It depends on what you're doing. Sometimes you put her in a fairly ordinary AR/SMG team alongside STAR15 and maybe SOPMOD. Sometimes you put her alongside two other dolls in a three man echelon for some kinda hands off AFK farming team. Sometimes you put her in a team of four handguns to buff her. Or sometimes you pair her with a rifle and three handguns.
When you go all in on buffing the railgun, you often set M4's skill to manual activation since it has a 4 second ICD. Then, once the handguns activate their buffs (usually 6 seconds), retreat two handguns and activate the skill. The railgun scales better with firepower and rate of fire buffs instead of crit because of how the damage is calculated (IIRC the main hit can't crit, but the AOE can?).
During Continuum Turbulence, the popular team for taking down the boss and the most powerful gundams was M4/M14 mod 3/Stetchkin/Calico/Mk23. Sometimes people talk about "Double Jupiter" teams, and they're talking about pretty much the same setup except IWS2000 instead of M14.
One AFK farming team for 10-4E is M4 in position 3, Grape in position 1, and virtually any doll that you want to drag along for XP in position 2.
She doesn't need the speq. The Speq is mostly handy for allowing one to go longer on certain farming setups before they might have to repair. IIRC the setup with her and grape for 10-4E farming means she'll take some damage for the cyclops units.
Also, I want to re-iterate that we'll be having the second anniversary event in May. That means that we'll most likely get rate ups for dolls, fairies, and equipment. Maybe even HOC data too. So it may be prudent to assess your resource expenditures carefully and save up for for the rate up. Don't forget to check to see if you have enough construction tickets and quick construction tickets to support your building spree.
Also, we're expecting to get an item called a True Core Mask. Last year it was handed out as part of a login event. TCMs can be exchanged for any 5* doll in the construction and heavy construction pools. So for example rare 5* dolls like Grape will likely be common picks for TCMs. Shotguns are legal targets too, so a lot of people will likely be picking SAT8 or some other 5* shotgun. However limited event dolls like Groza and Python are not legal targets since they aren't in the construction pools. Likewise, collaboration dolls are not legal targets since they're not in the construction pool. There's also a unique profile portrait that you can exchange it for if you're a madman.
The TCMs will expire at the end of the anniversary event, so you can't just horde it forever. But you can at least hold on to it until that point in the hopes that you hit the jackpot during the rate ups.
My personal goals are to roll for a few more 5* capes, lots of fairies, and to use my TCM for one of the 5* shotguns that I'm missing.
i'm at like 80k on all resources, 200 something tdoll tickets and 300 something equipment tickets atm. trying pretty hard to not roll for anything so i can dump everything into handguns, rifles, exoskeletons, and scopes.
Yeah, I'd suggest probably shifting to the handgun recipes at this point. This will let you quickly hit the soft cap and allow for crafting more 500/500/500/500 fairies. Can't really recommend recipes for cheap equip crafting because it's a crap shoot, though voodoo isn't too bad compared to the official recipes and what's a good use of resources is going to depend on what you have and need.
As for TCM, I'd say that S.A.T 8 is probably the best option for anyone that doesn't have her. Shotguns are expensive to craft and even though there are alternatives to get around not having her, I feel like when she would be a fantastic options, is when you really feel the lack of her in your roster. Like in current' theater, I wish I had her because even if I go with the taunt setup because it can mean zero damage on the echelon against uhlans, I dread getting saving waves of those things. I know someone is going to say this is sacrilege, but FP-6 might just barely edge out Grape. First off, she is a shotgun, so rage crafting for her isn't exactly an option and theater just showed how she could be rather strong, since you can rotate shield use between her and S.A.T 8 to have almost 100 percent uptime on shields. If you're really good, you could also probably get some good impact from the knockback in her skill as well. I'd also say Grape has fallen down on the list, now that we have some alternatives to her. Sure NTW mod and M82A1 aren't nearly as good, one is a limited drop that people will have to wait for events on and the other is a mod which is an investment, but there are options and one of those is available if you can get NTW who is a more common drop and are willing to raise and mod her. I will say, Grape is a very close third behind FP-6 and even though rage crafting rifles is cheaper than machineguns, she does have a harder to fill niche than any of the op machine guns and she is really rare. After grape, I'd probably look at the two 5* machineguns in the big four because machine have continued to be relevant. I'd also say both AK12 and AN94 are also good ones to consider because they are both really rare and really useful. Well AK12 has issue that you might be in my position where you don't have a spot for her because SOP and Star are filling position 1 in your ARSMG teams, but definitely worth raising. Can't forget Contender either, if you have to use your mask on a handgun, she'd be the one IMO. Finally, if you have all the already mentioned units, I'd look into M200, IWS, MDR, Suomi & RFB since those are all units that can fill some important roles in echelon lineups for certain things. If none of what I mention is something you need, grats on having all the really good guns that are probably in the 11 for TCM usage an enjoy getting your icon, unless RNG played a cruel joke on you and left you without some other useful gun or you're really lucky and got the most meta units before everything else.
Also the two handguns we get for DJMax are suppose to be really good, so probably try to adjust your leveling plans to get them to 90 before Isomer because you'll want more handguns to support all the rifles we're suppose to need.
The DJMAX collab should also be a bit friendlier than the Vallhalla collab since IIRC its dolls are event shop rewards or map clear rewards. IE, it's just like the White Day event that just ended in that you can earn event currency every day which can be exchanged for prizes in the event shop. So no RNG grinding as you pray for limited dolls to drop. Also, IIRC the cosmetic costumes are shop bundles, so if you want them you just buy them instead of being at the mercy of gacha RNG. I vastly prefer the "just buy the cosmetic" approach. I'm curious which approach the Gunslinger Girl collab will follow? AFAIK the Valhalla collab was the only one that has had gacha costumes. Fingers crossed that that was simply a decision on the vallhalla dev's part of the contract rather than a new precedent.
As for generic equipment recipes, 150x4 and 151x4 treated me pretty well in the first year for getting me a well rounded assortment of equipment. I only really shifted things up last fall when I shifted to 50/250/150/150 for HV ammo. I probably stayed on that recipe too long, and now I've swapped over to 270/40/270/190 for capes.
Managed to get to 32161 as my top score yesterday. Still in the top 39% for final battle and top 10% for overall score . . .
I do have to consider that some of the people ahead of me on final battle might be sitting on resources, so I might not get into top 10%. If I'm doing the math right, looks like we have 5 more days, if we include today. Thinking it might be worth my while to dump reports on the three advantaged units I have for Core 8 to get them to 90 because that's the last big boost I'd from them. It'll be a huge tick up in their CE and I think that would mean I'll be less than 1% short of the full 24% bonus and might be able to score consistently in the 32300-32400 range. I doubt it'll do much for the final battle score, since there are a ton of people CE stacking and I strongly suspect I'll be lucky if I breaking in the top 38% or lower. On the other hand, seeing a ton of these people mention not getting both their core 8 runs in full because of bad RNG, which gives me some hope that I'm a little more secure in top 10% than I think (also forgot to spend mats yesterday). I figure I'll try to get into a spot where I continue to boost my total score and hope that keeps me in the top 10%. So also have to hope I do well at scouting. Pretty sure getting my three advantaged dolls to 90 today will put me in the best spot I can hope for because even if it's just another 300-500 points, that adds up in five days and could be he difference. Also need to keep an eye out for any pure evasion exos that drop into my lap since I have like 4 ARs running with that slot empty and might as well get the free CE padding there.
So critiques of theater:
-CE formula needs an overhaul. For starters, 2* slugs should never be considered a better choice than gold equips ever. I mean sure, there does seem to be a point where the diminishing returns for CE get massive and I do get a laugh at of the fact that I'm likely kicking the asses of people that should easily be ahead of me and likely would be given my screws up days 1 and 2 of Core 8 being open. If I was more on he ball, could have been in day 1 and because of absent mindedness on day 2, I ended up not enhancing units I leveled for core 8, which would have gotten me through it definitely that day and then absent mindedly clicking core 8 map and not being able to complete it, so I got a 3K score. Anyways, CE formula is really fucking dumb right now and encouraging really bad choices. Sure I'm happy that it's probably going to result in me getting into the top 10% for total score and I do value the 25 extra special combat reports, advance data, intermediate data, batteries and however many AT4 fragments I get out of that way more than 2-3k of each basic resources because those are all much harder to obtain quickly and are proving to be the real bottle necks for improvements.
-The menu needs an update. You have to go to main menu before you can go anywhere else. Also really bugs me that it's easy to pop into a menu and unless you memorize which picks go with which stage, you have no idea what stage you're on. That should be listed because absent minded clicks do happen and the at a glance info is kind of useless. Not to mention they bury all the units you do want to know about all the trash units. At a glance, icons of strelets tell me nothing, but icons of uhlans tell me a lot.
-Don't really care for scouting. Some of that is because I'm not great at it. So far 5 perfects, 4 draws, 1 abstention and 6 losses. God I suck at this, also another area that needs better menus because it only tells you your perfect tally. Pretty sure, I'm still coming out ahead on scouting because most of my perfects have been big wins and most of my losses have been before we had the full drone count.
-There probably should be a penalty for sitting on resources above a certain amount once we unlock core zone. AT least we didn't get the BS that KR had where progress grinded to a halt because a ton of players sat on their resources to fuck people over for the top 100. Didn't really impact people that could get there because they had the stuff to clear Core 8 with lvl 1 camps, but boy did it fuck over all the people who couldn't manage past core 4 or higher. it's also annoying to think that one's rank could shift a ton because people are like 'lolololol gonna backstab by dumping resources on the last day!" Not only is it annoying, but those are resources that could have been dumped when core opened to get camps max quicker, so it defeats the idea of this being cooperative as well. If it were me designing this, code it so that core has to open first and that someone has to check theater when core is open. This ensure that people can stock up for core because some of the zone structures aren't worth investing in and ensures the setup can't fuck someone over if they can't log in for any reason once core opens. I want to say 10k is probably above the max someone can get in a day and I can see a scenario where someone finishes there runs and forgets or is unable to spend those resources and they aren't trying to be a backstabbing dick about it. Assuming that people are saving 2-3 for scouting just in case. I'd set the cap at 13-14K for materials. If you're below that nothing happens, if you hit that and try to leave theater the game will send a prompt "Dear commander, your materials are well above what is deemed acceptable for stockpiles kept for unexpected situations. Such hoarding is against the spirit of cooperation we wish to encourage. You are advised to spend those resources and fairly to do so will result in anything above the acceptable cap being forfeit. Any materials that are forfeited will give no points towards your final score. Also note any forfeited materials will be put towards structures that can be upgraded." Sure it's a bit heavy handed and we didn't get the shit show that KR had, but I wouldn't mind seeing something in place to prevent that. If it's around 13-14k that allows for a rainy day fund and anticipating that sometimes people don't spend their materials for non-backstabby reasons. Finally, it would make the ranking board before the final much more reliable. Granted, the big one for me is mostly the having a safeguard to prevent the bullshit that KR saw, where low and mid tier players were forced to pointlessly suffer because people assumed doing that would make their prospects of getting into the top 100 easier. I'm pretty sure that's the group that likely has invested enough into 2B and AGs that they could use them to kill a gundam wave or maybe they'd need to weave AT4 in instead of AGS, something they could likely do easily. They likely have the needed comp for uhlans, that would allow for not needing taunt. Also probably have a good solution for striker waves. Granted there is probably a group that is screwing themselves as well because they wouldn't be able to hack more than 5 gundams or 2-3 uhlans.
