The GameFAQs SaGa Frontier community is actually cool.
I would think if they're putting this much time in to decompiling and analyzing battle mechanics from Saga fucking Frontier, they're probably quite the opposite.
Oh Rob, you're so delightfully antagonistic!
<3
Yggdra Union: Well, the game is as unique as it's reported to be. Pretty interesting. There are some mechanics that translate really easily to DL format like "The entire SRPG team of 9 can only make -one- attack total in a round". Then there's the weird Clash/Morale system, which essentially gives every PC two forms of HP: Real HP, called Morale, which takes a unit out of play if it reaches 0; and "Buffer HP", called Clash damage, which only serves to determine whether or not a PC gets a chance to damage Morale or not. Buffer HP only lasts for one round of combat, it is completely restored by the next turn, even if all Buffer HP is reduced to 0.
The reason this is controversial is because each PC's Buffer HP looks like a generic mook that follows them into battle.
As an example, Yggdra always rides into battle with 6 Valkyries at her side. These Valkyries are just graphical representations of Yggdra's stats that attack alongside her. If all of them die, they instantly respawn in the next attack. At the end of an attack, the number of Yggdra's Valkyries that survived are converted into damage against the opponent's Real HP. If only Yggdra survives, she does 10% damage (plus a few other factors) to the opponent's Real HP. If Yggdra doesn't survive, then she deals no damage and the opponent gets to counter-attack, but there's no game over unless the opponent manages to bring her Real HP to 0.
After a lot of looking at the mechanics, I've come to the conclusion there's only two ways to view Yggdra Union characters.
The way I suspect most DLers would demand would be "Leader PC fights alone", which is only possible in-game during a single round of combat if the enemy manages to take out all of the mooks, but not the Leader. Mathematically, I can probably still make a stat topic like this, since if only the Leader is alive, they do 10% of damage, which would just make the damage averages look a lot lower. However, most of the skill/equipment mechanics formulas in the game look something like this:
Attacker's TEC - Opponent's GEN = # of Mooks killed
The Mooks themselves each count as basically 1 Buffer HP and 10% of Potential damage. That's basically their entire function is to be a graphical representation of the Leader's Buffer HP, which can be converted into damage if any of them survive. Manipulating how many of them survive on either side during a turn is basically how damage to Real HP works.
This is how I would view Yggdra Union, where mooks are ignored as anything other than meatshields. If they were graphically represented as floating shields, there would be no question on how to interpret this. They have about as much autonomy as FF6's Interceptor (maybe less since technically Relm can get Interceptor, too!). Yggdra always has 6 Valkyries, Durant always has 3 (2-HP) Knights, enemies always have 6 or 3 mooks following them, so calculating Real HP damage using the baseline 6 mooks is actually entirely possible.
And particularly interesting due to the way resists and weaknesses work in the game. All things being equal, an attacking PC normally (no skills used) wins a Clash with only themselves standing. However, there's a weapon triangle, elemental typings, and species/terrain effects that come into play. If a PC has a weapon-type that's strong against their opponent's (like Sword over Axe), then they will win a Clash with more of their mooks standing (which converts into more direct damage to their Real HP). But this system is tiered. Elemental resistance overwrites Weapon triangle, so if the Sword-user attacks the Axe-user with a Holy-elemental physical and the Axe-user nulls Holy, now the Sword-user loses the Clash miserably and deals no damage to Real HP (in fact, they give the opponent a free counter-attack to their own Real HP). Species weakness overrides everything, but there's only like 4 species weaknesses in the game.
It makes an interesting cast full of spoilers who are equally spoil-able. Resisting a YU PC's weapon-type can make them completely unable to damage an opponent without using skills (which are very limited). Conversely, having a weapon-type that a YU PC resists can basically make them untouchable and give them free counters (unless the opponent uses skills/elements/status).
So... while I doubt I'll be able to make a topic that would make people deem the YU cast as 'rankable', I can definitely make a stat topic that has comparable stats for things like Board Tournaments.
