Indiana Bartz

There's something that I neglected to mention in the last post that turned out to be important. I had briefly considered just switching classes to something that can use better armor and moving everyone to the back row. This would cut damage taken way down, but it would also reduce our damage output to a trickle, with several counter attacks on the party for every drip. I had simply discarded the strategy.

 

I had failed to consider the whip, which the previous boss so conveniently drops at a 100% drop rate. Not only does it have the best attack out of any available weapon up to that point, but it also does full damage from the back row, and it has a good chance to paralyze on hit.

So Bartz is a back-row Freelancer for this fight, and now Galura is a pushover. If I get a paralyze in on Bartz's first hit, then everyone stays alive, and sometimes Galura never gets to attack. If not, then everyone dies except Bartz and we still win. Galura is hitting him for 0-4 damage a shot. It's still technically possible to lose if Galura gets 3 or so Rushes to connect on Bartz and drains his HP out, but it seems like a vanishingly small chance.

Looks like we get our date with Liquid Flame before implementing the Job system after all. I've mapped and pathed to Karnak.

Elephants Are Scary

Mapped and pathed to the Galura fight.

 

Galura beats the tar out of us right now. Granted, we're running a group of half-naked level 6 unskilled brain-dead Monks, but it's still a pretty sad fight.

I wanted to see whether something better than starting equipment would tip the scales, so I worked out the code for shop interactions and bought four Training Gis. We can now buy and sell with impunity, but unfortunately it's fairly game specific code for both FF4 and FF5, and I haven't come up with a nice way to generalize it. Some of it could be moved off into configuration, but there's a point at which that stops making sense. For example, in FF4 you choose the quantity of items you want to buy/sell before you choose the item. In FF5, you choose the item first and then the quantity. There's a half-dozen other little differences surrounding this. This sort of procedural difference doesn't convert very nicely into configuration. I will probably end up building a framework for attaching game-specific code to games on startup so the code is cleaned up a bit.

Anyway, the better armor did help - dropped Galura's hits from 130s to 90s - but it's not enough. He just goes nuts in the second half of the fight every time you hit him, and that's all we're ever doing. Even if I wanted to try the Phoenix Down binge strategy, at 1000 GP a pop Phoenix Downs are prohibitively expensive. I could only buy 3 of them now without level grinding. I could also just level grind a bunch until we can stomp him, but it's not worth it; this is a sufficiently compelling problem to solve more intelligently.

Looks like it's time to start implementing Job and Ability support. Galura exclusively uses physical attacks, so it would be a great place to test a Knight Cover/Guard strategy. We'll see if we need it; to start with, I'll probably give everybody Mantra and have them use that when they're low on HP.

It's going to take a while to get this stuff up and running. From a top-level perspective, I want to have the following:

• A SetJob:[CharacterName]:[JobName]:[ExtraAbilityName]:[etc] command. Examples: "SetJob:Bartz:Knight:Counter" or "SetJob:Lenna:Freelancer:X-Fight:MagicSword".
• A SetAbility:[CharacterName]:[AbilityName] command.
• An UntilCharacterReachesJobLevel:[Number] level grind exit condition. Might choose to add UntilCharacterMastersJob later on.
• An UntilCharacterLearnsAbility:[AbilityName] level grind exit condition.

In addition to all the other internals the borg needs to support this, I also need to be able to read what a character's current battle commands are; a static config file isn't going to cut it anymore. I might as well see if I can sort that out for FF4 while I'm at it.

Later on I may need to add some more sophisticated code to automatically manage job and ability switching. At the very least, I want to avoid situations where three of the characters are spinning their wheels in a level grind while we wait for one to learn a specific skill.

Horrifying Void, North Mountain Branch

Mapped and pathed through the North Mountain.

The borg found the bit of map that has improper pathing layers. The cartographer wandered around out there in the aether until it died for a few runs, and then I decided to manually modify the atlas to seal the evil away. I retained what it was able to map for posterity; maybe if I'm feeling particularly neurotic I'll crack open the seal again and send it out to explore the unknown.

The Magisa / Forza fight is pretty easy; most of the time the borg wins with everyone still standing. However, it is possible for them to get very, very lucky and get one-hit kills in on party members, and if they get 2 or 3 in then the fight is much closer. It looks like the odds are about 1 in 10 that we'll lose just mashing A; I'm okay with that for now. I want to get past the trivial boss fights and get to something that requires a more intelligent strategy.

Monks really are a great early game class. They're big sacks of hit points, they have by far the best physical attacks at this point in the game, and their greatest weakness - poor equipment choices - is almost meaningless so early on.

Hiryuu is convinced it can use transitions, and this leads to some interesting cartography problems. Not only will it try to go through the Torna Canal entrance to try to finish mapping that area out, but it'll also refuse to approach the Castle Tycoon area of the map because there's a transition to the Tycoon Meteor Site in the way. Looks like I need to be able to mark each vehicle as passing or using transitions.

