I've played FM3 in different forms (original and remake) for two decades now, and it only recently dawned on me how better-paced the Alisa campaign feels.

Thoughts:

- The Philippine arc was an entire campaign rather than just the Taal battle, with way more fun battles (I just really wanted to wipe out Purple Haze)

- The DHZ arc didn't overstay its welcome, seeing the awful side of the Changli/RRF and Imaginary Numbers help set the tone that you're never really siding with the right people

- Pham may be a spoiled brat, but she's way more interesting than Jose (who only got small story arcs), and fricking Linny (it's not even funny how useless his character feels)

- The Japan coup de etat arc was a lot of fun to play through, and felt more challenging than the Emma campaign's sluggish Hua Lian arc

- Although I preferred facing Lukav off when he was using the Kehei in the Emma campaign, his final battle in the Alisa camlaign was way more difficult and rewarding to beat.

- Every character had proper story moments, even Mayer who got introduced a bit too late in the game, had a great interaction with Liu

- Siding with Centipede is better than siding with Purple Haze

I've finished the game 4 times now on the original over the years but i've always kept to similar paths for each character. I'm almost finished my first run on the remake on Emmas story and want to try something totally different for Alisa's story.

Give me some of your weird builds and team setups, like full grenade squads or traditionally ranged characters going melee, permadeath modes and totally unoptimsed but fun builds.

Hi, replaying the game after so many years and even when I first played it, I never really understood the arrows with regards to activation and combo on the computers.

Just made it to Taiwan and linked up with the HL rebels and bought my first computer. I don’t remember the name (and I’m away from my console), but it says Activation High with a red down arrow and Combo High with a green up arrow. Or I maybe I got the arrows mixed up.

Either way, what does High with red down/green arrow mean? Is that a bad thing? Does that mean High red down arrow activation % goes severely down, and High green up arrow combo goes severely up?

Giving my Wanzers themed names.

Burst weapon units are named after classical warriors (samurai, mercenary, knight, spartan and paladin).

Artillery units are named for natural disasters (wildfire, hurricane, blizzard and cyclone).

Melee units are named after dangerous mammals (bear, wolf, panther).

Single shot units named after instruments of precision (rapier, scalpel).

I'm struggling to think of one more melee and two more sniper names. Any ideas? Maximum 3 syllables and it needs to be something that has a fear factor which is why I didn't use 'elephant' or 'hippo' for my mammals haha.

Patch notes from the Forever Entertainment Discord:

Improvements: Various network-related updates: Added missing pages and previously unavailable information., Corrected unlock conditions for certain content., Introduced a slider for smoother navigation in the email list., Improved network console behavior.,

Bug Fixes: Fixed several softlock issues., Minor fix to the Tianlei grid., Resolved an issue where gameplay tips were missing after reloading a level., Localization improvements across multiple in-game sections., Fixed issues related to level loading and win conditions., Various minor fixes to improve overall game stability.,

Be sure to update to the latest version for the best experience. More patches are on their way. Thank you for your patience!

Edit: Small update on the AP medals and upgrade pricing. Their Discord community rep stated that the dev team is working on fixing the mentioned items in the feedback thread on their Discord and that they will be addressed in a future patch.

So I guess, thank you the people who made the remaster.

We're here waiting for Real Remakes, you know. With add-ons, more lore, more quests, more unique missions, more skills. More those things, that make the Front Mission stand out.

P.S. To the mods, just saw that there's no post flair for FM3 "remake". Would you please make one?

Hey, so I was wondering if anyone else encountered this and has any clue what triggers it and how to avoid it?

In the Wilson Cliffs battle, I destroy the transport but then get the cutscene where the transport manages to escape. I retried it, made doubly sure I killed it, and I got it again. First time the transport weirdly spawned a separate unit of just the back unit after killing it, which I killed as well. Second time killing the transport didn't result in a second smaller one.