Of those, probably the one that is annoying me most is how BS the CE formula is, but that's likely because EN didn't have enough idiots willing to brick server progression for a non-existent chance to boost their prospects of getting into the top 100. Honestly, if that had happened, I'd be pretty pissed. Sadly, it could happen in future theater runs because as far as I can tell, there are zero safeguards in place against it.
I'll try to right up some of my own thoughts about theater later tonight when I have more free time, but for now I want to draw attention to one of the shop bundles.
In honor of it being April 16, there is a "416" bundle in the shop. If you are the sort that expects that they'll be buying tokens with gems at some point in the future, then you may want to consider picking up the bundle now or sometime in the next 11 days while it's being offered.
It contains the following at a cost of 1760 Gems:
416 tokens
One Oath certificate
200 pure samples
1000 intermediate training data
416 advanced training data
10 strawberry cheesecake
Normally tokens are sold at a rate of 600 gems per 100 tokens. So 400 tokens would cost you 2400 gems. So purely from a perspective of "I'm probably eventually gonna cash in my gems on tokens for a costume gacha that I like", then this pack is a bargain for the tokens alone. The samples and cheesecake aren't particularly useful, but the training data and oath certificate sure can be.
As always, I advise people to spend wisely when dealing with mobile games. I am not advocating for running out to buy gems to grab the bundle. Just that if you know that you are the sort who will end up buying tokens, then I wanted to bring attention to an opportunity to get some tokens at a slightly cheaper rate.
I'll write up a post on the things that I enjoyed with theater once it finishes. Thus far, I'll say that overall I like it more than I hate it because I do think it does some things pretty well. I probably could do it now, but want to see how things play out.
As for the bundle. If you're willing to pay for tokens and are semi-serious about ranking, it's a really good deal IMO. Like you said, the tokens are worth more than the gem cost. The people over at gamepress actually did the math. Data put together is worth 300 gems, so a little over a sixth of what you're paying for the bundle. Oath is 580 gems, so somewhere around a third of what you're paying. I don't think it's worth buying sample data, but since it's here, they listed it out as being worth 300 gems, again I don't think it's worth buying because RNG could make that not worth it. I'm just going to include it because it is a thing that shows up in the shop for gems and I should at least be fair to list what Mica has valued it out. Instead of writing it off as non-existent the way I'm doing for the cheesecake, but seriously, never buy a bundle if you have to rely on the "gem value" of sample data to break even. Hell, I'd say never get a bundle if the "gem value" of sample data isn't render completely irrelevant to getting anything in it at a discount. Luckily, for this bundle, the tokens along get you a steal and then the items that are worth a damn for gem purchases (data and oath) are worth about half the bundle price, so it's a really good deal if you do intend to buy tokens with gems and do semi-serious ranking. A good deal if you are willing to buy tokens. Not worth it, if you only want to spend your gems on stuff that improves units because the performance boosting items, that are pure RNG, in the pack are only worth 50% of the gems spent.
Anyways, have some theories on how scoring might work based on my experiences thus far and looking at the top 100. One thing that I did note yesterday is that my best score, 32161, had me losing I believe one link on contender and 2 each on RO and CM-S. The run I did after, I had lost at least 2 links on contender, maybe three and both RO and C-MS had lost 3 links. The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure that score was 32158, that's three points lower than my first run yesterday despite only losing double the links. Also that score is still within less than 900 of the top score. Also need to consider other differences between me and the top spots.
For fairies, I have a lvl 95 2* command fairy (SL4), lvl 81 2* Airstrike (SL10), lvl 78 3* Artillery (SL8), lvl 80 3* taunt (SL10), lvl 74 1* Paradrop (SL10) and lvl 77 illumination (SL10). Listing skill level because I suppose it could be a factor in how the game weights echelon CE. I certainly does that for HoCs.
For HoC: AGS lvl 82 (s1 SL10, s2 SL2, s3 SL10) CE IIRC was about 9600, BGM lvl 80 (s1 SL10, s2 SL10, s3 SL2) CE 13768, 2B lvl 80 (s1 SL10, s2 SL7, s3 SL9) CE IIRC was about 4900. I didn't think to record CE for AGs or 2B before tweaking them further. 2B has had one chip replaced to reduce empty squares and the third skill maxed, while AGS has gone up two more levels.
Rather than list out everything for t-dolls used. 22 slots with greens, 3 empty equip slots, 8 speqs, one speq at lvl 4 enhancement, I'd hazard maybe a third of the golds aren't fully calibrated or beyond lvl 5 enhancement. an advantage bonus of like 22.2% (or whatever one gets with three lvl 80 advantaged dolls), 6 mod 3 dolls that are oathed. Three 115s and 116s. 9 lvl 100s, a lvl 99, two lvl 98s, a 96, a 95, a 92, a 91 & 5 lvl 90s. All mods that aren't UMP have max for all their skills. Maybe a quarter of the units have max skill levels, most are at SL8 and a hand full are SL7 with M16 being the only at SL3 and RFB being at SL6 IIRC.
So there are probably a ton of areas where the top players are getting CE that isn't padding if we assume they've gotten all their units to lvl 100, have maxed gold equips in every slot, max level 5* fairies, max level 5* HoCs (maybe even higher star HoCs). Skill levels is a bit murkier because I suspect I might be investing in some skills not worth maxing, but I'd wager on average their skill investment has to be higher and this is assuming that skill levels are some how counted in the CE average for the judge fight.
Anyway you hack it, this doesn't look good for two arguments. The first is that lost links and damage really hurt. I have a theory that they might give a hidden bonus for having full links and maybe their is a negative multiplier that requires certain thresholds to be met. For the negative modifier I'm pretty sure it exists if stuff gets critically damage because that is a thing for repair timers. I'd also say it probably goes up when a certain number of links are last, if there is one for lost links. It's a shame we can't really test this. Though I'm going to hazard a guess that one probably wants to spread out damage if they get close to critical damage and can afford to do so. That CE padding for CE padding sake is worth it, I'm less than 900 points away from the top spot with a setup that is not at all close to maximum optimization. I'd hazard unit, fairy and HoC levels, along with unit rarity probably do more for CE values, than fully enhance a bunch of 5* slugs. Also that the advantaged dolls are probably the bigger thing to work towards for point padding. Also another comment to keep in mind from the folks running the gamepress articles where they do a daily run down on their scouting predictions (which you should read for lols and not serious advice on where to scout) pointed at that the current number 1 isn't even going out of his way to pad his score, he is there because he has guess correctly on all scouting outcomes. So anyone kneecapping themselves on Core 8 is a fool because at best they do actually get a higher ranking for a few hundred more base resources that can be farmed in logistics, while ensuring that they can't get themselves more of the harder to acquire resources.
My thoughts on the CE stacking is that while I thought it was kinda dumb at first, when you think about it, how can you have a serious leaderboard at the upper tiers where everyone is capable of clearing the content flawlessly? The answer is to introduce a system where players can boost their score by adopting a handicap, and that's essentially what we have here by the CE padding encouraging the creation of nonsensical echelons that are poorly suited for clearing the content. So at the highest tier of the scoreboard the question is no longer "can you clear ten waves with your six echelons?" It's "can you clear the ten waves with about two or so echelons with the rest being unsuited for combat? Yes it also favors the whales and those with tons of free time on their hands who have run 0-2 several thousand times and who get their basic and intermediate data from grinding mystery nodes, but I can't really fault the game for throwing an advantage to its most serious players.
The biggest thing that bugs me about the CE stacking isn't the system itself but the fact that I had TONS gold slug ammo six months ago. I didn't realize that it would have a silly use in Theater (same goes for blue/green armor). So, since I knew that slugs are generally inferior in most every case, I opted to keep three on the off chance that they'd be useful in combat some day and fed the rest to boost one of the slugs to +9. I really wish that I still had those slugs right now.
The other thing is that I question if it was really that big of a deal if some people were withholding resources in the buildup to core 8. First of all, I don't think that the EN playerbase has that cutthroat of a mentality as the KR one. But put that aside for a second. If inadequate base infrastructure is holding you back, then you probably aren't in the running for top 100 anyway. You're shooting for one of the percentage brackets, and a lot of players are likely being inhibited just like you. You just need to fare a bit better than the rest of the pack. There is some sticky business once the MAX shielded enemies start coming into play where the presence or absence of BGM spells the difference between a clear and a wipe. Your daily freebie should help ward off bad RNG with MAX shielded enemies to an extent, but I still suspect that from a big picture standpoint that people will settle in to the same approximate leaderboard positions regardless the hardships thrown their way. From what I'm seeing though, it looks like the capacity of clearing core 8 is pretty much an assured ticket to the top 15% slot which is notable for being how high you want to score to walk away with a 5* HOC after two arena seasons. Anything above that is kinda prestige territory IMO.
All of that said though, it still feels like crap to get backstabbed like that and ostensibly this is supposed to be a co-operative event. So I think that they should be encouraging people to spend resources on facilities as a safety valve to try to ensure at least a minimum level of production rate. Maybe some kind of event quest where you get some loot for spending X materials on construction?
I'm still trying to min-max my score a bit. I reworked some of my teams today. Basically I dissolved the AR team squad and replaced AN-94 and K11 with M4 and SOPMOD in my anti-striker team. It is now my anti-striker team's job to clear out strikers, rodelleros, prowlers, and strelet swarms. Definitely a lot more pressure on the squad there. As of right now my CE against judge is 17996, and my new personal best score for core 8 is 32891. I'd really like to push that above 32900. I think that's in reach since my AA-12 is only 3x linked right now, but I'm out of cores. I think that my echelons might be capable of top 100 IF my skills were all leveled and all of their gear was leveled too, but I don't think that's worth the expenditure of resources with a fairy rate up around the corner. I'll be farming a lot of basic training data this weekend to try to shore up everyone to level 4 skills at least, and I'll try to run some night maps to hopefully find some white slugs at least to fill out the last few gaps of gear minmaxing. Also, I'm back off to the 10-4E mines to try to get some more cores for AA-12.
edit:
I'm also going to try to rework the SG/MG echelons to make sure that at least one of them is a serious SG/MG team instead of pure CE fodder. I suspect that one of them could probably clear the strelet swarm or the rodellero waves, which would take some pressure off of the anti-striker team.
