but it's unlikely Square had Agility in that function by accident. so imho, the best fix tries to figure out in what capacity Agility would've likely been used, while still retaining balance.
It's not quite that simple, you cannot retain balance if you include Agility. By default, in vanilla (unpatched) FF5, Knife based weapons do the exact same damage as Sword based weapons if they have the same attack power (because of the bug, knives sometimes do a little extra). It's a very simple, understandable way to calculate damage - if the weapons have the same attack power, they do the same damage. If, on the other hand, you patch the ROM to include Agility, it becomes a lot more complicated.
Take as an example a Knight wielding a Mythril Sword. You happen to find a MageMasher knife. Normally the two weapons do the exact same damage, but if half the Strength influence is replaced by Agility, the MageMasher will end up doing less damage (because Knight has low Agility).
Maybe this was intended, who knows? However, the fact remains that this is a very serious change to game balance and therefore, in my opinion, should be classified as a game modification, not a bug fix.
without an extra term in the formula, Knives are more of a poor man's Swords. they don't really have anything to set them apart.
This is not true. According to instructrtrepe's algorithm guide, all knife based weapons
halve the enemy evade stat when used. This alone gives knives an advantage over swords. Another important thing to remember is that almost any job can wield knives. Instead of buying a sword, an axe, a katana and a spear for your warrior character you can simply buy one knife.
I'm almost persuaded by the argument, but what do the damage numbers look like at each level with either approach?
With (Level*Strength)/128 + 2 (or vanilla FF5), knives do the exact same damage as swords of the same attack power. Every 3-6 levels the attacks become a bit stronger.
With (Level*Strength)/256 + (Level*Agility)/256 + 2, it depends on which job your are using:
- Knight/Samurai/Berserker/Blue Mage will do less damage with knives than with swords
- Dragoon will do a little less damage with knives
- Freelancer/Mystic Knight/Red Mage will have almost exactly the same damage with knives and swords
In a very general sense, low agility jobs will have less damage with knives and high agility jobs will have more.
I'm assuming you want a Fractional M where the Goblin Punch is fixed and Agility is not taken into account to calculate the knives damage, am I right?
Not quite, what I want is a patch that adds a fractional M system (with Goblin Punch fixed) without affecting the knife damage formula at all.
If my ROM uses (Level*Strength)/128 + 2, and I apply the patch, the formula should still be (Level*Strength)/128 + 2.
If my ROM uses (Level*Strength)/256 + (Level*Agility)/256 + 2, and I apply the patch, the formula should still be (Level*Strength)/256 + (Level*Agility)/256 + 2.
We have EVEN MORE themes now, but some old ones are gone...