It Was Bound to Happen

Results of trial run: TPK.

Details: Lost to the White Dragon in the Lunar Subterrain. I was wondering if this would ever happen.

 

After his usual Maelstrom toward the end of the fight, he managed to hit each character that was queued up to use a Phoenix Down right before they used it a few times in a row. Once we got down to 2 live party members, we struggled for a bit to stay afloat and then lost.

In a lot of these fights there seems to be a tipping point at 3, or sometimes even 2 dead party members. If we hit that point and we don't pull it together in the next few actions, there's a good chance the party will go down. Will have to think about that some more; maybe we can add a conditional that checks how many party members are dead and takes more drastic action. Ashura seems like a good choice.

Anyway, part of the problem here is that the White Dragon casts Slow a lot in the lead-up to Maelstrom, which gives him time to pick off healers. Well shoot, we can do something about that, can't we?

Solution: Added a one-time casting of Slow to the default end-game battle strategy.

Take One for the Team

Results of trial run: TPK.

Details: Lost while fighting two Red Dragons for the Crystal Gauntlets.

 

We did come into the fight with one party member dead and one nearly dead, which put us at a serious disadvantage. I don't think that was what killed us, but I went back and put a couple more Recovery commands in our command queue for looting the Lunar Subterrain.

The problem here was that we managed to get 3 party members dead with 1 Red Dragon left, and spent all of our time bringing them back to life to get lasered down again. Occasionally we'd pull back up a bit, but it just wasn't quite enough.

The borg has a single battle strategy for this whole section of the game, and so far it's worked pretty well. Up until now, Rosa's part of the strategy has followed something similar to what we've done for most of the game:

• If someone's dead, bring them back with Life or a Phoenix Down.
• If someone's near dead, heal just them.
• If someone's just kind of hurt, heal everybody.

For most of the end game boss fights, I wrote a custom strategy to manage them instead of using the default settings.

This strategy doesn't work for end-game stuff, and here's why: the real threats to the survival of the party are attacks that hit everybody, not big hits on single party members. We can handle one party member dying at a time pretty well. We get in trouble when a big group of them go down at once because they were near dead to begin with and the party got hit with an AOE.

Solution: Changed the strategy for this section. Now, if Rosa's going to do any healing, it's Cure 3 on all allies if a live party member is below 70% HP, or use a Phoenix Down otherwise. No more Cure 3 on individuals.

Back to the Training, Yeah!

Results of trial run: TPK.

Details: Lost to Zeromus.

 

This is a great example of a fight where a lot of little things could have gone better, but the screenshot above illustrates the final mistake we made.

Currently, the DeadAlly target (as well as most of the other options that target allies) will choose the first character in the party that meets the conditions, starting from the top of the list. In our current party arrangement, that means that if 4 characters are dead and one of them is Rosa, Rosa will be the last one brought back. This is very, very bad planning.

I could write some code that lets me prioritize which party members get raised first, but I'd like to avoid adding more code if it's not necessary to get what we need, and in this case, it's not; we can just arrange the party so the most important characters to raise are at the top.

Solution: Added commands to rearrange the party before the final battle to this order, from top to bottom: Rosa, Cecil, Kain, Edge, Rydia. I also made a few more adjustments to the battle strategy.

• Rosa no longer fires off a one-time Shell on all allies. I think it might actually not help at all against Big Bang. This has been replaced with a one-time Haste on herself.
• Kain now has a one-time command to use Spiderweb (Slow effect item) on first target. Ideally, we'd reapply Slow every time Zeromus wipes statuses, but I haven't written any code to determine enemy statuses, and I don't want to. That flirts with the boundary of what a human player would be able to tell about an enemy, and I'm trying to build this borg to only use information available to a human player. Still, getting Slow out once gives us a bit of an edge for the first part of the fight.
• If all live party members are above 70% HP and someone is dead, Rosa will cast Life 2 on them instead of using a Phoenix Down (unless she doesn't have the MP; then she'll use the Phoenix Down). It takes a bit longer to cast than to use an item, but this is a fight where having someone go from dead to full HP is very useful.
• If everyone is alive and at least one party member is below 30% HP, Rydia will summon Ashura instead of Bahamut. A bit of a long shot move since Ashura is so unpredictable, but in those crevices where the fight isn't faring well, it can help quite a bit. Might choose to bump this up above using Phoenix Down, but probably not: If Rosa is dead, I don't want to cast Ashura and hope that maybe she'll bring everybody back to life. I want Rosa back on her feet.

Not a Grenade, Horseshoe, or the Government

Results of trial run: TPK.

Details: Lost to Zeromus fight. The core of the problem was that Rosa was using a Phoenix Down when she should have been casting Cure 4. This wasn't a problem before because we had Cure 4 as a higher-priority conditional.