I'd have less issues with CE if the thing actually did what it's billed to do and some of the "this is better CE value" make no sense. Lack of communication of what their plans were also didn't help, I've gotten gold slugs that I've used to enhance one gold slug because conventional wisdom what that only one was needed.
As for it being a way to make things more interesting for the top players. I do like the idea of giving people more points for handicapping themselves, it's not a bad idea, but the current system is just bad because of how CE is billed. More CE is supposed to mean you're more effective in combat, but that's not really how it works. Not entirely sure the devs realized that this would result in people running sup-optimal comps that are uber padded and limit themselves to as few units as possible. If so, thing s probably would work better if they came up with a system for how people could handicap themselves to get a higher score that won't send the mixed signals that CE sends.
Also on scouting, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of how big a part that can play in scoring. On one hand, yes, it's interesting in that it shakes things up, but on the other hand it's making things too much about being a good guesser. So I'd like to see it's impact on things matter less, thus I'd like to see the points from it get nerfed.
Well, from what I've read from the KR incident. The issue was the backstabbing that went against cooperative play, just resulted in theater being fuck awful for everyone that didn't have a shot at top 100 and many of them likely knew it. The lack of camp upgrades meant that contend they'd have an easier time with was either off limits or just horrible to do. Given what this is billed as and the potential of ruining the game for people, there really should be a safeguard. A daily quest might not be a bad idea. People that are trying to be jerks have pointed out that what you really want to do is save up resources for core. Don't think there really is an issue as long as stuff is put into core to get camps up and running for those of us that need or want them. I know currently and probably for a few future theaters, I need the structures upgrades in order to consistently clear core 8. I know I'm not an uber player and I also know I don't want to uber my way through several waves of gundams without adequate HoC support in core 8.
I think someone has mentioned that you could use SGMGs against street day swarms that are either pure strelets or come with rodeleros. Pure street swarm is AFKable, it's the one with rodeleros that is a pain. I would say for that one, you'd want an HoC to strip shields so they go down quickly. If 2SGHG2MG is viable, I'd see if you could get one where the maximum CE lets you have a setup like this.
MG I Empty I SG
Empty I HG I SG
MG I Empty I Empty
That would let you move the SG in 9 to 8. Move HG in 5 to 2. Then if can't get the SG out of the way in time, you can either pop shield if the SG has one or retreat and have the other SG step in can get aggro, but don't know how feasible that is. Though if this is a dedicated echelon for that and you don't need taunt or fairy commands for other waves. That setup also lets you run SG in 6 to 8 and drop the HG into 2 still. Ideally you kill the rodeleros before the taunt dies. Honestly, thinking about it, if you can spare the taunt fairy and the commands you'd want for this one for Rodelero control. Taunt also lets
MG I Empty I SG
Empty I HG I Empty
MG I Empty I SG
Setups work as well. If anything has to hoof it, you really want it to be the HG because they can pull that off with time to spare and Rodeleros are probably the only real threat in those groups once you have enough armor. I mean strelts might take forever to kill and you might want to invest in some accuracy to ensure that they don't stay up long enough to slowly kill your SG or SGs one damage per hit.
Well my tweaking let me get to a score of 32404 and a bonus of 23.1%. I know I said I wasn't going to raise the three advantaged units to 100, but I'm going to give it a shot. Granted, some of score boost was getting a level on python, upgrading at least 2 more gold pieces to max, getting RO's skill to max, 2B's third skill to max and filling in an empty slot. So 10-20 points might be from stuff unrelated to bonus units. I think I could maybe get into the 32500s by hitting 100 on those units, but after that gains will be really hard. I haven't needed my 2nd anti-striker team but I'm afraid the moment I pack it up for a SGMG echelon, the game will chuck two runs of 7 strikers waves at me, so that I have to complete one or end up missing having a complete core 8 run or two. Plus, I suspect the SGMG team would only net me like 20-30 more points, maybe less.
Anyways bad news, someone found a way to test AGS and apparently HoC CE matters not for final boss score. They did this with one run that had AGS with max skills and then the next with AT4 and somehow manage to score in a way to make them comparable. I'll laugh if it was the exact scores. It's probably still worth raising HoC skills because they'll kill things better or if they have a debuff like 2B, that debuff will be more effective. As far as whether it's worth switch AGS out for AT4 now, hard to say, if you're struggling on tanks with AGS+2B and can get AT4 to 60 with 300 pierce from chips, then yes. If AGS+2B are leaving time to spare, it's a big maybe because even though AT4 means devoting 2B use to either striker waves or the last six waves, she is going to be lacking in other others that a raised AGS will not be. I'd say for the next theater, you'll want AT4 properly raised and use her instead of AGS. This also brings up a big question about AGS's second skill. The question becomes how often does she get applied against trash mobs in campaign events, if it's not often then you probably only want to bother with SL4 because precision is only going to help against trash, shield piercing always works and buildings don't have evasion. So the basic data isn't too bad to farm up for the returns you'll get on precision. I'll say everything 2B has is worth maxing because it'll make her a fantastic trash killer, but you'll want to get SL3 maxed before SL2 because it has greater returns and SL2's description makes it seem better than it actually is. BGM's 3rd skill is another that probably needs some thought. I'd wager that anything you can stack it on, is going to be a boss or has shields that need to be brought down ASAP, so it'll be seeing use, probably tot he point where it's worth getting SL7 because the investment of intermediate data will pay off. It's levels 8-10 for the skill that I have doubts about because I don't think BGM is going to have tons of lethality stacked on her and advanced data takes a ton of time to farm up. That said, I do believe the odds of it being worthwhile are probably better than the odds of investing in AGS 2nd skill. Can't really comment too much on AT4's stuff.
BTW Ch. 11 drops on Tuesday of next week, the 21st. So we'll have that to keep people busy until DJMax drops on the 28th. I'll have to see what the logistics missions look like. IIRC they are supposed to be more efficient, but don't know if it's in a way that will supplant any of the good current options. I'm hoping we get a better mission for parts because farming for parts quickly sucks. Finally, they are doing a thing for friended people considered veterans to the game starting on the 21st. So you'll want to figure out how to pull that off. I know it means I need to prune my friend list of at least one inactive to get someone that qualifies for the rewards. Note, you only get the reward package once.
Edit: Also at 9% for overall and 38% for final battle. Now someone mentioned something on reddit that might be worth considering, I'd like to confirm it, but the reason or the close spread of points on the final battle going all the way back to like the 50% range, might be a result of it only counting the fight against judge as the final battle. So if people don't clear core 8, they aren't even making it to the list. With a much smaller pool, it's far easier to be say 629 points behind the number 1 spot and be in the top 38% despite being in the top 9% overall. I'm hoping this is the case because that would mean that if I keep things up, I'm probably safe in the top 10% even fi there are jerks hoarding resources to drop on the last day for "lols." Not to mention, probably some percent of the people ahead of me on final battle score aren't consistently clearing core 8 and/or doing much worse than me on scouting. Though on the scouting front, I did guess C, so that will help my score a decent bit for tomorrow (scouting scores get counted the next day). I'm curious if we'll have the option to scout on Monday or if Sunday will be the last day. Either way, we either have 3 or 4 more days (counting today) for scouting and as things tick down, it's going to have less of a chance of making people either go lower or higher in the rankings. We might actually be at the threshold, where scouting results only matter if you're on the threshold of the reward breakdown (ex. 5k less points could be the difference between being in top 5% or 6%) or if you're in the top 100.
I tweaked my teams a bit. I replaced 5-7 in my anti-gundam team with Python. I was a bit antsy about using IWS2000 without any ROF buffs, but it worked out. The MG/SG team can deal with the strelet swarm as an AFK fight, but it takes three volleys before they chew through them all.
I upped my top score to 32893. That's so close to hitting 32900.
Wait, does that mean even though strawberry's stuff only helps RFs, the buff is applied to any gun in her tiles, even if it does nothing for them? If so, that tells me, I really should have raised her once I knew python was on the way.
Wait, does that mean even though strawberry's stuff only helps RFs, the buff is applied to any gun in her tiles, even if it does nothing for them? If so, that tells me, I really should have raised her once I knew python was on the way.
Give her skill a read one more time. It's easy to miss. Her active only helps rifles, but her passive affects everything in her column.
Completely missed that passive text. Yeah, she'll get raised. Probably will be number 6 on the current list. Once NTW stops being advantaged for expeditions, I want to get her to 115 and she is currently 105. Also want to get to work on IDW, since I'm getting close to memory fragment soft cap. Then I need to get another shotgun to at least 50 if not 55 for 0-2 dragging. Then T-5000 since she might be handy when we're in full rifles frontline and because I have like 5 dupes of her that I've saved for linking. TAC-50 for some shenanigans in DJMax and then Strawberry. Upside is it won't take long to get to here since TAC is already like lvl 78 or 79 and T-5000 is low 60s. Plus, getting a shotgun to 50 or 55 won't take long either.
Anyways, think I can get all the theater advantaged dolls I have to 100 before my runs today. I'm like 10 combat reports worth of xp short, so some more 0-2 dragging should fit the bill. Probably go one report short of what's need to get them to a hundred and drag out the rest of the xp on 0-2 to avoid wastage of combat report exp. Is it a good use of reports, absolutely not. Will it get me a better score in theater, probably. I mean QBU will very likely see some usage and Kar probably will as well, just have to train their skills at some point. JS05 is the only real waste and I'll probably switch her with M16 on one of the logistics teams, since I need her free for saving resources later this month and early next month. Besides they may make JS05's skill not garbage in the future, but I wouldn't bank on it. If nothing else, she is ready to go for expeditions and theater, should she ever be advantaged again.
Edit: So with all advantaged units at 100 and getting the full bonus. 2 more levels on airstrike. Another gold HP maxed out, two empty slots filled with a green and a blue non-tank exo. SOP raised to level 17. Remembering to throw the green slug I picked up yesterday on my other spectator shotgun. Finally, so more improvements to HoCs to hopefully kill things faster. I managed a personal best of 32651. I wasn't expecting to add another 247 points to my final score. I figured it would be barely above 100. At this point, I'm pretty much out of easy avenues for more points. Not really inclined to power level stuff further because the gains will be less with anything that isn't advantaged and it'll take forever to get more levels on fairies. I know for the rest of theater, I'll use the ones that are being used by combat echelons for quests & grinding, on the off chance I do enough to get another level but doubt it happens. I do have 3 X4 exos that haven't bee maxed out, with two that aren't even calibrated, a gold silencer on MP7 in need of enhancing, Kar's scope that I haven't done anything with, UMP's speq which need calibration and further enhancement and then a bunch of greens that are also in use for theater participants. I might consider getting some of those up to at least 5 for greens and whatever I think is good for the golds, if it's a groups where it's not win more. Problem is I think for most of the greens and the golds, it would be just winning more and I don't think that will be a good use of resources I should start saving for incoming rate-ups because I'm not sure I'm going to get the returns I've been seeing with raising the advantaged units. Getting that last .9% for the bonus applies to everything. Where getting a few more points from some gear, is just a few more points. Like Is strongly suspect it might be a struggle to get in the 32700 range. Though I'll consider my options because if nothing else, good way to claw my way to a safe spot in the current bracket and who knows, maybe top 5% isn't impossible for me (probably is, would have likely had it if I hand screwed up that one day). Only other option that could pay big would be to find a way to make a viable SGMG echelons for pure street swarms and strelets swarms with rodeleros, but I suspect fairy rarity would hold me back. I do want the second group for strikers because RO and CM-S do still take a beating towards the end of 4 striker waves and that's with them getting support (I probably need to do a better job with kiting). Current score is 889369, I'll see where that puts me I the ranking. I'm also sitting on a little over 2k worth of mats, but might stop saving mats at this point. If I'm not trying to level stuff for ranking, I can do that first thing in the morning and Core 8 runs have been consistent, that I just have to remember to send drones before dumping mats into buildings.