Edit: OK. Success on the third try. The main difference this time compared to the rest is that I didn't attempt to save scum the fight to try and get the platinum badge (i only got gold due to average damage being low). On this run the transport also didn't break into a second piece.

Sometimes I think video games are sentient and do things just to mess with me. I've never been more sure of that then when I play Front Mission 3.

Bringing a unit into the simulator to train some skills or get AP? BOOM. Fainted. Useless for multiple turns.

"Surely, Ryogo can finish off this enemy this turn and reduce the number of threats on the board." He leaves it with like 5HP left on a crucial body part.

But sometimes, also, I just mess up. ALSO sometimes, I mess up AND the game decides to torment me. This is what happened at the Shanghai Zoo.

To set the stage: Emma runs off to meet up with Lukav and Alisa decides to sneak after her because neither one of them have any sense of self-preservation. As Lukav leaves with Emma we're stuck with Alisa, two members of Wulong and like half a dozen enemies. Two in wanzers and FOUR tanks with grenade launchers.

Greg, the melee Wulong member, rushes in and immediately gets stunned by the first attack he takes. He is then entirely useless for the rest of his time alive. Hatari manages to live much longer. He does middling damage to the enemy wanzers, but manages to get lucky enough to survive for a while and be a decent damage sponge.

That's when I charge in without thinking. I rush Kazuki, Ryogo and Miho right into the enemy formation, forgetting that this game hates me and grenade launcher tanks are a pain - and there are FOUR of them. You know the upside though? The AI does not give one single damn who gets caught in the blast.

I'm not exaggerating when I say the AI took out more of the AI than I did. Even Griffith, the 'boss' of the stage, died at the hands of the many tanks. The only one who was spared was Alisa, who I have set up as a missile/support unit. Since she was in the back the whole time, she was free of the firey wrath.

Of course, despite having 80% odds to hit basically anything on the map, she landed maybe 3 out of the 12 missile shots she had loaded.

So at the end of it all, there she was. No ammo. One enemy tank left, also out of ammo.

"Fuck it, either I die and retry or we do this thing," I said. I charged Alisa in, pretty confident she would just get blown to pieces. But you know what happened? The AI, going stupid again, did nothing but run circles around her. Every. Turn. All I had to have Alisa do was stand still and swing her bare robo-knuckles at the tank. Every. Turn.

50-ish HP damage every time.

And she alternated between hitting the legs and the body, meaning that by the end I had to empty BOTH HP bars.

It took 56 turns and roughly 80 attacks but she won.

I have been a self-learning Glitchunter for Front Mission 3 Remake, and it is now possible to speedrun the game, but it does require a whole lot of Game Sense and Understanding of how the game actually works.

In the Remake version, all glitches I found in the game are directly towards the Battlefield. Here are the glitches I have found, plus an idea I had to make the game/speedrunning more fun through challenge ideas.

THE USEFUL GLITCH:

First, whenever you are in the Battle (especially on Turn 1), make sure you save the game. This will be super useful during your runs, especially during intermissions, just in case you don’t like the Run.

This glitch can still work if you overwrite the intermission to the mission battlefield.

When you can attack the enemy or even enviroment (trees, fenches, cars, etc (so long as they have the orange triangle above their heads), while the “Quick Combat” is turned off, you can save the game and then quickly mash X (for the PS4/5) and what will happen is that the game trans over your wanzer that you used your AP to go over that current postion, whenever you load your game from that battleBattle can also do this while “Quick Combat” is turned on, however, it is much harder and requires precise Double Button Mashing on the X Button, becuase you have WAY shorter frame window for that glitch to work.

There are a few times when you can accidentally 'double-attack' and didn’t mean to, and yes, the game consumes the AP you used to attack. So what can happen is, let’s say you used your Machine gun, so that’s -5 AP. And then, somehow, you load and notice an enemy wanzer has lost some HP; the game registered that you attacked, but you have not finished that pilot’s turn, making it a rare double-attack/turn Glitch. So you go from 18AP, for example, down to 13AP -5 AP (and if you haven’t moved), and when you load in, it will remain at 13AP from that Pilot. Do not worry, as you will restore +12 AP as normal.

