if i may, i thought i’d give a few quick notes on the battle debug feature thing and its operations, because holy hell this thing is fascinating in the most boring way possible. for those who aren’t aware, it’s the endless battle looping thing that happens when you press the start button on the sound test
the enemy-side is where all the testing in this feature happens: they cycle through every class and every weapon in the game in a set order. meanwhile the player-side unit is always a cavalier with a silver sword. both units always have 32 hp, but i can’t speak for their other stats since i can’t maths for shit (damage output with the same weapon against the same class seems consistent though). the terrain they’re standing on also seems to be picked at random
for both sides, the character names are randomly pulled with each test: player-side names are always playable units, while enemy-side names are always enemies (both generics and bosses show up). the cut character name “wylar” also shows up. the selection seems limited in some ways and seems to have a focus on earlygame, but i’m not 100% sure yet
all weapons in the weapon types usable by that class are tested, in index order (ie silver sword first). there are several exceptions:
- the rapier and falchion are only tested for lord classes, unsurprisingly. the mercurius does not appear at all for some reason
- earthstones do not appear at all
- the cut helarn staff appears among the staves tested. no other cut item is tested
there’s a few odd animation glitches with some of the tested weapons. i suspect this is a side effect of testing effects which, under normal gameplay circumstances in fe1, should never appear being used by enemy units
- when lords test levin swords, the actual levin sword attack does not play the lightning effect, which instead shows up on the player-side unit when they attack
- the sparkles that appear on falchion at the start of a battle seem a bit janky too
- starlight’s spell animation sparkles appears on top of its user, instead of on the player-side unit like it should
- parthia’s fire effect appears on its user, instead of on the player-side unit like it should
each weapon is tested at least twice per class
- 1-range weapons are tested twice. the player-side unit attacks, then the enemy-side unit attacks
- 1-2 range weapons (javelins, gradivuses, hand axes, levin swords, tomes) are tested three times. first, the player-side unit attacks, then the enemy-side unit attacks at 1 range, then the enemy-side unit attacks at 2 range
- bows and ballistae are tested twice. the player-side unit attacks at 1 range, then the enemy-side unit attacks at 2 range
- staves are “tested” once each. the player side unit attacks at 1 range and the staff user does exactly nothing, unsurprisingly
classes are, unsurprisingly, also tested in index order, aside from manaketes. the order is: cavaliers, armours, peg knights, paladins, dracoknights, mercenaries, fighters, pirates, thieves, heroes, archers, hunters, ballisticians, horsemen, snipers, chameleons, a brief test of an unarmed manakete, mages, priests, bishops, lords, generals, and lastly a proper test of manaketes with stones. after the last manakete test it loops back around to cavaliers and starts from the top
while this feature tests a huge number of scenarios, it doesn’t cover all cases. since all player-side units are cavaliers, it doesn’t test effective weapons (aside from ridersbanes and rapiers) against the classes weak to them, and because the player-side unit only ever wields silver swords, it never tests 2-range vs 2-range situations. incidentally, this site estimates that one round of the test mode, going through every combination of class, weapon, initiating unit and range that can appear in it, takes 107,762 different battle scenarios
(all struckthrough parts turned out to be inaccurate suppositions based on incomplete data; see darr’s experiences going through the whole thing below)