Also I'll reveal one bit of my thoughts on scouting. I think C is unlikely to be a winning choice for the rest of theater. To explain this, take the expected point value for each zone and then subtract 30 from the score. Gonna keep it simple and we'll pretend we get a 1 material cost drone.
Win Loss Draw
A 30 -15 0
B 50 -10 10
C 70 -5 20
In short, if someone camps zone C, they need only greater than 1/6 of their deployed drones to be there on days where we have a draw to beat just spending those materials on buildings because you get 30 points for each material on buildings. Every C draw can negate 5 C losses. Every C win negates 14 C losses. Granted this assumes equal number of drones sent per day, which isn't the case. So yesterday saw C get the maximum return. As of right now, there are 8 C losses, 1 win and 8 draws (might be off one because I'm scrolling up and down to see the counts). I don't feel doing the exact math for drones used on losses, wins and draws, but I'd wager at this point that yesterday's C win along with the draws has probably ensured that C only voters are going to come out ahead, even if C losses for the rest of theater. Not to mention, looks like most of the losses were when we had less drones. You'll also probably be dealing with people that realize they are close to the margin or think they are. They'll do one of two things. Either they stop scouting and go for the guarantee of 30 points per material from building construction or they go the safest bet route of voting C because at worst they lose 5 potential points per material spend on drones and if they get a draw, they get 20 more points. My hunch, is that there probably is a good chance that C will lose at least once more if not twice because of that. Partly from a result of the highly cautious group hoping people will second guess and they get another huge payout. At which point, I'm going to say it's likely a coin toss between A & B for the remaining days. The payout for A sucks because if you guess wrong, that's 50% of potential points gone and if you get a draw, you're on par with people that are just dumping into buildings. On the upside, if you win, even if it's only 30 more points, you're still getting more points than anyone else that day. B is slightly better, but people will worry it's too obvious and go with either A or C. So A will win if enough people are really risk adverse that day and go for safer or less painful to lose options. If tons of people are feel risk adverse or think that enough players feel risk adverse, then A losses and B likely gets the win. I will say final day of scouting be that Sunday or Monday will be truly lols, why you might ask. Figure a ton of people will have a pretty good idea of where they are in regards to the bracket margins and realize they can just leave their choice up to a truly RNG setup, even many in the top 100. The only people that will try to logic something out of this chaos will be the few that think they are on the margins of a bracket or know they are and think a scouting win will put them over or keep them in the bracket. Actually, I'd bet good odds that C losses badly that day because that's where those tops decide to go big and hope that no one else has the same idea. Granted, this is EN which has broken records on theater scouting, namely getting over 50% on one zone, which I gather no other server has done. So I'm likely trying to apply logic a very chaotic abyss that may decide to act in a way that defies all expectations to spite me.
Edit Edit: Also worth keeping in mind I'm looking at this through the lens of people that aren't going to read every detail. So they won't get that a draw is actual neutral points for all zones because drones cost the same amount of materials as the points awarded. Now to be fair to some number of these people, the menu interface and conveying of useful information in theater is all sorts of half-assed. If you don't read everything each time you click something, it's pretty easy to see drone cost of 30 because the investigation menu always starts you on zone A. Once you switch zones, the average user and most above average users will not think to read that cost again. Actually, going to revise my early critique of theater, the menu design and display of important information is probably the worth thing about theater. There is key information that is not included where it should be, key information conveyed in convoluted manners and info that users will desire this not made easily accessible. Like I shouldn't have to run a spread sheet or tally chart to quickly figure out my win, loss and draw numbers. Mica really should hire an expert on these things, which would probably be a psychologist of some sort. If they have crunch time as a thing for certain projects, that can easily lead to bad design getting through because the devs probably aren't mentally fit enough at the end of crunch time to realize something is badly designed. Also depending on the execs, most tend to have issues these days, they might not be thinking in terms of good design and if their heads are way up the ass on predatory gacha design, might happily jump at bad design in GFL with the mistaken impression that it'll get them more money. Anyways, we're dealing with the fact that most of EN is likely running on the assumption that drones cost a flat amount regardless of zone deployed. So a ton of C sitters are there not because of the various memes with C, but rather as a result of believing it is the safest bet. If it were me, I'd have all drone costs displayed together because it's pretty easy to see the cost for zone A, which IIRC doesn't specify it's for zone A and conclude they all cost 30 materials. Maybe when I'm feeling less lazy, I'll do the numbers for what people would actually need with all draws being draws and all loses being a 50% reduction in points earned compared to construction. In this context, it actually makes C a worst prospect because that's more points put in, so if you lose that more potential points lost. Again, I'd have to do some math to see how that would look for win loss ratios (aka how much do you have to win to offset losses). IMO even though I'm concluding the interface design is the worse thing about theater now, they really shouldn't have scouting count for nearly as much as it does currently.
Bah, apparently drone costs are the same. Perhaps the whole quarantine is slowly driving me insane. :P
No, going to blame the interface for theater being crap because it kind of is and makes it easy to get things mixed up.
Anyways, I know I said I do this at the end of theater but I don't see much changing in the next day.
So on the off chance that this make sit before the eyes of something that matters for the development of this game, which seems highly unlikely, I'll do a pseudo approach for my theater critique and have my opening positive things be that overall I find theater enjoyable. I'll admit I cam ein with lowered expectations, but getting to play it made me really appreciate some approaches to theater.
No to get the negatives out of the way by starting with the worst.
-The interface, is garbage. I have feeling that all that information did overwhelm some and it's a nightmare to try and pull some information from. The big things that come to mind is that in squadron formation menu, it should tell which map these formations are for and the toughest enemies should be at the top of the list for at a glance reference. No one cares about strelets or prowlers. Scouting menu need s a bit of a clean up, with win loss draw record for the player displayed and probably a separate table that lists the record for zone (how many times A was a draw, a win or a loss). Some other information should probably be made more digestible. Also it should be easier to find advantaged units, I shouldn't have to consult the advantage unit tab to double check multiple times. Also no idea if today is the last scouting day or it's tomorrow. Then people see the 20/25 and are wondering if we'll have a few days of scouting. Should also incorporate the ribbon that allows fast menu changes instead of forcing us all back tot he main screen if we need to do things other than theater or moving gear. Interface being crap isn't unique to theater or GFL, seems fairly common to gacha games and I think that comes back to the predatory nature that many of them use and even though GFL avoids most, if not all of that shit, I wouldn't be surprised if devs brought in, that worked on other games, might not be on the look out for how those projects trained them to intentionally do bad interface design. Bad interface design means users get frustrated and frustrated user make mistakes and if someone makes enough mistakes they might open their wallet to fix it (Like I'm pretty sure this explains some of the really oddball shitty choices for Arknights menu design, as in they don't want you be able to easily check if you're practice mode normal, practice mode challenge, challenge mode or normal mode because if you can, less chances of someone accidently running something that they likely can't complete, thus wasting sanity or time). Thing is, if someone is thinking hard on how not to be another predatory shitty gacha, they probably don't think of the interface that often. I mean when this game frustrates me at times, I'm pretty sure I either need to take a break or if it is bad design on the game's part, it was the devs trying to make a challenge and not realizing that the challenge isn't fun or feel that rewarding when you do beat it. With Arknights, I do think about a third of the shit that really frustrated me was in fact designed to piss me off, in hopes that I either paid money to make it less shit by overpowering it without a huge grind or to fix fuckups. Now, they could also mess up some of this stuff if they do the whole crunch time things, worn out people tend to make dumb decisions, just saying. Could also be a case of Donning Kruger effect, where the devs are well wasted and assume because they are good programmers that they choice of interface can't possible be bad. I do feel hiring a psychologist could go a long way to improving interface design because they can't more easily point out and explain why certain setups can't or won't work with the average user.
-Scouting matters too much. I get the idea is to probably shake things up, but I would like to see the shake up mechanic be something that isn't, "how good are you at shibboleth that is the EN server." I don't know what could be put in it's place because I'm pretty sure they don't want RNG from waves to matter more and that they do want it be something that the top can't just easily skill play and end up with the setup where things are static for most theaters. Maybe it's the best of a multitude of bad options, but seems like there has to be something else to shake up things that'll be a little less aggravating.
-Backstabbing. I'm thinking we didn't see the BS KR experienced, but would like to make that a non-factor and even though I think I might be in a spot where resource hoarding won't fuck me out of the top 10 spot, I'd like to see something in place that makes this shit unrewarding. It goes against the spirit of cooperation and I get the feeling many that do it, do it less for a potential shot at the top spot and more to be dicks and to get off on ruining the experience for others. In my mind, that shouldn't be rewarded, is should be smacked down. Yes, things should be static enough that on the last day the top 100 is still in flux, but I don't think someone should be pumped up thinking they be in the top 5% or 10% and then get punked because enough people held onto enough resources to drop them out of those brackets and they might be sitting in 3% or 8% or hell, if enough do it, you could see someone move 3%. I do like the idea of a quest that makes it so people want to turn stuff in because the rewards are more advantageous than being a dick and make it harder for the dick play to pay off. For instance maybe phase one has a daily that asks for 20 materials, rewards some allotment of resources (data, combat reports, sample whatever) and 100 points. I'm suggesting a small number here because we get like fuck all in the way of points on day one. Also so this doesn't screw up things in core, any mats turned in for this quest will result in 20 materials for each structure, even the unavailable core structures. In phase two, that goes away and we given one where the turn in amount for the daily scales up based on what map is open, up to probably core 6. you want to make sure people can still scout, keep stuff just in case they fucked up and do the daily, but have the amount stop at something reasonable for people that are fairly new. Have it reward 2k worth of points, you don't want to completely hose people that miss a day (I know I nearly did because of power outages), but have it be enough that'll really sting if someone hoards resources. Also like phase 1 daily, each structure will get an equal number of points from the turn in, maybe not 100%, but enough that it was a better turn in option than just dumping stuff in one building (coughHOCschough). Now before someone says "But, Mill, you could still hoard enough to be a dick." You tweak the turn in for buildings in core 2 so that up to like X number of times, for every X amount of materials, you get a loot crate. You pick something that is forgiving to those that might forget to turn stuff in for a day or two, but low enough that people hoarding are just fucking themselves out of free loot because they'll hit a threshold where they'll have maxed out the number of crates they can get.
