Brainstorming Chapter Objective Ideas

Design
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So yeeeh, let’s brainstorm about goal concepts?

Destroy Supplies: This involves, basically, targeting a specific class of units and counting their deaths. For a “destroy supply” mission, you would utilize enemy Transport tents or wagons. Another variant could be “destroy ballistae”, for a map focused on the enemy’s artillery tactics. FE7x implements this as a timed mission, which adds a bit of pressure. Original the chapter goal, property of YetiCorp.

Protect Villages for X Turns: Pretty self explanatory. Might be a way of spicing up that bland earlygame brandit chapter? FE needs more defensively-oriented objectives. The problem with Seize/Rout/Defeat boss is that they’re basically all the same. GBAFE sparingly uses timed Survive maps. Utilizing the occasional “complete in X turns” for Seize/Defeat boss maps could also be another way of diversifying the goals.

Defeat X Enemies: We’ve seen something like this once before, in FE10. Pretty self-explanatory. Crazycolorz even coded it to work in GBAFE. Would love to see more of these in fan projects. Could give these missions a “guerrilla warfare” feel, even, based on the map design/enemy placement. FE10’s map was basically a two-way slaughter where every death counted towards the total.

Open Chests: Let’s go looting!

There are also a few under-utilized goals we’ve seen in the FE series that would be neat to see more of in fan projects.

Seize All Castles: The hallmark of FE4. It’d be cool to see a project adopt one or two of these larger-scale seize maps (FE4 prologue is about as big as you can get in GBAFE). FE4 used seizing as a means of linear progression; but having, say, a map with two castles to seize and whichever one doesn’t get seized first responds reinforces themselves could be interesting.

Escape: As long as they don’t basically turn into rout maps (ala FE9), I always love the occasional escape mission. FE5 debuted this chapter goal, and any unit that you left behind was captured by the enemy (you can’t get them back until Chapter 21x; by which point said unit is vastly underleveled). Perhaps it might be better to take a page from FE9’s playbook, and give units who escape a free level-up instead (well, FE9 gave BEXP but same idea). That way, you’re incentivizing players to have everyone escape with a carrot, instead of beating them with a stick.

Let’s hear everybody’s wacky chapter goal ideas, or ways in which we can spice up the standard FE goals. Should be interesting!

2 Likes
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Get Item: Basically a plot macguffin is being held by a certain mook on the map who will then procede to try and leave the map. The player has to locate and either defeat that enemy or steal it from them with a theif before they leave the map which cause game over.

Defeat certain enemies: Pretty self explanatory, locate all enemies of a certain class or army name and defeat them. It’s basically a twist on the recruitment criteria for Samson and that Gra Princess chick in FE3

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Escort All [Insert faction of NPCs]:
FE5, FE9, and FE10 sort of had these chapter goals; FE5 gave you rewards for the kids(Items, Dalshin, Hicks), FE9 gave you units(Neph/Brom/Kieran), and FE10 gave you bonus exp, but none were a requirement. Basically the mission would be to free all NPCS from some prison and guide them to an escape point without them dying.

Defeat As Little Enemies As Possible:
I don’t know if this has been used anywhere, but the premise would be that your enemies aren’t really your foe, but they’re choosing to attack you anyway. In order to prove your position as an ally, you’re ordered to defeat as little as possible(idk if 0 is even realistic as a goal though). Could also be similar to FE9’s chapter with the priests where you’re trying to not kill a specific faction.

Earn X Gold:
Essentially the premise would be that you have to work off a debt that is owed by having a specific amount of money in a certain amount of turns. Arenas give gold, as well as selling items and weapons. Easiest route would be to quickly sell all of your weapons but this could leave you in a difficult situation for the future. The arena is an option but could result in… unfortunate outcomes.

Avoid Battles:
Fire Emblem: Solid Snake
Possible for scouting missions, I don’t know if it’s exactly a goal, it seems more like something to avoid game overs, but it’s an idea I guess.

1 Like
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An Escort mission in the vein of FE5’s Ch3 would be ballin’.

Sell your shit/win at arenas goal is pretty evil, hahah. Love it.

That’s another way of spicing up the gameplay - FE could get a lot more creative with loss conditions, too, as a way of supplementing the chapter goal. I’m basically using this in EN for Astor’s bonus map - the goal is to Open Chests, but if he engages in battle with any of the Ostian knights on patrol its a game over.

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The “Escort” thing is a lot easier now that we know how to get the AI to do it, too.

I’ve got a switches map like FE7 Lyn mode.

There’s another map where the chapter ends once an NPC talks to the protagonist. Therefore it’s a game over if the NPC dies and you can indefinitely stall the chapter by rescuing it if you like.

I like the idea of protect villages and wish I’d thought of it sooner - I guess I’ll have to rewrite a chapter now (slightly).

1 Like
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I’m not posting here because you basics will steal all my ideas

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[4:11:33 PM] Arch: stealing mechanics from 7x is in vogue
[4:12:57 PM] Tequila Mockingbird: you shameless hussy
[4:13:17 PM] BwdYeti: it’s because they’re great and you should want to steal them

Good artists copy, great artists steal

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Greater Artists do both

Earn X Gold is what the Port of Badon Gaiden in FE7 SHOULD of been

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Defeat the Boss with X Weapon:
Like in FE6 with the true Ending or the battle with Ashera in FE10, but it requires ASM (And IIRC, is not possible to check the units’ inventory, right?), It would be nice see a boss that can’t be defeated unless you use certain weapon.

