Creating Fire Weapons in Fire Emblem!?

Projects Concepts
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So yeah, I know the bases that define Fire Emblem as Tactical RPG and franchise, but this is a hack and discussion forum, so let´s run wild!

Imagine this, fast-forward the Fire Emblem setting a couple years forward. Let¨s say technology advanced and now we have specialized classes like the “Marksman” and Ballistician, but in place of those bows we now have Muskets and Tanegashimas!

How to code it in-game? How would they distinguish themselves from your Run-Of-The-Mill bow? How would you design the bow so people still want to use them over a firearm?

We’ve got plenty to work with! What do ya’ll say!?

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If I were to put Firearms in my game, they would need to have very high Might and low Accuracy. They’d basically be like a ranged version of Axes, perhaps with Bows standing in for Swords and Crossbows standing in for Lances.

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A ranged weapon triangle huh… I guess that’s pretty doable, but then again, I think a Musket would be a lot more accurate than bow. I was thinking of introducing them not just as a weapon type but a whole feature. After all, even if we take out shurikens and every other Hoshidan weapon, we would also need to weigh magic, which was pretty much the heavy artillery equivalent until now, including its utility on Nosferatu, Mire, all of that.

Let’s become historians here, how would firearms fair in an environment seeing them for the first time?

Giving out ideas, remember that there could also be different kinds of arms like handguns, cannons and whatnot, maybe even grenades if you want to go overboard!

As a remainder, there’s also the option of scrapping bows and/or tomes completely out from the formula, but other SRPG franchise sporting stupidly high levels whose name rhymes with “Regalia” demonstrate that fire weapons, magic and bows can coexist.:wink:

Then again, Disgaea is kinda broken.

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As sidenote for the thread: Think about EVERYTHING you’d like to include; Weight, Constitution, Uses, Unique Weapon Skills, all of that and how it would fare on the same environment. (Personally, I think including all of them would be to much. Especially Cons and Weapons Uses together. Extremely limiting on the gameplay and strategic choices)

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My take on guns in FE would give them a high might that isn’t affected by the user’s strength (you can pull a bow string farther and more easily with strength, but it makes no difference for pulling a trigger). I remember Arch(?) having the idea of guns both not being able to counter and not being able to be countered, which would make them interestingly surgical in combination with the fixed might; it could also be compared to actual early gun use where smoke made it impossible to aim directly after shooting and reloading took a long time.

If you wanted to take historical comparison to the extreme, you could make it so you have to wait a turn after attacking with a gun to use it again (the stipulation being that the gun has to be reloaded); this would also encourage a loosely historical flow to battle where you open with a volley of gunfire before sending in the cavalry, and the infantry have spears or bardiches as secondary weapons to either defend against the cavalry or slam against the opposing infantry line. Maybe give guns a hit bonus when the user has an ally adjacent and a penalty when there’s an enemy adjacent to encourage structuring units into lines.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you do try to emulate this style of warfare, you have to reconcile the fact that death count was just a statistic with how much of a huge loss it is for just one unit to die in Fire Emblem. You can lean into this and have your non-lord characters be more “generic” (Allen/Lance/Noah/Trec from FE6 come to mind: you might come to care about each one of them through supports but from a gameplay perspective they’re a certain degree more expendable than others because they’re all the same class), or you can do a little writing and say that the presence of magic in the world changes this: for example, clerics might become vital to the structure of armies because of their potential as battlefield medics, and for this reason your non-lord units would just have casual mode-style deaths because it’s understood that the clerics will run around bringing everyone back from the brink of death after the battle is over. This also gives you an interesting subplot to play with where killing clerics is considered a war crime because it potentially causes thousands to die untreated, but on the other side of things, there are people who are doomed to live their entire lives in the army because wounds that would normally cause their retirement can just be healed. This sets up not only a “clergy vs shamans/mages” plot, but a “nobility vs peasants” plot as well.

The main obstacle to people actually putting guns in their game, as far as I see it, is that they worry about making animations for all the new classes and/or people just want the sword-and-sorcery setting with no strings attached. Something like the invention of the bronze cannon could turn any FE setting on its head (can’t get through that door? BOOM! Whoopsidoodle, 1/4 of the map is now ruins! I knew it was a foolproof idea to give Cath a horse-drawn cannon). The Emblem Brigade’s Project Z had guns, but they were just reskinned bows; the big difference was that rifles replaced longbows and pistol- and rifle-users were their own classes with weapon locks.

As for people wanting to use bows over guns? Take a page from history again and throw some real-deal steppe hordes into your setting: horse archers were so powerful on the plains that the hordes’ biggest downfall was in-fighting until guns and the requisite military tactics came around. Guns should straight-up be the best way to fight them (“the only way” according to the plot). The steppe setting also lets you have setting-appropriate shamans, and in the hypothetical plot from earlier, the combination of guns and clerics would easily steamroll the cossacks and shamans and be a testament to the power of the big bad empire which was the first to perfect the guns+clerics strategy. An actual way to differentiate bows from guns would be to make guns unable to fire behind things, i.e. you would need a straight shot at your enemy rather than being able to hit them behind other units or rough terrain, but this would be technically challenging to implement and the sort of thing I’d procrastinate on until the rest of the game was finished.

Curse you for prompting me to write this essay; now I wanna make the game I just described.

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I had a concept years ago for a game with firearms; I treated them the same way that “seige tomes” are treated, they cannot counter an attack and cannot be countered when you initiate an attack. They were locked to two range like bows. This reflects the long reloading time that inhibited the effectiveness of early firearms.

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First of all Alusq, you’re the kind of person this world needs. Essay or not that was one of the best answers I’ve been given. Go out, make a game. Or better, join me and make a game. Second, OH MY GOD LORD ARCH ACTUALLY APPEARED!