-CE stacking, I'm going list this as a neutral. There are problems with current CE formula, 2* slugs shouldn't be a better deal than gold items and that is a sign that something is way off. I applaud them for trying to make CE relevant, but I don't think it quite panned out. Armchair's observation of how it's a mechanic to get high end players to handicap themselves is actually pretty good and has made me had this far less, but I don't think the devs foresaw the full impact of this design choice. At best, they figured people would run with less echelons capable of clearing the waves for more MGSG teams and doubt they saw Ceia's one size fits all echelon coming. I'd actually like to see this developed into a proper system where the player is told they could get more points for using as few echelons as possible or not using certain things (maybe bonus points if your AR don't have gold HV ammo). I'm also perfectly fine if this means huge points loss because that fits in the spirit of things. If you overestimate your abilities you et burned, be that going into core 8 from core 6 without being ready or handicapping yourself beyond what your skill allows you to overcome.
-Advantaged dolls. I like seeing dolls made relevant because there are a ton that get mothballed because they are only tier A and not tier S and you only need one. My only concern, is that this probably won't result in some units getting fixes they badly need. If I make a spectator unit, I want that to be a result of either not having the skills trained up, so it's not worth using even at 100 and/or the comp it's in being a really good CE pad, but terrible against the waves in the zone. I don't want to spectator echelons, like what I had, where even if JS05 had max skill level, she'd still be kept in a spectator echelon or discarded altogether if one could get 24% advantaged bonus without her. My concern is someone at Mica will pull up a data chart showing she was used by X number of commanders and decide all is well, while missing that like 90+ percent of those commanders used her as a bench warmer. Advantaged units a great, but I'm hoping too the devs use it as a means to spot troubled units, rather than use it as a means to ignore trouble units.
-No dupes & wave tailoring. I love this because it forces me to look at all units I have on hand because it's easy to forget ones that aren't meta. Meta also forces you to go a more generalist route, unless you can ensure that a specialized unit can avoid stuff that will shred it to be bits. Okay, you get people like Ceia that still make the crazy generalist echelon, but most don't. Also the no duping forces everyone that wants to be creative to be creative because they can't fall back on the same uber units for a dedicated anti-uhlan team, that is separate from the anti-gundam team, but is also separate from the two anti-striker teams that can't be carbon copies of each other.
One thing that isn't negative or positive, is that I would like to see the option for having limited test runs instead of doing the theorycraft, fielding the teams and hoping you didn't just fuck yourself over.
I managed to clear 32900 today with a score of 32903.
Also, I saw someone post a link in one of the Discords about suggestions for Isomer. I'm not sure who the author is, but IMO the suggestions look sound.
A few key points that I think bear mentioning about Isomer preparations:
While rifles have been at the forefront of the hype since evasive Gundams are the big bogeymen of the ranking map, they're not the only opponents that we'll face. We'll also need some ARSMG teams that are geared up to fight ELIDS, SWAP-SF forces, and bosses.
RFB is highly reccomended for engaging SWAP Jaegers.
Shields are highly reccomended against the ELID squads. Handguns that provide shields will be very valuable. As of this moment, only Sei fills that role on the EN server. HOWEVER, Isomer itself will be introducing HS2000 and P22 as crate drop and limited drop units respectively, and those two both outperform Sei in this role. So try to have some combat reports, cores, and skill data earmarked for these new handguns as we make our way into Isomer.
If you haven't upgraded M4 with her neural mod upgrade yet to give her the railgun, then do so because it's REALLY GOOD.
Oh nice I got an M200 and saw that she was niche but good eventually. I guess this is that eventually hah. I got so much stuff to level! Once I finish Five-Seven and SVD I think I'll do M200 and Strawberry next, that seems to be good value.
I'll need to go through that list at some other time. Was already planning on raising MDR for isomer because I saw she had a niche and the next theater will be the exact same setup as this one supposedly, so maybe making striker waves suck less next time. Also a big factor in why I raised RFB the rest of the way from 75 because I had heard she had uses in Isomer and could also help in the second anti-striker echelon. I think I saw a few others on there that I have, but hadn't slotted in for leveling. Was going to have to raise 416 before the event after Isomer since that's when she gets her mod, guess I could raise her now. Don't think I'd grab her speq, assuming singularity will be permanent before Isomer goes live, since you'd probably want a PEQ (though likely want to grab it for dragging purposes, since her grenade damage is the big draw).
I'd have to check, but I think have every rifle slotted to be raised that is recommended, which I currently have and then some. Though saw one or two I had, but wasn't planning on raising anytime soon. G38 being one, might be worth considering since I don't dupe. Still don't have grape. Also same deal with handguns, but don't have steichkin, hoping she drops while I'm in the handgun crafting mode to conserve resources.
Also happy tomorrow is the last day of theater. I'll probably knock it out first thing after bombing 60 nodes in 8-1N and finishing equip crafts. I might be able to squeeze out one more CE on my setup, which is currently 9967 IIRC. I don't think it's worth seeing if I can get more CE on the fairies that I'm using. Doubt RNG will let me get more stars on my HoCs (2B and AGS). I'll have piece of mind knowing that if the forecast was slightly off and the storm system goes further north than expected that a power outage won't fuck me over. Can clear gear off of random units that aren't normally in use or forget to change AN-94 back to a scope before dragging 0-2 with her (feels like the peq results in the tank taking enough damage to double the repair timer). Can also really let the battery stockpile fill up some, still have pets to get and non-essential base structures to upgrade, but HOC power leveling and skill training uses a fuck ton of batteries, namely the skill training. Upside is that the original HoCs are close to being done with skill training. 2B needs like two more levels on her 2nd skill. I think BGM might be done if her 3rd skill is only worth getting to lvl 7, AGS might also be done if it's only really worth getting her second skill to lvl 4. AT4 needs almost everything except the first 4 lvls of her first skill.
IMO that's still pretty good considering that you started playing pretty recently. Sucks a bit to be at the cutoff from the 31% bracket, but maybe you'll squeeze in at the end and get a few more samples for AT-4 out of this.
Well you might still get all the point reward stuff if you're close enough and get good RNG, along with guessing the right zone for scouting. I'm thinking C is going to lose bad tonight because it has the biggest payout and people are probably going to for a hail Mary.
So got a little worried with my final run for theater.
1st run, got a 7th fucking gundam on like wave 10 IIRC. AGs and 2B weren't enough and I don't think AT4 would have saved me either. Had to abort that run. Worse thing was like 5 of them were back to back.
2nd run, got more striker packs than I would have liked, but got it down.
3rd run, got something like 5 uhlans back to back towards the end and this was after getting one on like wave 2. Was afraid wave 10 would be my 7th uhlan wave and 6th uhlan in the back to back group. I thinking I'd probably squeeze it out because I had all three HoCs available, but might lose handguns in front. Thankfully, wave ten was strelets and rodeleros, so didn't need fairy commands and I was out. I of course hit every HoC and bombed the shit out of them. Got my best final battle score too, 32654. Maybe that bumps me back into the 31% group, instead of 32%. I did notice that when I went from 32404 to 32651, that I went from 38% to 31%, so there is some major factor there that is causing that shift.
Current score before final scouting is 1150993 and that's top 8%. Assuming there aren't a ton of asshats sitting on mats behind me, remember to drop today and situated in a way that they can knock me out of top 10%, I'm probably making the cut for top 10%, maybe even staying in top 8%, doubt I'll move up further. Though will be happy with top 10% for the data, batteries, special combat reports and AT4 samples.
collapsed over the line at 31% and exactly the final reward because i forgot i had my resources i hadn't spent
nailed it
edit: lol, decided to pull twice on the radiant and got lee enfield's huntress' frock which would be really cool except I don't have a lee enfield to give it to qq.
My 2B14 dinged 5* today. I'll sift through my chips to see if I can equip her with an "optimal" assortment of chips. Optimal in quotes since IIRC you can't actually max out all of 2B14's stats simultaneously. However I also want to say that maxing out her rate of fire is suboptimal since framerate math causes extra ROF after a certain point to never progress enough to hit the next break point. I've got an infographic somewhere. I'll add it to the other infographics on page 1 once I find it.
I really need to start stockpiling my everything in preparation for the anniversary. I have 30 cores to my name right now, and I'll need more for all of the fairy crafting that I want to do.
Theater got me thinking about things outside of it that could use tweaking as well.
-I've mentioned HoCs are likely way too complicated and they need to do something to make them more intuitive. I think the big offender is the chips and that simplifying things down so that every chip has two stats at equal itemization value, rather 1-4 with random distributions, could go a long way to make them more user friendly.
-Don't know if anyone else has seen what a disaster KR server's theater has been. I can see a number of factors that could have fed into the current state of affairs there. I know there are on a rerun for HoC and I started to wonder if that HoC was either subpar or if they were at the HoC saturation point, where a good one might not excite players because they have more than enough other HoCs that can do what the new one does and are already fully raised. This also got me to realize that the HoC acquisition setup outside of theater, the one that future GFL players will contend with for AT4 and other yet to be released HoCs is actually fuck awful on a long term system. Each new HoC dilutes the pool players pull from. If you view this like the t-doll poll, it doesn't seem bad at first because with t-dolls you get the full unit, but that's not how HoCs work at all, nor do you have a means outside of their gacha to raise their stars. You need to pull enough samples of them to first unlock them, with exception of BGM and the current theater reward, should theater be active. You also have to do that song and dance to get more stars. Right now, this isn't bad since we only have three and most of us are likely close to being done with the first three HoCs for raising rarity. Add enough HoCs in and an event that requires more than 1* BGM and there will be problems. This isn't a problem that impact me and may not be an issue for me ever, but I do hope the devs are aware of this and looking into. No, rate ups are not a good solution to this IMO because HoCs are intended to be a very slow grind.
-I've mentioned quests. The worst offenders are repair because you need go out of your way most days to get 28 repairs in. I'd say the data sim dailies are also bad because they don't work with current sim design that wants you to do the max level you can, outside of data and defense drill doesn't really work with it at all. The combat sim dailies are probably the easiest fix, instead of X combat sims, make it X energy spent and it would be golden. The weekly could be changed, but it's not really an issue. The fairy ones are also pretty bad, I get they want people to do this stuff and these are meant to encourage and train people on how to maybe do so. The fairy enhancement could probably be salvaged as a monthly, but the calibration one needs to go because it's a trap. There is a point where you raise the first fairy you get for a certain type until you get a certain number, so of course you'll likely need to calibrate them. Then you hit a point where you only do that for ones with expensive recipes and you should for getting either dmg I, dmg II or Fervor. So you'll need to need to still do calibrations, but you'll eventually hit a point where you don't need ones from expensive recipes because it's not worth farming for their dupes for enhancement, you'll have them calibrated to either dmg II or fervor and if you need any from the 500x4 resources pool, you'll likely hold out for one that rolls dmg II or Fervor. So what this weekly does is train people to think they should calibrate dupes for enhancement which is a terrible idea; especially, with defense drill becoming less relevant thanks to data, memory fragments and soon SF capture stuff being more important. They probably should cut this weekly an d make sure we have the right career quests to help new players become aware of this feature, so they use it if they need it.