Heal NPC:
A chapter where some NPC are hurt or whit some status alignment and you have X turns to heal them before they die or the enemy kills them.

Using Items:
Let’s say we give the main character an Item that can’t be thrown, used or traded, then arrive to X location in the map and use the Item in that place.
The Item can give negative bonus to make the mission more interesting (Like Leanne and Ike in FE9)

2 Likes
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Lure the guards away:
Your army is attempting to infiltrate somewhere, so a small detachment needs to get the guards out of a hall. Probably with a bonus for not killing any of them.

Lose:
Not all battles need to be won. The trick is losing in such a way that it furthers your goals.

  • Lose a castle
  • Get routed
  • All enemies escape
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I believe that this has been done before in DoG (and probably other projects), but I would dig if more projects had situations where commoners/peasants/etc are forcibly conscripted by the enemy army to fight the player’s units and the player is encouraged to avoid killing peasant units throughout the chapter. The player gets an item, recruitable unit (villager class anyone?), or side chapter in exchange for leaving all of them alive (optionally, give a “crappy” prize like a vulnerary for leaving less-than-all of them alive). Or give nothing for the time being, but then a few chapters later when you’re in a pinch it’s been revealed that the peasants formed a militia and they come to your aid as ally units. That would be cool.

Another implementation of a stealth chapter would be to give the player a thief (for thief vision) and have the chapter be a fog-of-war “night” chapter. The enemies are mostly guarding and only see you if you wander into what would be their FoW vision range were they player units. You would have to hold off of giving the player torches so not to break the suspension of disbelief of a sentry not seeing someone holding a torch, though (unless you had ASM that activated the “enemy sees you” event ID whenever the player uses a torch). Getting through the entire map unseen would give you the jump on the enemies in the next chapter, whereas they would be on full alert if you got seen at any point beforehand.

This last idea might require some major maneuvering in storytelling to get it to work, but going off of Lisandra’s “all enemies escape” idea, you could have a chapter that consists of getting ally (green) units not to attack enemies because you need both sides alive for story reasons but telling that to either of them would ruin the player characters’ plans. You could stall the ally units by using light runes (which are woefully underused), rescuing them and towing them to the other sides of cliffs using flying units, opening/closing doors/bridges, and knocking down snags that impede units’ paths rather than make bridges across rivers… and you need to do all of this while making sure the enemy units on the other side escape instead of trying to kill you in the process.

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Let’s not forget secondary chapter goals.

I like to try and make character recruitment - especially after playing @AlfredKamon’s Midnight Sun - a little bit more complex and require a bit of thinking, rather than the usual “move character to X until Talk option appears” (-_-).

For instance, one of my characters not only has 3 soldiers following her which the player is encouraged to keep alive, but she must also be talked to by a unit rescuing a villager, which is released from a village earlier in the chapter.

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I’d love to see Donnel and Severa’s recruitment criteria in Awakening appear again. I found Donnel’s level up the pseudo Est unit requirement fun, if not annoying at times, and Severa’s was an escort mission, which would always be appreciated by me to have more of.

Douglas from FE6’s recruitment requirements would also be good to see again, if only so Camus archetype characters don’t constantly seem like giant idiots.

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I think you mean Douglas? (Duessel is from FE8 and doesn’t really have anything special about his recruitment).

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Yes, I did, I just had an idiot moment is all. Thanks for pointing that out, and now I’ve fixed it.

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I think it’s a great thing to make “recruit the unit” a thing that the player has to design their strategy for the map around. It’s one of the few times I was disappointed by Bloodlines: you can always recruit the recruitable units in ch1~4 before doing any fighting (all of them except one being before the first enemy phase even happens) and it’s painfully obvious who to recruit them with. While they are a bit more plot-important than the usual FE recruitable units, it would’ve been fun to have to chase after them to prevent them from charging into enemy lines and getting themselves killed… and one could say that there’s almost no point to loading them as ally units rather than player units when the player is always going to recruit them first thing anyway.

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Maybe like a X Units arrive kinda like Alexander vs. Darius. You don’t have to break the enemy’s defenses, just get enough phalanx and companions around to the real target

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@Agro That’s almost TOO tricky senpai, hahaha!!
Can’t wait to see that in action.

Incidentally, I’ve just made a “talk to X in his house with an Y unit rescuing the Z character” scenario as well, while getting pressured by pirates that want to destroy said house.

…Maybe mine is too tricky as well

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https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19964863/Design/Objectives.png

I made myself a reference table with the stuff in this topic and figured I’d post it. Tables are nice :smile:

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I guess this can fall into some of the categories there, but I’m surprised there aren’t destruction missions. I think 7x has a “destroy supplies” mission, but it can also be, like, destroying some other objects, maybe it’s a castle siege mission and your goal is to break enough walls, or maybe you’re in like a mine and you need to break rocks or otherwise collect, maybe, more than the enemy does? (Maybe you can defeat enemies to take what they took, idk collect missions in general might want looking into)

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