How to fix Armor Knights? (Discussion)

[Gero]

NOTE: I posted a draft by mistake, this is the real post.

DON'T SAY "GIVE IT MORE MOVEMENT" OR YOU'RE GONNA GIVE ME A STROKE

Hello everyone!

Some time ago I brought a topic related to mono-weapon cavs but I’ve come here with another interesting topic.

How we could fix Armor Knights?

Armor Knights, even if they are my favorite class, are a flawed class, they are slow, have extremely low res, they move almost nothing and worse of all, they’re Weapon locked! (WOW HOW LOVELY!!!)

Some ideas have come around, like give it more movement, for example. But is it really all that they need to be at least a treat for both the player and the enemy?.. Not quite.

There is a lot more to it! Armor Knights are supposed to be the tanks of the party and they should be feared by both the enemy and the player. So how we can keep their identity without going to extremes?

Well first of all, let’s fix the big burden that they have: extremely low speed.

• Speed, as we all now, is the most broken and strong stat of every Fire Emblem game. So, we make them speed demons?.. No that’s too much, how about something more subtle, they shouldn’t be very speedy, but, they shouldn’t need to be too slow. In other words, just give them average speed, like cavaliers.

So besides speed, what else is a burden? Oh yeah! Being weapon lock.

• For all the time, armor knights have always be locked behind one weapon: The lance. The lance is good, depending of the game obviously, if we are talking about pre-weapon triangle, then is one of the best weapons that exist, this never represented a real problem to armor knights in those games, but since the introduction of the weapon triangle (and the abundance of axe users in the early chapters) this has been a BIG disadvantage for Armor Knights. So what’s the solution? Simple, give them access to axes, but why axes of all things? Two words: Hand Axe. Having access to both Javelins and Hand Axes compensates their short movement and also because of their high con (where con is important) they can’t get the drawbacks of welding axes.

So after what I showed you… you may ask, why don’t give them movement? Well being completely honest, I’m not against the idea, but I’m against of giving them too much movement. What do I mean? Well, I present to you the Hector theorem.

• Hector, besides of being literally the best lord in FE7, he never gets more movement even after promotion, but that doesn’t makes him weaker, in fact, it makes him balanced. Yes he can solo entire armies, but he can just move 5 tiles, yet he’s a unit that you MUST use most of the time. So am I trying to say: “make armor knights as broken as Hector?”. No dear friend, but maybe we can take an example out of him. Also we need to take into context that FE7 is not… That hard of a game (unless you’re playing Hector HM), so most of the pre-promotes or even promotes units tend to be weaker than expected. So, yes, give Armor Knights +1 movement, but not give them more movement after promotion. Speaking of promotion…

The General is one of the coolest units that exists in the game, big armored dudes that have control of the weapon triangle. And honestly they don’t need to be touched at all. Because the main problem are in the pre-promotion… Also Armor Knights tend to be units very hard to level, gaining very little XP most of the time, making hard the labor of having Generals in your party. They are a XP sponge, just like your Jagen, something that is… Very dumb being honest, they are your defensive unit, but they not need to be worst Jagens by any chance.

How about resistance then?.. Uh… Just give the more base resistance and a bit more growths too, no much science behind it.

In conclusion:

Armor Knights have a lot of potential, and can be esencial units in your army, or even the enemy’s, but they have been mistreated a lot because they never tend to get good results. They are hard to train, slow, and lack the necessary tools to be useful in the early chapters. Is not as simple as just “giving them more movement”, and that’s all, I’m hopeful that IS see this problem too and try to finally fix it… But at this point I’ve lost hope…

Oh well, that why we romhackers exist, don’t we? That’s all and thanks for reading!

[knabepicer]

give it less movement

[Gero]

SHUT IT, i posted the thing by mistake

[VelvetKitsune]

More movement.
…Equal to infantry, without any upon promotion is pretty good. They already have terrible speed in a series where that’s basically the best stat, they don’t need movement to impede them as well.

Aside from that the only thing I can think is to create chapters where you’ll actually want to use them, big chapter where all they can do is fall behind? You’re not really going to want to use them, but I don’t understand balance, so what do I know.

[PhoenixRadiant]

I mean, there’s a few ways to do it:

• Give them a few points more resistance. That way mages aren’t as hard counters and they serve their primary purpose (taking hits) better.

