Various thoughts on doubling and it's relation to speed. Concepts for different doubling systems

Design
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Good afternoon everyone.

I have been thinking about the core mechanics of Fire Emblem for a while, and one that has always stood out to me is doubling. Being present in every single game, while working mostly the same with only a few adjustements. I would like to share my insight with all of you and ask about your thoughts on it.

So, if two units fight the one has more Speed gets to attack twice. This is the case everytime except on certain games or when using certain weapons. The things that vary are the exact threshold, wether weapon weight exists or not and, in case it does, what counteracts it if anything.

However the result is the same, Speed is usually the most sought out stat. Logic would say that having more offensive stats (STR/MAG) makes units deal more damage, while defensive stats (DEF/RES) makes units resist more. However Speed grants you both things, since having enough to not be doubled avoids being dealt double damage, while having enough to double allows doing so to others.

Most One-rounds require doubling the enemy, since One-shots are either the result of a critical, an effective weapon or a huge power disparity. One-rounding while doubling can be done with a cheap weapon, more reliably and against “matching“ opponents. Of course this last point depends on the game and difficulty, but it still can’t be ignored.

With all of this in mind, I have started to see doubling as I did the old WeaponLevel stat, a core gameplay mechanic hidden away in the unit’s stats. And just like WeaponLevel turned into Weapon Rank, a separate parameter that dictates what a unit can do, I have begun to think about doing the same to doubling. This would relegate Speed to be just the counterpart to Skill on the opposite end of the accuracy formula and open up new possibilities to balance units.

The first idea I had is giving units “Speed Tiers“, which would look like this with FE6 classes:

Unit’s Class
Swordmasters, Pegasus
Heroes, Lords, Nomads, Valkyries
Paladins, Snipers, Berserkers, Sages, Bishops
Wyverns, Warriors, Druids
Generals

Units in a tier would double those below them and be doubled by those above. This consistency in who doubles who would allow for more extreme balance measures to be taken without risking overtuning units. In a way this would turn a soft reality into a hard one.

The second one is to take the “Speed Tiers“ and have it be unit dependant instead of class dependant, so players can get outlyers like fast armors or slow myrms. It would be a special stat like movement or constitution, and would have a very small growth if any. This way it can also interact with both weight and constitution as the old AS did.

The third one is going with what FE4 did and have it be a skill unique to certain units, or just removing doubling altogether (based).

So, what do you think? Would a more static doubling framework bring any upsides? Could doubling work and be fun while separated from speed? Should it even be or is this all a nothingburger? Personally I plan to try and make a hack incorporating these concepts to see what would change.

Also if anyone knows about a hack or game that does something similar to what I described with all that speed tiers segment I would appreciate you telling me, since that would probably answer my inquietudes. I haven’t played that many srpgs outside of Fire Emblem to be honest, so I might just be trying to reinvent the wheel.

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Static doubling would make armor knights even worse, since now they take x2 damage from a lot more enemy types. I think the FE system usually works better in practice than it would in theory, since most fast units are balanced by having some combination of low STR, DEF and/or CON, with the units that don’t have those drawbacks usually being the best in their respective games.

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You are right, thinking back on it the usual system does work better than what one would expect looking at it from outside, with only a few outlyers per game.

It is also true that just implementing Speed Tiers into the game without changing anything else would be a huge kick to everyone on the lower half of the chart. What I had in mind for armor knights was giving them enough defense to be unscathed by everything above Zerkers, because I feel that the reason they are not that tanky to begin with is because technically they could reach high enough speed to not be doubled.

What I hope with that is to have them be hard counters to many of the units while being countered more by other ones, instead of being underwhelming overall as I usually find them to be.

I also think it woud help avoid having the high speed units with good stats everywhere else from being the undisputable best. All the while keeping the countermeasures you have mentioned (low STR, DEF, etc…) for the ones on the higher end of the speed list.

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One really elegant solution I have seen to balancing Doubling has been on Broken Legacy, and it also serves as a way to make the game more Player phase focused is having Doubling only happen on your own phase.

This gives all the usual benefits of doubling increasing damage output for 1-rounding, without making the same unit able to just delete everything on enemy phase. The counter point, is that it can make enemy threats hard to gauge by just checking the battle preview, since you have to go and check the stats to see what enemies can double who on the enemy turn.

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Well now that’s a novel idea, I’ll have to check that out.

It sounds like a good compromise for the player’s units, both not making fast ones overtuned on enemy phase but also giving slow ones a safe chance to set up kills and the like. Thanks!

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Fire Emblem Tactics Online (an old web browser multiplayer pvp game I remember from a LONG time ago) experimented with an approach I’ve never seen anyone else try.

Instead of changing how Spd works, they added a similar mechanic with other abilities for each of the other stats and then each character chooses which stat they want to check the threshold for.

For example, if you chose the Str stat instead of Spd for you character, the game would never check Spd for double opportunities but instead compared your Str to the enemy and if you had enough advantage you got something like a 50% damage increase instead of a double attack. This was great for high Str build armors who had no hope of being fast because they could still get SOMETHING for being good at a certain stat. Plus, by choosing a stat other than Spd, your matchups change. You may have no hope of doubling a Myrmidon but you almost always have more Str than them so the 50% damage boost is guaranteed, but you’re also guaranteed to get doubled by that Myrmidon if you fail to 1 shot him or miss.

Str/Mag, Skl, Spd, Luk, and Def/Res all had their own buff if you had 4 or more points of it than a foe, but your character has to lock into only checking one stat and you choose which one for each character. You can change you choice, just not during a match/chapter.

I always thought it was a cool idea. It adds a layer to the game that works different for each unit to keep up with how Spd works instead of trying to strangle Spd into affecting the game less.

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A very creative solution for sure, really evens out the playing field among different classes. It does sound like it cripples units with balanced stats and promotes having min-maxed characters, but I’d have to play it to be sure.

Speaking of which, searching around for it I have found it’s main page to be down. Being an old browser game I fear it’s gone for good. You wouldn’t happen to know if it’s still available somewhere, right? If it truly is unavailable, do you happen to remember what the other stats did? I suppose they further boosted themselves, but Luck is the one that has me puzzled, I can’t imagine how they would make it worthwhile.

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Nah, I can’t remember off the top of my head. It’s been over 10 years since I played it. :sweat_smile:

I do remember the chosen stats were represented by character “Natures”. This synergized with the fact that all of your units are custom characters you build yourself. So it was basically like choosing a personal fighting style. I think Skill may have rewarded you with a crit bonus and Def/Res may have given you a Wary Fighter type ability against that kind of damage. But that’s just me making bold guesses, I don’t actually remember.

Keep in mind this was also a game with alot of class variety. We had armored high def low res mages, we had high res/spd Lance infantry, Bow fliers, damn near everything lol. So the matchups got so extreme and volatile that these natures could act as either countermeasures for weaknesses or maxers for your unit’s 1 big advantageous focus. And it’s a pvp game so your units expected to die (no perma death unless you agree to delete your character). So the battle system had different needs from your typical “please don’t kill my favorite guy” Fire Emblem game :+1:

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Well then, thanks anyway. For how you describe it it sounds really fun! We can only hope they manage to bring it back online.

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