-Defense Drill cannot justify it's 5 energy cost. Again we have two things in game that are more important than calibration tickets and you don't need to spend sim energy in 5 sum clumps to farm them. It should be 3 energy.
-Sim energy cap needs to be raised to hold 12. One, they insist on having maintenance day on a data day, so people get screwed over if maintenance runs over a certain period of time. Two, shit happens and I don't think it's reasonable for any game to have a setup where you must log in almost exactly every 12 hours or you get penalized. I'm aware they probably lose some revenue if they do that, but I've had times where I've over capped on sim energy because of travel, long maintenance or getting sick and when it's a 12 hour timer before getting penalized, well that's bullshit. I mean, I'm compromising here by accepting a once a day thing because I'll likely still over cap at times, through no fault of my own. Three, there is no good way to get back to your old cycle if you over cap, other than to eat further penalizations because you'd have to over cap again.
I have other things that annoy me, battery stuff, but if they were looking into some QoL stuff over new content. IMO those are probably the big ones that should be a focus.
IIRC they are re-working the daily quests. I think the daily repair one gets the axe or at least is no longer one of the quests that provides a token. I don't remember the details. I'm not sure if the CN server has the new daily quests yet or not.
Glad to hear that they are working on the daily quests because some of those needed a rework from like day one. Just hope combat sim stuff is on the radar, I've yet to do defense drill because other stuff has given me enough of them and memory fragments and data are far more useful than what defense drill rewards and it really doesn't play well with the daily.
what are the odds we get as val's mod before isomer? i have zero night ARs of note leveled and just got star's mod 2, so looking for another AR to lob into my leveling team and if that's available in time, seems like it could be a good fit.
There's no discernible rhyme or reason as to which neural mods that we'll get in the next batch. All that we really know are upgrades that are tied to story events. Which IIRC means UMP9 and HK 416 as part of Shattered Connexion.
You'll probably want HK 416's speq from singularity, when that goes permanent, if you don't have it. Pretty sure her mod speq doesn't compete for the same slot, so that'll make her even better, if just slightly, for 0-2 dragging. I think overall Sopmod and 416 mods are best for dragging because they do a great job without buff stacking. Sure AN-94 probably can beat both with the right set of stats, but if you need specific buffers to drag, well IMO that beats the point of dragging stuff for xp. You want draggers that do a great job before buffs are added in, so that you don't have to care about what you're grabbing to power level outside of you want to or you need it to feel a niche or role.
Though I'll see if I can track down the chart someone did, IIRC sopmod was at the top, even with buffs factored in.
i don't particularly care for who's doing it, i have plenty of draggers, i just have been using sub-100s and people i need to get mod2 for as draggers because why waste the xp.
i use groups of 2 people because otherwise i have to repair m16 too often and it's too slow anyway, so it's pretty trivial to drag.
Posts
i assume that needs m4's special equipment?
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Also, I want to re-iterate that we'll be having the second anniversary event in May. That means that we'll most likely get rate ups for dolls, fairies, and equipment. Maybe even HOC data too. So it may be prudent to assess your resource expenditures carefully and save up for for the rate up. Don't forget to check to see if you have enough construction tickets and quick construction tickets to support your building spree.
Also, we're expecting to get an item called a True Core Mask. Last year it was handed out as part of a login event. TCMs can be exchanged for any 5* doll in the construction and heavy construction pools. So for example rare 5* dolls like Grape will likely be common picks for TCMs. Shotguns are legal targets too, so a lot of people will likely be picking SAT8 or some other 5* shotgun. However limited event dolls like Groza and Python are not legal targets since they aren't in the construction pools. Likewise, collaboration dolls are not legal targets since they're not in the construction pool. There's also a unique profile portrait that you can exchange it for if you're a madman.
The TCMs will expire at the end of the anniversary event, so you can't just horde it forever. But you can at least hold on to it until that point in the hopes that you hit the jackpot during the rate ups.
My personal goals are to roll for a few more 5* capes, lots of fairies, and to use my TCM for one of the 5* shotguns that I'm missing.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
As for TCM, I'd say that S.A.T 8 is probably the best option for anyone that doesn't have her. Shotguns are expensive to craft and even though there are alternatives to get around not having her, I feel like when she would be a fantastic options, is when you really feel the lack of her in your roster. Like in current' theater, I wish I had her because even if I go with the taunt setup because it can mean zero damage on the echelon against uhlans, I dread getting saving waves of those things. I know someone is going to say this is sacrilege, but FP-6 might just barely edge out Grape. First off, she is a shotgun, so rage crafting for her isn't exactly an option and theater just showed how she could be rather strong, since you can rotate shield use between her and S.A.T 8 to have almost 100 percent uptime on shields. If you're really good, you could also probably get some good impact from the knockback in her skill as well. I'd also say Grape has fallen down on the list, now that we have some alternatives to her. Sure NTW mod and M82A1 aren't nearly as good, one is a limited drop that people will have to wait for events on and the other is a mod which is an investment, but there are options and one of those is available if you can get NTW who is a more common drop and are willing to raise and mod her. I will say, Grape is a very close third behind FP-6 and even though rage crafting rifles is cheaper than machineguns, she does have a harder to fill niche than any of the op machine guns and she is really rare. After grape, I'd probably look at the two 5* machineguns in the big four because machine have continued to be relevant. I'd also say both AK12 and AN94 are also good ones to consider because they are both really rare and really useful. Well AK12 has issue that you might be in my position where you don't have a spot for her because SOP and Star are filling position 1 in your ARSMG teams, but definitely worth raising. Can't forget Contender either, if you have to use your mask on a handgun, she'd be the one IMO. Finally, if you have all the already mentioned units, I'd look into M200, IWS, MDR, Suomi & RFB since those are all units that can fill some important roles in echelon lineups for certain things. If none of what I mention is something you need, grats on having all the really good guns that are probably in the 11 for TCM usage an enjoy getting your icon, unless RNG played a cruel joke on you and left you without some other useful gun or you're really lucky and got the most meta units before everything else.
Also the two handguns we get for DJMax are suppose to be really good, so probably try to adjust your leveling plans to get them to 90 before Isomer because you'll want more handguns to support all the rifles we're suppose to need.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
As for generic equipment recipes, 150x4 and 151x4 treated me pretty well in the first year for getting me a well rounded assortment of equipment. I only really shifted things up last fall when I shifted to 50/250/150/150 for HV ammo. I probably stayed on that recipe too long, and now I've swapped over to 270/40/270/190 for capes.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I do have to consider that some of the people ahead of me on final battle might be sitting on resources, so I might not get into top 10%. If I'm doing the math right, looks like we have 5 more days, if we include today. Thinking it might be worth my while to dump reports on the three advantaged units I have for Core 8 to get them to 90 because that's the last big boost I'd from them. It'll be a huge tick up in their CE and I think that would mean I'll be less than 1% short of the full 24% bonus and might be able to score consistently in the 32300-32400 range. I doubt it'll do much for the final battle score, since there are a ton of people CE stacking and I strongly suspect I'll be lucky if I breaking in the top 38% or lower. On the other hand, seeing a ton of these people mention not getting both their core 8 runs in full because of bad RNG, which gives me some hope that I'm a little more secure in top 10% than I think (also forgot to spend mats yesterday). I figure I'll try to get into a spot where I continue to boost my total score and hope that keeps me in the top 10%. So also have to hope I do well at scouting. Pretty sure getting my three advantaged dolls to 90 today will put me in the best spot I can hope for because even if it's just another 300-500 points, that adds up in five days and could be he difference. Also need to keep an eye out for any pure evasion exos that drop into my lap since I have like 4 ARs running with that slot empty and might as well get the free CE padding there.
So critiques of theater:
-CE formula needs an overhaul. For starters, 2* slugs should never be considered a better choice than gold equips ever. I mean sure, there does seem to be a point where the diminishing returns for CE get massive and I do get a laugh at of the fact that I'm likely kicking the asses of people that should easily be ahead of me and likely would be given my screws up days 1 and 2 of Core 8 being open. If I was more on he ball, could have been in day 1 and because of absent mindedness on day 2, I ended up not enhancing units I leveled for core 8, which would have gotten me through it definitely that day and then absent mindedly clicking core 8 map and not being able to complete it, so I got a 3K score. Anyways, CE formula is really fucking dumb right now and encouraging really bad choices. Sure I'm happy that it's probably going to result in me getting into the top 10% for total score and I do value the 25 extra special combat reports, advance data, intermediate data, batteries and however many AT4 fragments I get out of that way more than 2-3k of each basic resources because those are all much harder to obtain quickly and are proving to be the real bottle necks for improvements.
-The menu needs an update. You have to go to main menu before you can go anywhere else. Also really bugs me that it's easy to pop into a menu and unless you memorize which picks go with which stage, you have no idea what stage you're on. That should be listed because absent minded clicks do happen and the at a glance info is kind of useless. Not to mention they bury all the units you do want to know about all the trash units. At a glance, icons of strelets tell me nothing, but icons of uhlans tell me a lot.
-Don't really care for scouting. Some of that is because I'm not great at it. So far 5 perfects, 4 draws, 1 abstention and 6 losses. God I suck at this, also another area that needs better menus because it only tells you your perfect tally. Pretty sure, I'm still coming out ahead on scouting because most of my perfects have been big wins and most of my losses have been before we had the full drone count.
