Help understanding the formation system

[Mad Mage]

I know that S weapon users do best in the front rown, and M weapon users do bet in the middle, but I have no idea what quallifies as "front" or "middle".

The grid you possition your characters on is four spaces long. To make things more confusing, some of the formations you may choose place characters inbetween two spaces. So can someone please tell me What possition on the grid coresponds to what weapon type. And what if someone is placed in the middle row but there's no one in front of them (like the "basic" formation for instance)? Would that be considered middle or front?

Thanks for any help!

-loving the game so far

[Danny]

Oh, Middle characters can be placed anywhere on the grid, it won't affect they fighting style that much because they're good whereever they are. I think the M characters are a good choice is you have to face a boss... so bring one or two S characters, a bunch of M characters and the others would be L characters. Only the characters in the 6 first slots can fight. It's like some chess game, just, don't mess up with the S characters cause if they're too far from the monsters, they'll miss often.
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[Marshmallow]

The game's manual says that M range characters lose accuracy if they are placed in either the front or the back row. I assume this is true, but can anybody confirm it just to be sure? It seems to me as though they totally messed up with the range system this time around (I liked it the old way. With this system, you can theoretically have an S range character in the back row attack an enemy in its back row.

[Skooboi]

Yea it's true. I have my hero in front and he misses consistently. Thanks for the heads up, I'm gonna put him in the center now. Generally I like to use Tiger stance and have my hero in front as he has very very good armor and acts as a tank. Monsters can't attack anyone else other than him. A lot of good strategies with formations. Thanks again Marshmallow, no wonder why my hero was missing so much. It frustrated me.

[Himuro]

Arrow stance is by far my favorite.

I've had my hero in the front for the longest time and I haven't noticed many misses from him.
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She knows stuff.

[Danny]

So it means you can place it in front of the lines, but in the middle position? It's kinda confusing me.
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[mumbay]

So in other words in Suikoden V the formation has a S where only people like Georg( which is known if i am correct)) probably miakis due to the fact she uses short swords and probably claw users. M for people like Lyon if i am correct as well as Hero. And finally we got L for archers and mages((so they are protected unless you wanna attack them since they may have some good armor.

[melange]

A lot of the mages are actually M for some reason. Only Zerase is L.

I'm not sure how accurate it is but my rule of thumb when playing the game was S for the 1st row, M for the middle 2 rows and L for the last row. The in-between placings some formations have I would fill with characters of either of the closest two ranges (i.e. if the placing was between the 1st and 2nd row I would place either S or M characters). Going by my Excel list of characters, there's actually an overflow of S range characters with the total number of S range physical attackers (34) being almost twice the number of M range physical attackers (18, of which 5 are beavers, but not including Prince, Lyon or specialized mages). And since the Prince and Lyon always take up the M range slots I often had a shortage of M range fighters when having to make 3 parties in my first playthrough.

Actually if you have a high enough accuracy I don't think it matters too much if you put a M character at S or L range (I've had Zweig for is M in a L position for a long time and he hardly missed or Georg at M range) but still the chance they might miss is higher. But you still kinda want to ensure that misses happen as infrequently as possible by placing them in the correct ranges. It would really suck to be fighting a tough boss and your main damage dealer ends up missing the blow that would have won you the battle.

About placing the toughest character in front so the monster only attack them... there are some monsters (those bee/wasp monsters) that seem to only attack characters placed in the M range.
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"The waters of the Faytus River are cold, you know..." ~ Miakis
Anyone else notice that Lyon's weapon = overglorified switchblade?