with MP-reducing skills that's barely usable), are available through top classes with low MP development for most races (Hunter for humans, Noble for moogles, etc) and need a special weapon available lategame.
There are Time magics, that is a mid-game class for Moogles and Nu mous, and the good attacks (Half life etc) are only available with mid-late game stuff. The Bangaa in the TAS gets one useful Time magic just so the Moogle can give Celerity on either teams.
The "double damage - half precision" skills are available quite early and are the best bet so far.