-There probably should be a penalty for sitting on resources above a certain amount once we unlock core zone. AT least we didn't get the BS that KR had where progress grinded to a halt because a ton of players sat on their resources to fuck people over for the top 100. Didn't really impact people that could get there because they had the stuff to clear Core 8 with lvl 1 camps, but boy did it fuck over all the people who couldn't manage past core 4 or higher. it's also annoying to think that one's rank could shift a ton because people are like 'lolololol gonna backstab by dumping resources on the last day!" Not only is it annoying, but those are resources that could have been dumped when core opened to get camps max quicker, so it defeats the idea of this being cooperative as well. If it were me designing this, code it so that core has to open first and that someone has to check theater when core is open. This ensure that people can stock up for core because some of the zone structures aren't worth investing in and ensures the setup can't fuck someone over if they can't log in for any reason once core opens. I want to say 10k is probably above the max someone can get in a day and I can see a scenario where someone finishes there runs and forgets or is unable to spend those resources and they aren't trying to be a backstabbing dick about it. Assuming that people are saving 2-3 for scouting just in case. I'd set the cap at 13-14K for materials. If you're below that nothing happens, if you hit that and try to leave theater the game will send a prompt "Dear commander, your materials are well above what is deemed acceptable for stockpiles kept for unexpected situations. Such hoarding is against the spirit of cooperation we wish to encourage. You are advised to spend those resources and fairly to do so will result in anything above the acceptable cap being forfeit. Any materials that are forfeited will give no points towards your final score. Also note any forfeited materials will be put towards structures that can be upgraded." Sure it's a bit heavy handed and we didn't get the shit show that KR had, but I wouldn't mind seeing something in place to prevent that. If it's around 13-14k that allows for a rainy day fund and anticipating that sometimes people don't spend their materials for non-backstabby reasons. Finally, it would make the ranking board before the final much more reliable. Granted, the big one for me is mostly the having a safeguard to prevent the bullshit that KR saw, where low and mid tier players were forced to pointlessly suffer because people assumed doing that would make their prospects of getting into the top 100 easier. I'm pretty sure that's the group that likely has invested enough into 2B and AGs that they could use them to kill a gundam wave or maybe they'd need to weave AT4 in instead of AGS, something they could likely do easily. They likely have the needed comp for uhlans, that would allow for not needing taunt. Also probably have a good solution for striker waves. Granted there is probably a group that is screwing themselves as well because they wouldn't be able to hack more than 5 gundams or 2-3 uhlans.
Of those, probably the one that is annoying me most is how BS the CE formula is, but that's likely because EN didn't have enough idiots willing to brick server progression for a non-existent chance to boost their prospects of getting into the top 100. Honestly, if that had happened, I'd be pretty pissed. Sadly, it could happen in future theater runs because as far as I can tell, there are zero safeguards in place against it.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
In honor of it being April 16, there is a "416" bundle in the shop. If you are the sort that expects that they'll be buying tokens with gems at some point in the future, then you may want to consider picking up the bundle now or sometime in the next 11 days while it's being offered.
It contains the following at a cost of 1760 Gems:
416 tokens
One Oath certificate
200 pure samples
1000 intermediate training data
416 advanced training data
10 strawberry cheesecake
Normally tokens are sold at a rate of 600 gems per 100 tokens. So 400 tokens would cost you 2400 gems. So purely from a perspective of "I'm probably eventually gonna cash in my gems on tokens for a costume gacha that I like", then this pack is a bargain for the tokens alone. The samples and cheesecake aren't particularly useful, but the training data and oath certificate sure can be.
As always, I advise people to spend wisely when dealing with mobile games. I am not advocating for running out to buy gems to grab the bundle. Just that if you know that you are the sort who will end up buying tokens, then I wanted to bring attention to an opportunity to get some tokens at a slightly cheaper rate.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
As for the bundle. If you're willing to pay for tokens and are semi-serious about ranking, it's a really good deal IMO. Like you said, the tokens are worth more than the gem cost. The people over at gamepress actually did the math. Data put together is worth 300 gems, so a little over a sixth of what you're paying for the bundle. Oath is 580 gems, so somewhere around a third of what you're paying. I don't think it's worth buying sample data, but since it's here, they listed it out as being worth 300 gems, again I don't think it's worth buying because RNG could make that not worth it. I'm just going to include it because it is a thing that shows up in the shop for gems and I should at least be fair to list what Mica has valued it out. Instead of writing it off as non-existent the way I'm doing for the cheesecake, but seriously, never buy a bundle if you have to rely on the "gem value" of sample data to break even. Hell, I'd say never get a bundle if the "gem value" of sample data isn't render completely irrelevant to getting anything in it at a discount. Luckily, for this bundle, the tokens along get you a steal and then the items that are worth a damn for gem purchases (data and oath) are worth about half the bundle price, so it's a really good deal if you do intend to buy tokens with gems and do semi-serious ranking. A good deal if you are willing to buy tokens. Not worth it, if you only want to spend your gems on stuff that improves units because the performance boosting items, that are pure RNG, in the pack are only worth 50% of the gems spent.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
For fairies, I have a lvl 95 2* command fairy (SL4), lvl 81 2* Airstrike (SL10), lvl 78 3* Artillery (SL8), lvl 80 3* taunt (SL10), lvl 74 1* Paradrop (SL10) and lvl 77 illumination (SL10). Listing skill level because I suppose it could be a factor in how the game weights echelon CE. I certainly does that for HoCs.
For HoC: AGS lvl 82 (s1 SL10, s2 SL2, s3 SL10) CE IIRC was about 9600, BGM lvl 80 (s1 SL10, s2 SL10, s3 SL2) CE 13768, 2B lvl 80 (s1 SL10, s2 SL7, s3 SL9) CE IIRC was about 4900. I didn't think to record CE for AGs or 2B before tweaking them further. 2B has had one chip replaced to reduce empty squares and the third skill maxed, while AGS has gone up two more levels.
Rather than list out everything for t-dolls used. 22 slots with greens, 3 empty equip slots, 8 speqs, one speq at lvl 4 enhancement, I'd hazard maybe a third of the golds aren't fully calibrated or beyond lvl 5 enhancement. an advantage bonus of like 22.2% (or whatever one gets with three lvl 80 advantaged dolls), 6 mod 3 dolls that are oathed. Three 115s and 116s. 9 lvl 100s, a lvl 99, two lvl 98s, a 96, a 95, a 92, a 91 & 5 lvl 90s. All mods that aren't UMP have max for all their skills. Maybe a quarter of the units have max skill levels, most are at SL8 and a hand full are SL7 with M16 being the only at SL3 and RFB being at SL6 IIRC.
So there are probably a ton of areas where the top players are getting CE that isn't padding if we assume they've gotten all their units to lvl 100, have maxed gold equips in every slot, max level 5* fairies, max level 5* HoCs (maybe even higher star HoCs). Skill levels is a bit murkier because I suspect I might be investing in some skills not worth maxing, but I'd wager on average their skill investment has to be higher and this is assuming that skill levels are some how counted in the CE average for the judge fight.
Anyway you hack it, this doesn't look good for two arguments. The first is that lost links and damage really hurt. I have a theory that they might give a hidden bonus for having full links and maybe their is a negative multiplier that requires certain thresholds to be met. For the negative modifier I'm pretty sure it exists if stuff gets critically damage because that is a thing for repair timers. I'd also say it probably goes up when a certain number of links are last, if there is one for lost links. It's a shame we can't really test this. Though I'm going to hazard a guess that one probably wants to spread out damage if they get close to critical damage and can afford to do so. That CE padding for CE padding sake is worth it, I'm less than 900 points away from the top spot with a setup that is not at all close to maximum optimization. I'd hazard unit, fairy and HoC levels, along with unit rarity probably do more for CE values, than fully enhance a bunch of 5* slugs. Also that the advantaged dolls are probably the bigger thing to work towards for point padding. Also another comment to keep in mind from the folks running the gamepress articles where they do a daily run down on their scouting predictions (which you should read for lols and not serious advice on where to scout) pointed at that the current number 1 isn't even going out of his way to pad his score, he is there because he has guess correctly on all scouting outcomes. So anyone kneecapping themselves on Core 8 is a fool because at best they do actually get a higher ranking for a few hundred more base resources that can be farmed in logistics, while ensuring that they can't get themselves more of the harder to acquire resources.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
The biggest thing that bugs me about the CE stacking isn't the system itself but the fact that I had TONS gold slug ammo six months ago. I didn't realize that it would have a silly use in Theater (same goes for blue/green armor). So, since I knew that slugs are generally inferior in most every case, I opted to keep three on the off chance that they'd be useful in combat some day and fed the rest to boost one of the slugs to +9. I really wish that I still had those slugs right now.
The other thing is that I question if it was really that big of a deal if some people were withholding resources in the buildup to core 8. First of all, I don't think that the EN playerbase has that cutthroat of a mentality as the KR one. But put that aside for a second. If inadequate base infrastructure is holding you back, then you probably aren't in the running for top 100 anyway. You're shooting for one of the percentage brackets, and a lot of players are likely being inhibited just like you. You just need to fare a bit better than the rest of the pack. There is some sticky business once the MAX shielded enemies start coming into play where the presence or absence of BGM spells the difference between a clear and a wipe. Your daily freebie should help ward off bad RNG with MAX shielded enemies to an extent, but I still suspect that from a big picture standpoint that people will settle in to the same approximate leaderboard positions regardless the hardships thrown their way. From what I'm seeing though, it looks like the capacity of clearing core 8 is pretty much an assured ticket to the top 15% slot which is notable for being how high you want to score to walk away with a 5* HOC after two arena seasons. Anything above that is kinda prestige territory IMO.
All of that said though, it still feels like crap to get backstabbed like that and ostensibly this is supposed to be a co-operative event. So I think that they should be encouraging people to spend resources on facilities as a safety valve to try to ensure at least a minimum level of production rate. Maybe some kind of event quest where you get some loot for spending X materials on construction?
I'm still trying to min-max my score a bit. I reworked some of my teams today. Basically I dissolved the AR team squad and replaced AN-94 and K11 with M4 and SOPMOD in my anti-striker team. It is now my anti-striker team's job to clear out strikers, rodelleros, prowlers, and strelet swarms. Definitely a lot more pressure on the squad there. As of right now my CE against judge is 17996, and my new personal best score for core 8 is 32891. I'd really like to push that above 32900. I think that's in reach since my AA-12 is only 3x linked right now, but I'm out of cores. I think that my echelons might be capable of top 100 IF my skills were all leveled and all of their gear was leveled too, but I don't think that's worth the expenditure of resources with a fairy rate up around the corner. I'll be farming a lot of basic training data this weekend to try to shore up everyone to level 4 skills at least, and I'll try to run some night maps to hopefully find some white slugs at least to fill out the last few gaps of gear minmaxing. Also, I'm back off to the 10-4E mines to try to get some more cores for AA-12.
edit:
I'm also going to try to rework the SG/MG echelons to make sure that at least one of them is a serious SG/MG team instead of pure CE fodder. I suspect that one of them could probably clear the strelet swarm or the rodellero waves, which would take some pressure off of the anti-striker team.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
As for it being a way to make things more interesting for the top players. I do like the idea of giving people more points for handicapping themselves, it's not a bad idea, but the current system is just bad because of how CE is billed. More CE is supposed to mean you're more effective in combat, but that's not really how it works. Not entirely sure the devs realized that this would result in people running sup-optimal comps that are uber padded and limit themselves to as few units as possible. If so, thing s probably would work better if they came up with a system for how people could handicap themselves to get a higher score that won't send the mixed signals that CE sends.
Also on scouting, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of how big a part that can play in scoring. On one hand, yes, it's interesting in that it shakes things up, but on the other hand it's making things too much about being a good guesser. So I'd like to see it's impact on things matter less, thus I'd like to see the points from it get nerfed.