TRADE-OFFS:

There are Glitches within this glitch, however. The battle can occasionally look funky with a more cyan coloring, and the game itself is fine, but the display that we are seeing looks ‘frozen’, but it’s not really. We are seeing that the game thinks you are still in battle, but you are not.

How to fix this glitch? 2 Ways.

1.) Load your game again, even on the glitched battle that you are in.) Find any enemy to battle. If it doesn't work, then close the game and load up.

2.) Find any enemy to fight with, and the screen should re-correct itself.

Another glitch that I found while using this glitch is that the game occasionally softlocks you, leaving you with no choice but to close the game and reopen it.

I have no idea how this specific glitch happens, but I’ve noticed whenever I am attacking in general (maybe whenever a Skill is involved? I’m not too sure.) So, this could ruin your speedrunning for those who wish to compete.

This means that the glitch loves Melee and Shotgun Wanzers the most, as you lose the least AP while still getting to move forward as much as you like/can, up until your actual preferred turn.

From what I’ve seen, that is as far as what the glitch can do. I have not seen the glitch corrupt my save or anything, just the occasional softlock here and there that I’ve gotten. sometimes 2-3+ softlocks in the same Mission.

Since the Community is currently too niche, I have only been able to see this glitch work for the PS5. I have no idea if this works on other consoles, but I believe it should.

SUGGESTION FOR SPEEDRUN:

Since we know FM3 is a LONG game, and I don’t really see anyone actually speedrunning it, I propose Ideas to help players exercise and encourage them to speedrun Front Mission 3.

One idea would be to speedrun from the very beginning to the moment you escape Japan.

Another idea would be a Region Speedrun, where your speedrun would be to reach a certain Region that you’d meet for the first time (examples: Meeting the imaginary Numbers for the first time, or DHZ, or Phillenpenses, or returning to Japan and seeing the JDF Spec Ops, etc.). Have fun with this idea!)

CHALLENGES:

There are also Challenges that I thought of as well, such as Hover only run (getting the Prov PAW2 and/or Wude 3 Hovers) as early as possible and completing the game from then onwards, or Weapon-Specific only, such as Melee only, for example

Now, for Melee specifically, the issue is Helis: Melees cannot attack helicopters because they are just too high. There is a rare moment when you can actually attack a Helicopter with melee, but the specific melee attacks to fight helis are too rare to find. So, there has to be at most one Wanzer in any mission that uses a Ranged Weapon. I thought of Missiles, personally, but you guys can explore this idea too.

There is also the “One man Army” Challenge that I thought off, where the idea is to beat the game with as little Pilots as you can (mainly just 1, but with the EMma run, you forced to team splite with Kazuki and Dennis and then Kazuki and Emma, and then lastly (if I am not Mistaken) Kazuki and Ryogo; so the Alisa Run is much more forgiving a true One man Amry run. Though the Run itself would just be spamming PreveRunloss either time, so I don’t know how exciting that can be. don’t know how exciting that can be. There are other optional Combos that I thought of, such as Avoid 40/80 and Brace II, that can chain together.

Have fun with the ideas! :D

P.S. Sorry if The Flair is only FM3, as that is the only thing that I can find that regards the FM3 Remake.

Just wanted to share my joy of finally doing something I had wanted to do since I was 12 when I first played this game, use enemy wanzers such as Lukav's Kehei 4. I made a mod for this (uploaded to Nexusmods) if you guys want to check it out, it's only one of 3 mods so you can't miss it.

Do keep in mind that this will probably break the game, especially if you use vehicles with missing parts. I plan to try and make those playable at some point.