I’m really happy right now.

Back on topic, the only reason your idea won’t be declared winner is simple, the margin of your concept is way too big! It would need a revamp so big that it wouldn’t even be called Fire Emblem anymore and with Three Houses coming, we should get a bit closer to the original formula (and I mean, GBA-3DS formula).

Your idea would fit pretty well on a Valkyria Chronicles game actually.

Now, if we put a little bit more thought, we have the space, and the resources so…

A Genealogy of the Holy War esque game would fit the mechanics PERFECTLY, allowing you better ranged control over the gargantuan terrain and by adding some values we might even get to add Height to the formula and new kinds of terrain. It would feel like a pretty damn crazy Fire Emblem, but Fire Emblem nonetheless. And since almost everything is cavalry on that game, hear me out, we glue some carts on the horses and BOOM, we can move around up to three units at the same time making good use of our great knights. This is looking more and more like some RISK playthrough but sounds good to me.

Look, I’ll copy ALL of this in the morning and make a new thread with THIS concept in mind. I hope to see your face there man.

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Now, that derailed a bit but it’s good.

Leta make some notes okay?

Now, while every pro I said is true, the cons were also true. Think about skirmishes, Guerilla tactics, irregular armies, all those beautiful (purely from a game design viewpoint) things war has given to us. Obviously not all maps can be indoor maps, but this kind of gameplay will heavily benefit from those. Even then, don’t forget the beautiful landscapes.

Let’s think, in what aspects bows could surpass modern weaponry.

(On a video game. I doubt things like Setsuna’s Yumi actually existed. Poison maybe? Also, no Peg. Knights IRL, pretty sad I know).

Throw away the conceptions that series like GATE: Jiettai kanochi nitte kaku tatakaeri have made, making us think that low fantasy has no place in modern war. Bows can have a wider array of projectiles for many situations!

(No Green Arrow box glove arrow allowed, ever)

I’ll make this point abundantly important, if you DO include bows, don’t make firearms vastly superior. Alusq tried to make a point on the reloading time but even then, firearms will see a LOT more use anyway since they DO Not rely on the users strength. Anti RNG-screwing not allowed, it’s a series staple, thank you.

Ok, you CAN do it so as to avoid limiting the creative flow, but try not to include it if you can.

And please add MAGIC! It’s the closest thing we have to a firearm in terms of weaponry and balance, yet no one has included it on the calculations to a big extent.

Thats about it. Proceed.

(God, this is So much fun)

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Pegasi are real anyone who believes otherwise is buying into a deep state conspiracy!

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Shh! The world must not know the truth! They aren’t ready!

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Pegasi are as real as the reptilian extraterrestrial overlords that control the Vatican.

#ArchAnon

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You’ll condemn us all!

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For sake of convenience, and for my own ignorance of this category before creating this thread, we’ll be moving to the concept group. I think this fits a bit more with all the hypothetical basis of the conversation until now, and, like I did with Alusq idea, the moment something grows from mere rambling to being actually doable I’ll make a project thread just for it.

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Any time I think about putting guns in FE I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that I’d need them to be the centre focus, have the setting moved to something more modern and then just basically make Fire Emblem: Advance Wars.

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Everyone knows what they are getting into once they open this thread, but I still think it completely doable, again, by making the right scenario. Yes, it may be somewhat restrictive for the plot to only happen wherever the best strategy isn’t just “Snipe’em from as far as you possibly can” and bringing as many marksmen as possible to every map. Also, restrict them by making it so that the farther they are from the opponent, the chance of hitting decreases by 5% with two tiles away being 100% and from there onwards it goes down, then that number round it up with the inherent weapon hit, sum it up the Skill/2 * Speed/2, then deduct opponent’s Skill/2*Speed/2. What I think is, since those weapons were fairly inaccurate, give them low hit rates and give the Marksmen class high skill growths of 25% with 15% speed, and let luck a minimal yet existent impact.

Just an idea. If you can muster a more efficient way, say it.

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We could also take out the bow, BUT replace it with crossbow, a lot more efficient and accurate than bows yet keeping many of its flaws like having less range than fire arms.

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In FE7IF has weapons that exist outside 3 weapon triangle, such as “iron baton” and “knife” .
These seem to be implemented as item type: 0xB (Dragon Stone / Monster Weapon).

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First time I hear about it. Mind sharing a link so I can test it?

Also, even if it’s valid, I think weapons outside of the triangle have immediate advantage, even if they are bad just because they are so reliable without taking enemy weapon in account, fulfilling whatever role you need them to.

How would you like to make the balance for those weapons?

Stones mostly work for: Being class locked, acting more as bonus givers than weapons, not having many enemies that wield them whenever they do appear and coming with predefined roles; Tiki only had ONE in FE11, because it was a goddam NUKE. Wolfskin and Taguel became utility classes sporting high speed and strength with medium defense, creating a makeshift offense tank with beast killer as a bonus. Specific yet flexible can fill many roles only excelling in one. Beaststones aren’t weapons or objects but a class skill in the inventory.

Fates ran with this to great effect adding the beastrune, with a more direct way of choosing what do you want the unit to do without adding needless and confusing mechanics.

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fe%20zombie-1 I love fe which have guns

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First time I hear about it. Mind sharing a link so I can test it?

FE7IF, the author harassed, the publication has been stopped.
That’s why I can not give you a URL.

However, I think that there is data that was reprinted if you search it with google.
FE7IF is a very difficult game with remodeling made at the dawn, but animation, music and text are written very well.
It is one of my favorite hacks.

How would you like to make the balance for those weapons?

How about limiting the units that can use that weapon?
Or make the price of weapons extreme.

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