Palette & Mold glitches with Monster Formations

So things have been going well on this project--maybe I should start a thread in the Personal Projects forum when I have stuff to post that isn't related to the topic at hand.

Anyway, I ran into another glitch that I can't see any way getting around, and honestly I may just leave this one be, since it only comes up when you are in Magitek Armor: (the formation is just fine on the Veldt, as you can see below)



From what I've learned from the molds, here is my hypothesis of what's going on--I'm curious if this has already been discovered yet. The game only allows monster sprites to essentially fit within a 128x128 frame, or 16384 pixels. Meanwhile, the character sprites each take up a 16x24 frame. Multiplied by 4, that means 1536 pixels are normally dedicated there. Add up the two and the total maximum sprite pixels comes out to 17920.

When Magitek Armor is on the screen, however, it looks like the share of pixels that go to the characters increase to 32x64 per character (32x32 for the armor itself and then another 32x32 for the character, since he/she is now centered inside in the armor). Multiply 32x64x3 (I never actively realized there's always three characters each time you normally wear Magitek Armor) and that means 6144 pixels are dedicated to the characters.

As we can see in the first image, it appears that those extra pixels are taken away from the monsters' share. With three 64x64 pixel monsters in formation (Io's sprite was originally bigger but I shrunk it down so I could use a palette swap in other big formations), it is calling for a total of 12288 pixels to be used. However, 12288+6144=18432, which is greater than the 17920 that I believe to be the maximum total allowed. As such, that one 32x32 square cut out from Sky Cap is a repeat of the third Magitek Armor. Subtract that 32x32 square (1024 pixels) from 18432 and you get 17408, which is below that hypothesized 17920 threshold.

On a separate note, I really wish that the game allowed molds of a 32x64 dimension that were landscape oriented (it only has it portrait oriented, for sprites like Guard, Soldier, Trapper, etc). This would allow me to do some more manipulation to consolidate formations even further. I'd love to try to hack the molds but I'm discovering that my assembly knowledge is not that good.