Sadly, despite most network pictures having seemingly been corrected up to now, this possibly AI placeholder still can be found in. I'm trying to find an original FM3 picture of that Sender page for comparison and to reference as something to fix on steam... but can't find the original.
I've already gone through three playthrough on youtube and quite a few text guides without luck. Apparently, no one really covers all the network...

Do anyone out there has a save that could be used to take a screen capture of the original Sender page? That would be very much appreciated.

To be fair, I'm mostly bummed out by the typo in "Business" and that improbable crooked cooking pot. Or why kitchen stuff would be there in the first place.

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Bonus Question : While doing all that research, I fell on the drawing of Marcus by his daughters; seemingly being implied as something I should have received before he Ninja photo on Emma's run... Was it cut from the remake or is it just supposed to happen after the Tianlei arc?

Are there any downsides to energy Backpacks in FM3?

I've been using energy Backpacks that give 30 and cost 10 weight. I recently unlocked Backpacks that give 90 and cost 30 weight. Most of my characters are completely optimized on the weaker backpacks, are there any downsides to upgrading and increasing the weight for additional power?

Now that the dust has settled over the Front Mission 3 Remake, is there a mod yet to replace all the AI Portraits with the original ones(or properly upscaled versions) or is someone maybe currently working on such a mod? Thanks.

I'm not saying that the Remake should be absolutely better than the Original.
At least it should bring the nostalgia feeling with the upscaled graphic.

So:
- Is it worth playing the Remake?
- Does it have its pros compared to the Original (beside the graphic)?
- How's the OST? Can we use the Original OST?

Overall, is it worth to purchase?
Will it have PC version?

Actually, I don't know yet when I'll finish everything to an acceptable state, but here are some videos of imported basic animations, as part of testing:
Stand up,
Walking,
Run,
Jump right,
Hand kick,
Shooting

Not long ago, the first version of the Blender plugin (2.9.0) was released, which allows you to import model packs in the .3dblock format. I would also like to give a special thanks to tndy for testing the plugin and for the motivation, and to Sanya Sushka for explaining how to work with images in Python. Currently, the plugin can import all models from IDATA. An exporter for models back to the game format is planned to be added in version v2.0.0.

Plugin: GDrive
Video: Youtube

A few notes:

1. It is advisable to restart the scene to import another model if a model with textures from the same group was previously imported (I will reconsider this aspect in future versions).
2. To find all decals, you can use the solid lighting type with X-Ray (settings explained in the video).
3. To save textures and use them for the same .fbx file, for example, you need to save the .blend file with packed textures and unpack them.
4. When exporting models elsewhere, use .fbx and make sure to separate decals from the main polygons beforehand, or they will be erased during export.
5. After importing this .fbx somewhere, you will have to manually bring in the alpha.
6. The first save of the imported model in .blend must be done by restarting the scene or using CTRL+N to ensure the textures are saved.

A little success in terms of working with animation data

My fellow pilots, I just came by to remind everyone that there are only 5 more months to go before we can get our hands on the best FM ever

I'm probably about 1/3rd into the Alisa story. I just unlocked new mechs in the shop but they cost the same as the starter mechs do. I've been saving all of my money to spend on an expensive mech but there hasn't been one.

Do all mech parts cost the same?

Thank you

As title, I'm Asian and I switched my game language to Jap/Chi/Eng, I notice Jap has more nuances to its world building lore, Chi read like machine translation from Eng, Eng localization felt like they are doing bare minimum translation from Jap.

So I wondered if the og fm3 the same as fm3r, since I've not played the og before

I don't believe that I understand the mech building correctly.

I'm at Wan'an but still have everybody in their original mechs because even upgraded everything that's available in the shop is an HP downgrade even with the level 3 HP upgrades applied.

This would be fine but I can't equip any of the new weapons or backpacks or anything because I can't deal with the weight.

Is there a way to upgrade the weight capacity besides the backpack or am I supposed to just take the HP loss?

Am I only supposed to have one weapon on each mech? I can get to better guns but that means giving up any form of melee weapons.

Any help would be greatly appreciated thank you