Super Robot Wars F - Speedrun Route WIP

Game: Super Robot Wars F
Platform: Saturn
Version: 1.0
Category: Any% Super route
Completion time: 9:23:46
Time starts: Character creation finalized
Time stops: Continuing from final intermission

Route notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h...

This is a speedrun route demonstration video for Super Robot Wars F that was played on an emulator using savestates. Because loading times are not comparable between an emulator and real hardware, you should expect to lose a significant amount of time if you plan to follow this route on an actual Saturn. (Note that I intentionally edited out the anime scenes for reasons that I hope are obvious.)

Speaking of the Saturn, this route specifically uses the 1.0 Saturn version. Some bugs were patched out in later revisions, and that includes the one that this route heavily relies on: the "pilot alter ego bug" (パイロット分身バグ). This bug allows you to duplicate pilots and robots practically at will, which is HIGHLY useful for the run. Said bug was discovered by @test_srwf (Twitter), the owner of http://srw.g1.xrea.com. That site basically explains anything you could possibly want to know about this game, and was extremely helpful for routing this run.

In order to use this bug, you need the Super Gundam. You get the G-Defensor early on in the Super route, but fairly late in the Real route. For that reason, the Super route is by far the better choice. Once you have the Super Gundam, the actual bug is very easy to do:

1. Combine the Gundam Mk II and G-Defensor to form Super Gundam
2. Destroy the Super Gundam by any means (self-destruct or get shot down)

This causes the internal unit order to get screwed up, and allows you to move a pilot "from" the Super Gundam into another unit without actually moving them. If you repeatedly switch back and forth between the Gundam Mk II and other units, you can have the same pilot assigned to multiple units at the same time. Once you're done cloning the pilot, you can place them in the unit that you actually want them to use. Deploying this pilot multiple times will cause that unit to appear for each instance.

If you clone a pilot and place them into the G-Defensor, you can cram all of them into the same Super Gundam. The SP pool is shared between all clones (sadly), but all experience gain is accumulated separately. This means that if you stack 10 clones in there, any combat experience will be multiplied 10 times over. If you use Gain on top of this, you can gain an enormous amount of experience in a single battle.

If you place the cloned pilot into the Gundam Mk II instead, you can form Super Gundam by combining two of them. If you then destroy the Super Gundam, the game considers the G-Defensor pilot to be dead. That pilot gains infinite SP, but only certain spirits apply the proper effect. Conveniently, Rally is one of the spirits that functions properly in this state.

It's also worth noting that you can have multiple characters cloned at the same time. Because self-destructing is the quickest and easiest way to destroy the Super Gundam for infinite SP, it's useful to have a couple Bernie clones around for this purpose.

Putting all three of these things together, you might be able to guess what this run quickly becomes. You only ever get access to three characters with MAP weapons: Bright, Elle, and Quattro. Bright can't reach 200 reflex (the double move threshold) in F, so his usefulness is limited even if you overlook his fairly weak RNG attack stat. Elle reaches double move at level 40, but her RNG attack stat is complete trash on top of other ship issues. Quattro is entirely useless, since he joins during the final map.

Because MAP weapons don't seem to be a viable option, you need to pick a strong single-target attacker. Amuro is by far your strongest option for this purpose. He can level up quickly, clone himself, and has double move access starting at level 30. No contest there.

Moving on to the route itself, the primary goal is to activate the pilot alter ego bug. Once activated, I use it to clone Amuro and place him in the G-Defensor. Emma carts all these Amuro clones around to find a boss to finish off. Taking full advantage of the experience gain curve with Gain and a bunch of Amuro's means that he can reach level 40 (the cap in F) in a single battle. From there, well...you know. There isn't much the enemies can do against a ton of 150 morale Amuro's firing from outside their range multiple times per turn.

That about covers the most important bits of the run. It's not a very exciting run once the Amuro stuff kicks in, but I just don't really see a faster alternative. Hopefully you enjoy Main Theme, because OH BOY do you hear it.

As far as optimizations go, I'm sure there are many. Repair grinding Koji/Sayaka is the most obvious one (a relic from an old route). Overall though, I'd say the route is solid.