• Remove 1-2 range weapons and give them access to bows. They wouldn’t quite fit the archer niche b/c their movement makes them harder to bring along, but it means they have an edge on most other physical classes. As a plus, it would make swordies better in the process by removing the disadvantage they have when it comes to 1-2 range availability.

• Give them more skill. Armor knights are nothing if not consistent, and more skill means they fill that niche even better.

• Put them in a game where the enemies do a lot of damage. Defensive stats will be more valuable when they’re simply necessary to survive.

Frankly I liked Oswin and Gilliam even if they weren’t the best units, they might just be fine with vibes alone honestly.

[topazlight]

I think Engage is actually a pretty good game to look at for this, although one of the strengths of armors in that game pertains specifically to its Break mechanic, to which armors are immune.

I realize you said “DON’T SAY ‘GIVE IT MORE MOVEMENT’ OR YOU’RE GONNA GIVE ME A STROKE”, but Engage also has an interesting sort of “midway point” idea, giving tier 1 armors the same movement as other tier 1 infantry classes, but not giving them a movement increase upon promotion. So, I think something like that may be worth exploring. I do agree that armors having lower movement is an important part of their mechanical identity, and is also utilized in enemy placements, so I’m not big on changing that, myself.

My personal go-to would primarily be to just… give playable armors better stats for their lower movement to be a counterbalance to. Very strong combat, but not as inherently-mobile as other units. Just make that more of a fair tradeoff as opposed to their usual “pretty average combat needlessly nerfed by lower movement”.

I’m also a big fan of the idea of giving armors multiple weapon options starting from tier 1. FE1 (and only FE1) actually does this, giving armors both swords and lances, and I think that’s an avenue definitely worth exploring. More weapon triangle control would also give them more options for playing defense, too, reinforcing their intended niche.

[Parrhesia]

Play hacks and take note of the ones where armour knights are good, which is most of them. They’re almost as reliably good as romhack archers.

I think the main thing is just that 4 movement sucks unspeakable shit and being the only low movement unit type also sucks unspeakable shit, so if you want to keep low movement as a class identity, kneecap some other classes too and have fun with it

[Rivian]

I think giving armours more move is too cop out of a solution, I agree. It’s really overdone.
There’s a lot more nuanced ways of approaching this.

Like giving them more move AND canto+.

[RNGSOMEONE]

My solution is actually quite simple. Fix their skill issue, and patch up their HP/STR/DEF.
All of a sudden, you now have a slow unit that can actually fight stuff reliably, because high SKL ensures they have workable hit rates on their one attack per round of combat. High STR/DEF ensures they can match up well against low-STR classes like Swordmaster and Nomad Trooper, but not get completely wallbroken by high-STR classes like Berserker and Wyvern Lord.

Now they can reliably 2RKO squishier classes if not already OHKO-ing, thanks to good hit rate. They can wipe out entire swarms of enemies on EP with 1-2 range, just over the course of 2-3 turns. No extra weapon types needed. Avoid excessive RES buffs; too much and they will be sweeping mages with Pure Water + 1-2 range.

Sample statline (Lv10 unpromoted)

HP: 37
STR: 15
SKL: 13
SPD: 6
LCK: 7
DEF: 18
RES: 2

As a side note, stop having unpromoted classes cap all of their stats at 20. Classes that go all-in get hurt by this, so try to give different classes different caps, even if only by a few stat points. Armors will appreciate the extra defense, while Fighters appreciate their OHKO longevity with high-MT weapons, and Myrms can dodgetank a little better. Alternatively, use the FE4/TRS system, where Stat Cap = Stat Base +15, creating uniform class statlines and (if using class base differences as promotion gains) encouraging earlypromotion, as each unit can only gain 15 in any given stat.

[Gero]

POST UPDATED

Remind me of never trying to do a post on my phone… I posted a rough draft in the beginning but now is updated.

[Anarch16sync]

I agree with the suggestions about stats, no reason to have armor knight be slower and less skillful than cavs. This makes the trade-off more simple, less move for more base Str & Def.

Weapon Triangle control, I also agree with Axes being the better choice for a secondary weapon since it plays more into the idea of heavy tank, that can deal a lot of damage and take a lot of damage. And also serves another fix, chance for the rapier and armorslayer to have WTA.

