Very confused about SP gain/loss between menu and each battle - Not so Hard Mode

[DarthChocobo]

I'm in the first field of random battles... In the menu before EVERY battle - Garr, Lian, Seign and Nowa have 1 SP, Mio and Hildi have no SP..... First battle --- Garr and Hildi have 1 SP, Seign has 2 SP, Lian and Nowa have 3 SP, Mio has no SP..... Second battle --- Seign has 1 SP, Garr, Mio and Lian have 2 SP, Nowa has 3 SP, Hildi has no SP..... Third battle --- Nowa has 1 SP, Seign, Mio and Lian have 2 SP, Garr has 3 SP, Hildi has no SP... You get the point. Yah the game looks pretty but did anyone play test this thing?... I'm also playing on Hard Mode and have made it to level 5 auto battling, taking 36 damage split between 3 of 6 chars, and no visits to the inn, use of items or healing magic.

[Chief Spreading Bull]

It appears to be random. Though later in the game you do get a Support character who can guaranteed a minimum of at least 1 SP in your pool at the start of every fight and possibly a rune or food buff that does the same.

[DarthChocobo]

Yahh definitely seeing the randomness, just doesn't seem intended. Trying to save SP between battles is a no go.

[三Akiyama]

This game has so much issues, it's so annoying. Could be great but feels like early access. I honetly regret buying it (on PS5, hence why I don't have it on Steam)... Forcing myself to finish it but man it's painful.

[Chief Spreading Bull]

Well I just hit end game; I can confirm that SP is random BUT there are some characters like Leene who have a higher floor than other characters, most of whom have a floor of zero. She always starts with AT LEAST 2 sp and you can mess with this value using SP+ runes (that let you start with +2 SP) and Sphene Bangles that give you +1.

[ArtificialQT]

Of the 3 main battle resources, that being HP, SP, and MP, SP is the one that you can use freely because its starting amount is random outside of special Character or Rune modifiers, and you recharge 1 SP every turn.

Spend SP when you have it, and spend it often. There's no point in saving it beyond the battle that you're currently in.

SP was likely added to function as a limiter for old Suikoden Special Attacks and Combo Attacks, where we could spam them almost infinitely to the point where we rarely used Normal Attacks of any character who had them.

[SillyFearz]

The amount of SP you get is divided randomly based on the number of SP all characters have. So if every character in your party has one SP, there is a chance someone will start off with 4 SP while someone starts with none. The amount is always distributed randomly every battle starts, so just use it when you have it instead of saving it.

[Chief Spreading Bull]

Originally posted by ArtificialQT:

Of the 3 main battle resources, that being HP, SP, and MP, SP is the one that you can use freely because its starting amount is random outside of special Character or Rune modifiers, and you recharge 1 SP every turn.

Spend SP when you have it, and spend it often. There's no point in saving it beyond the battle that you're currently in.

SP was likely added to function as a limiter for old Suikoden Special Attacks and Combo Attacks, where we could spam them almost infinitely to the point where we rarely used Normal Attacks of any character who had them.

Well there's a minor caveat; SP Conversion Runes. Some characters like Elektra actually scale well by camping on their SP since their SP skill is quite specialized that it does not always come into play and it can add up to 20% Strength per rune. Worth considering given the scarcity of Runes of Tremendous Might and Arcane Magic. I used the defense version on Djikstra and he is nigh unkillable.

[DarthChocobo]

What ArtificialQT shared so far makes the most sense of what is going on with the random SP points in battle.

Thx ArtificialQT for sharing

Devs? You wanna chime in and share what your intentions were when adding SP into the battle system and how it works?

[VertVentus]

It's just like SillyFearz said, a randomly distributed amount on top of their base SP values dependent on party size.
https://suikosource.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=15181

Originally posted by KFCrispy:

1. SP in the character's status screen is their base SP going into any battle.
   
2. When entering battle, a pool of SP is distributed randomly amongst the team. This pool equals the number of characters in your party, and each character will only be given between 0 and 2 SP.

After each turn, each character gains 1 SP, with some exceptions (a martial artist will not gain SP in a transformed state). There are a few late game accessories and runes that can increase the character's starting SP as well as how much SP is gained per turn.

While SP gain is meant to nerf the amount of used skills/combos, it's also so battles have a bit of randomness and don't play out the same every time when the turn order timeline is simply highest to lowest SPD (and some delay on certain skills, like Iugo's Slash making him dead last). But they made hero combos incur a damage penalty based on the number of participants, making the single-target combos generally worse than the sum of individual normal attacks, so they overcorrected it.
Given low level magic damage is fixed, you won't get higher level spells that actually scale off MGC until later, and the low MP pools in the early game, you'll only have SP-dependent skills/combos for any AoE damage:

• Kogen with base 2 SP for his 4 SP row skill
  
• Hakugin with 0 base SP for her 2 SP row skill
  
• Riufan & Lam's 1 SP row combo
  
• Nowa & Seign's 1 SP all-target combo
  
• Leene with 2 base SP for her 3 SP all-target skill
  
• Nowa & Leene's 1 SP all-target combo

but that just ends up making normal attacks (auto battle) the optimal play from another overcorrection. At least the Trails of series has things like link attacks or CP batteries for sustaining all their character-specific Craft usage.

[Slatepaws]

This and the more i play, the less the mechanics seem to be working.
1. level ups either don't show, or don't have an increase in stats.
2. hp even with the best armor equipped seems to be woefully liquidate to the damage received from monsters.
3. they might as well remove the magic attack stat, 'NO' magic actually scales with it, not even healing.

[Yílõng Má]

Each characters has their individual starting SP (0-2) and then at the start of a battle, a pool of free SP is distributed randomly among party members.

[DarthChocobo]

Thx VertVentus for sharing KFCrispy's post. This has added some sense to the randomness.
SillyFearz's post left out that the SP pool randomly distributed equals the number of characters in your party which left some confusion but now I know where the extra 6 SP is coming from.

[Yílõng Má]

Originally posted by SillyFearz:

The amount of SP you get is divided randomly based on the number of SP all characters have. So if every character in your party has one SP, there is a chance someone will start off with 4 SP while someone starts with none. The amount is always distributed randomly every battle starts, so just use it when you have it instead of saving it.

This is a little bit wrong. A character with 1 starting SP won't start a battle with 0 SP, ever. It's either 1 or 1+N (N being randomly distributed SP from pool).