Solution: Added a conditional Cure 4 on top of the default Cure 4; now if any live party member is less than 70% on HP, Rosa will cast Cure 4, even if someone is dead. I ran this strategy several times to see how it works out, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.

While I was at it, I thought I would make Edge pull his weight, so I added support for the Dart command and added conditionals to have him throw all of our expensive weapons and Hellwinds during the fight.

Really More of a Taupe Elf

Results of trial run: TPK.

Details: Lost to the Dark Elf. Tellah's first Tornado in the second stage failed. The second Tornado connected, but again, we were too busy using Phoenix Downs to deliver the final blow. We really need someone dedicated to striking during the second stage.

Solution: Cecil no longer casts Cure on Tellah during the second stage of the fight. Since we're still Covering him, this should work okay.

Der Dunkelelfen

Results of trial run: TPK.

Details: Lost to the Dark Elf.

 

Everything goes great during the first stage. Then he turns into a dragon and hits Tellah for more than his maximum HP. We do eventually get him alive long enough to deliver a Tornado, but then everyone is too busy using Phoenix Downs to poke the Dark Elf once in the ribs, and we get Dark Breathed down.

Tellah going down in one hit made me really sit back and reconsider what needs to happen to make this a reliable fight. I still really, really don't want to have to add another level grind before the the Golbeze fight.

Solution: So what else can we do? Well, maybe we can increase his armor rating. I added some commands back in Baron to buy him a Kenpou and Bandanna; that raises his armor a little bit, but not by a whole lot. However, there's another solution that I don't normally consider; Cecil's Cover command. Firing that off once at the beginning of the fight makes Tellah very, very hard to kill in stage two, assuming he isn't near dead from a Tornado in stage one.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles Often Ends Very, Very Badly

Result of trial run: TPK.

Details: Made it all the way to Zeromus and lost.

 

We simply got Big Banged more than the party can handle. No, stop it, this is serious. The real problem was that I thought I could cut down on MP usage by having Rosa default to Cure 3 and use Cure 4 if anyone is even moderately injured. This is insufficient; without a human behind the wheel or writing some code to estimate when the next Big Bang is coming, we need it to be Cure 4 all the time.

Solution: Rosa's default command is to use Cure 4 on everyone, and the conditional Cure 4 command is gone.

Slow and Steady Wins a Brace

Results of Trial Run: TPK.

Details: Lost against the Giant CPU.

 

Our strategy up to this point has been for Rydia to spam Bahamut, Cecil and Edge to attack, and Rosa and Fusoya to provide healing. Everyone is on Phoenix Down duty, and Cecil is in charge of using Ethers when casters get low on MP. Most of the time, this works just fine for this fight. The problem comes if the CPU chooses Rosa and Fusoya for its insta-kill attack before bringing it's bits back. If that happens, then we get into a situation where we bring Rosa and Fusoya back just in time to get lasered down by the Attack System, and the rest of the party withers away waiting for a healing spell that will never come.

Solution: After some deliberation, I decided to rewrite the strategy for this fight to the much more boring but much more reliable track: kill just the Defense System and then peck away at the CPU with melee, periodically healing from laser damage. It's boring, but it means the CPU never uses its insta-kill attacks because we never kill the Attack System until the end of the fight.

No One to Blame But the Toroians

Results of trial run: TPK.

Details: Lost the Magus Sisters fight. Don't have any single dominant cause for the loss. We ran out of Hi-Potions. Tellah's reflect casting killed a lot of allies. Things just didn't go very well.

There's a few different ways we could solve this:

• Teach Tellah/Cecil to cast healing spells on injured party members that don't have Reflect at the moment.
• Level grind before the fight.
• Come up with a source of more Hi-Potions.

I really, really want to avoid level grinding for the mid-game boss streak. They're all beatable without it. I'd also like to avoid commands in battle that take more than one condition; I'm sure I'll want them eventually, but I'd like to see how far I can get just allowing one condition. And finally, Hi-Potions can't be purchased at this stage in the game, so I'm stuck with the supply I find in treasure chests or from enemy drops. Farming them would essentially amount to level grinding.

Solution: After reviewing the atlas for sources of Hi-Potions, I made a discovery; we were never actually looting the room in Toroia with like 16 treasure chests, and it has 2 more Hi-Potions. Added that to the command queue after beating the Dark Elf. That should give us a bit more survivability for that fight.

L'elfe Noir

Results of trial run: TPK.

Details: Lost to the Dark Elf. Random seeds lined up to create a beautiful test case for the current strategy; the elf almost exclusively hammers Tellah throughout the fight, and Tellah's first casting of Tornado failed in the second stage. Couldn't pull it together after that.

Solution: Cecil now has commands to cast Cure on Tellah during the second stage. It works for this iteration, but I'm not convinced this will be enough for this fight.