Now those two thing serve in general terms and in make them more usable, but if we add skills into the mix, I think Armor Knight having Provoke, to make enemies more willing to attack them over other units or savior to allow them to rescue without penalties, that would open interesting uses that play into the Tank archetype without making them extremly painful as enemies…
because as Enemies Armor knights are already pretty good. Is just that in the player hands they are a bit underwelming.

[Darkiway]

I’ve seen each of the above solutions implemented well in one hack or another.
In particular, I think designing your maps in a way where armored knights make sense is fundamental to making armored knights good (especially with 4 mov, but still true even using the 5 mov, no gain on promo route).

Different idea : One different avenue I’ve been toying with in my mind would be to make some special weapons that would be either exclusive to armored knights or otherwise optimal on them.

Creation of new weapons aside, a lot of romhacks implement greatlances and greatswords, or a larger diversity of great bows and blade weapons. It’d be interesting if there was a way to make these types of weapons a signature of armored units. Maybe speed loss incurred from overweight weapons could also hurt accuracy. Or maybe make the game so armored units don’t check for weight during AS calculation; this could work in interesting ways if the general speed of armored units was raised a bit.

[Gero]

A lot of guys giving good answers! I like the fact that you put skills on the table, but what if we do it without uses of skills? Let’s see it in a more general way that can be implemented without skillsys involved (nothing against it, but let’s see with what you come up!)

[dancer_A]

stop making them seize/rout and let them defend

[Parrhesia]

The thing is that you’re coming at this with a deficit-focused approach, rather than thinking of environments where their strengths are relevant and worthwhile. Barth and Bors and Gilliam are bad and Gwen is atrocious, sure, but that’s due to poor stats and to aspects peculiar to the vanilla GBAFE campaigns. And, yes, any unit that is an armour knight would prefer to be a cavalier if they could keep their stats. But they don’t get to be. Only the units the designer says are cavaliers get to be cavaliers.

The ‘more general way’ to improve armours doesn’t matter and isn’t relevant, because units don’t exist in a ‘more general’ environment, they exist in a specific campaign against specific enemies with specific stats at a specific joining time. Play hacks. Armours are frequently strong, while remaining true to their unit identity in at least some facets.

[RNGSOMEONE]

I’d lean towards incentivizing moving the armors forward. Whether it be enemies they can destroy being put further away or anti-cav/flier weapons restricting mounted units from rushing in. Another alternative is simply a very high volume of reinforcements; armors can survive them without too much trouble but cavs/fliers will get absolutely destroyed.

Regardless, enemy quality requires substantial increases; if mediocre prepromoted mounted units can wipe entire enemies with Javelin/Hand Axe, Armors will never get a valid niche, even if the mounted units become squishier.

[SirSpensir]

Give them provoke, give other units consistent access to barrier staves, then put them in a context where you have to fight 8 Mage horses with 1-3 range crit tomes per turn.

[7743]

I imagine armor knights and generals as cops with riot shields.
So with kaitou, they often appear as enemies.

Riot shield

They block the passage and catch enemy attacks with their shields.
They focus more on defense than attack and prevent enemy’s march.
And the unit is a shield to grow units that can do magic and other RANGE attacks.

The problem is after the other units have grown up.
Most of the time they end up retiring after their role.
If they had some powerful defensive skills or skills that give buff effects to the surrounding area, they might be a little more active.

[Fringus]

high density reinforcements as something other than a time pressure just sounds like a pretty terrible idea by in large, as rather than make armors feel good it’ll more likely (as ive seen with hacks that do so) make maps into slogs at best, and at worst make it so units which can handle the hordes now snowball excessively harder because you’ve given them a new, huge source of xp to dip into.

this less makes armors good and more just made maps longer or made it harder for xp to as reasonably scale because now theres more kill and chip xp for said bulkier units to gain.
theres also the issue that it means fairly longer enemy phases, which just means risking wasting the player’s time and/or boring them with more and more enemies they need to wait for to act

[Gero]

I appreciate the intent of “making me playing hacks” but this is a discussion my main man. I’m here to discuss ideas outside of already implemented stuff.

With that being said, I would like to know any personal recommendation that you could give me so I can play and see how Armor Knights are implement in such hacks.

PD: Also I don’t know if you read the updated post, it was a rough draft that I posted by accident, but i manage to edit the thing with the intended content. Thanks for sharing your ideas!