Well, from what I've read from the KR incident. The issue was the backstabbing that went against cooperative play, just resulted in theater being fuck awful for everyone that didn't have a shot at top 100 and many of them likely knew it. The lack of camp upgrades meant that contend they'd have an easier time with was either off limits or just horrible to do. Given what this is billed as and the potential of ruining the game for people, there really should be a safeguard. A daily quest might not be a bad idea. People that are trying to be jerks have pointed out that what you really want to do is save up resources for core. Don't think there really is an issue as long as stuff is put into core to get camps up and running for those of us that need or want them. I know currently and probably for a few future theaters, I need the structures upgrades in order to consistently clear core 8. I know I'm not an uber player and I also know I don't want to uber my way through several waves of gundams without adequate HoC support in core 8.
I think someone has mentioned that you could use SGMGs against street day swarms that are either pure strelets or come with rodeleros. Pure street swarm is AFKable, it's the one with rodeleros that is a pain. I would say for that one, you'd want an HoC to strip shields so they go down quickly. If 2SGHG2MG is viable, I'd see if you could get one where the maximum CE lets you have a setup like this.
MG I Empty I SG
Empty I HG I SG
MG I Empty I Empty
That would let you move the SG in 9 to 8. Move HG in 5 to 2. Then if can't get the SG out of the way in time, you can either pop shield if the SG has one or retreat and have the other SG step in can get aggro, but don't know how feasible that is. Though if this is a dedicated echelon for that and you don't need taunt or fairy commands for other waves. That setup also lets you run SG in 6 to 8 and drop the HG into 2 still. Ideally you kill the rodeleros before the taunt dies. Honestly, thinking about it, if you can spare the taunt fairy and the commands you'd want for this one for Rodelero control. Taunt also lets
MG I Empty I SG
Empty I HG I Empty
MG I Empty I SG
Setups work as well. If anything has to hoof it, you really want it to be the HG because they can pull that off with time to spare and Rodeleros are probably the only real threat in those groups once you have enough armor. I mean strelts might take forever to kill and you might want to invest in some accuracy to ensure that they don't stay up long enough to slowly kill your SG or SGs one damage per hit.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Anyways bad news, someone found a way to test AGS and apparently HoC CE matters not for final boss score. They did this with one run that had AGS with max skills and then the next with AT4 and somehow manage to score in a way to make them comparable. I'll laugh if it was the exact scores. It's probably still worth raising HoC skills because they'll kill things better or if they have a debuff like 2B, that debuff will be more effective. As far as whether it's worth switch AGS out for AT4 now, hard to say, if you're struggling on tanks with AGS+2B and can get AT4 to 60 with 300 pierce from chips, then yes. If AGS+2B are leaving time to spare, it's a big maybe because even though AT4 means devoting 2B use to either striker waves or the last six waves, she is going to be lacking in other others that a raised AGS will not be. I'd say for the next theater, you'll want AT4 properly raised and use her instead of AGS. This also brings up a big question about AGS's second skill. The question becomes how often does she get applied against trash mobs in campaign events, if it's not often then you probably only want to bother with SL4 because precision is only going to help against trash, shield piercing always works and buildings don't have evasion. So the basic data isn't too bad to farm up for the returns you'll get on precision. I'll say everything 2B has is worth maxing because it'll make her a fantastic trash killer, but you'll want to get SL3 maxed before SL2 because it has greater returns and SL2's description makes it seem better than it actually is. BGM's 3rd skill is another that probably needs some thought. I'd wager that anything you can stack it on, is going to be a boss or has shields that need to be brought down ASAP, so it'll be seeing use, probably tot he point where it's worth getting SL7 because the investment of intermediate data will pay off. It's levels 8-10 for the skill that I have doubts about because I don't think BGM is going to have tons of lethality stacked on her and advanced data takes a ton of time to farm up. That said, I do believe the odds of it being worthwhile are probably better than the odds of investing in AGS 2nd skill. Can't really comment too much on AT4's stuff.
BTW Ch. 11 drops on Tuesday of next week, the 21st. So we'll have that to keep people busy until DJMax drops on the 28th. I'll have to see what the logistics missions look like. IIRC they are supposed to be more efficient, but don't know if it's in a way that will supplant any of the good current options. I'm hoping we get a better mission for parts because farming for parts quickly sucks. Finally, they are doing a thing for friended people considered veterans to the game starting on the 21st. So you'll want to figure out how to pull that off. I know it means I need to prune my friend list of at least one inactive to get someone that qualifies for the rewards. Note, you only get the reward package once.
Edit: Also at 9% for overall and 38% for final battle. Now someone mentioned something on reddit that might be worth considering, I'd like to confirm it, but the reason or the close spread of points on the final battle going all the way back to like the 50% range, might be a result of it only counting the fight against judge as the final battle. So if people don't clear core 8, they aren't even making it to the list. With a much smaller pool, it's far easier to be say 629 points behind the number 1 spot and be in the top 38% despite being in the top 9% overall. I'm hoping this is the case because that would mean that if I keep things up, I'm probably safe in the top 10% even fi there are jerks hoarding resources to drop on the last day for "lols." Not to mention, probably some percent of the people ahead of me on final battle score aren't consistently clearing core 8 and/or doing much worse than me on scouting. Though on the scouting front, I did guess C, so that will help my score a decent bit for tomorrow (scouting scores get counted the next day). I'm curious if we'll have the option to scout on Monday or if Sunday will be the last day. Either way, we either have 3 or 4 more days (counting today) for scouting and as things tick down, it's going to have less of a chance of making people either go lower or higher in the rankings. We might actually be at the threshold, where scouting results only matter if you're on the threshold of the reward breakdown (ex. 5k less points could be the difference between being in top 5% or 6%) or if you're in the top 100.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I upped my top score to 32893. That's so close to hitting 32900.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Very good. It's one of the common pairings.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Give her skill a read one more time. It's easy to miss. Her active only helps rifles, but her passive affects everything in her column.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Anyways, think I can get all the theater advantaged dolls I have to 100 before my runs today. I'm like 10 combat reports worth of xp short, so some more 0-2 dragging should fit the bill. Probably go one report short of what's need to get them to a hundred and drag out the rest of the xp on 0-2 to avoid wastage of combat report exp. Is it a good use of reports, absolutely not. Will it get me a better score in theater, probably. I mean QBU will very likely see some usage and Kar probably will as well, just have to train their skills at some point. JS05 is the only real waste and I'll probably switch her with M16 on one of the logistics teams, since I need her free for saving resources later this month and early next month. Besides they may make JS05's skill not garbage in the future, but I wouldn't bank on it. If nothing else, she is ready to go for expeditions and theater, should she ever be advantaged again.
Edit: So with all advantaged units at 100 and getting the full bonus. 2 more levels on airstrike. Another gold HP maxed out, two empty slots filled with a green and a blue non-tank exo. SOP raised to level 17. Remembering to throw the green slug I picked up yesterday on my other spectator shotgun. Finally, so more improvements to HoCs to hopefully kill things faster. I managed a personal best of 32651. I wasn't expecting to add another 247 points to my final score. I figured it would be barely above 100. At this point, I'm pretty much out of easy avenues for more points. Not really inclined to power level stuff further because the gains will be less with anything that isn't advantaged and it'll take forever to get more levels on fairies. I know for the rest of theater, I'll use the ones that are being used by combat echelons for quests & grinding, on the off chance I do enough to get another level but doubt it happens. I do have 3 X4 exos that haven't bee maxed out, with two that aren't even calibrated, a gold silencer on MP7 in need of enhancing, Kar's scope that I haven't done anything with, UMP's speq which need calibration and further enhancement and then a bunch of greens that are also in use for theater participants. I might consider getting some of those up to at least 5 for greens and whatever I think is good for the golds, if it's a groups where it's not win more. Problem is I think for most of the greens and the golds, it would be just winning more and I don't think that will be a good use of resources I should start saving for incoming rate-ups because I'm not sure I'm going to get the returns I've been seeing with raising the advantaged units. Getting that last .9% for the bonus applies to everything. Where getting a few more points from some gear, is just a few more points. Like Is strongly suspect it might be a struggle to get in the 32700 range. Though I'll consider my options because if nothing else, good way to claw my way to a safe spot in the current bracket and who knows, maybe top 5% isn't impossible for me (probably is, would have likely had it if I hand screwed up that one day). Only other option that could pay big would be to find a way to make a viable SGMG echelons for pure street swarms and strelets swarms with rodeleros, but I suspect fairy rarity would hold me back. I do want the second group for strikers because RO and CM-S do still take a beating towards the end of 4 striker waves and that's with them getting support (I probably need to do a better job with kiting). Current score is 889369, I'll see where that puts me I the ranking. I'm also sitting on a little over 2k worth of mats, but might stop saving mats at this point. If I'm not trying to level stuff for ranking, I can do that first thing in the morning and Core 8 runs have been consistent, that I just have to remember to send drones before dumping mats into buildings.
Also I'll reveal one bit of my thoughts on scouting. I think C is unlikely to be a winning choice for the rest of theater. To explain this, take the expected point value for each zone and then subtract 30 from the score. Gonna keep it simple and we'll pretend we get a 1 material cost drone.
Win Loss Draw
A 30 -15 0
B 50 -10 10
C 70 -5 20
In short, if someone camps zone C, they need only greater than 1/6 of their deployed drones to be there on days where we have a draw to beat just spending those materials on buildings because you get 30 points for each material on buildings. Every C draw can negate 5 C losses. Every C win negates 14 C losses. Granted this assumes equal number of drones sent per day, which isn't the case. So yesterday saw C get the maximum return. As of right now, there are 8 C losses, 1 win and 8 draws (might be off one because I'm scrolling up and down to see the counts). I don't feel doing the exact math for drones used on losses, wins and draws, but I'd wager at this point that yesterday's C win along with the draws has probably ensured that C only voters are going to come out ahead, even if C losses for the rest of theater. Not to mention, looks like most of the losses were when we had less drones. You'll also probably be dealing with people that realize they are close to the margin or think they are. They'll do one of two things. Either they stop scouting and go for the guarantee of 30 points per material from building construction or they go the safest bet route of voting C because at worst they lose 5 potential points per material spend on drones and if they get a draw, they get 20 more points. My hunch, is that there probably is a good chance that C will lose at least once more if not twice because of that. Partly from a result of the highly cautious group hoping people will second guess and they get another huge payout. At which point, I'm going to say it's likely a coin toss between A & B for the remaining days. The payout for A sucks because if you guess wrong, that's 50% of potential points gone and if you get a draw, you're on par with people that are just dumping into buildings. On the upside, if you win, even if it's only 30 more points, you're still getting more points than anyone else that day. B is slightly better, but people will worry it's too obvious and go with either A or C. So A will win if enough people are really risk adverse that day and go for safer or less painful to lose options. If tons of people are feel risk adverse or think that enough players feel risk adverse, then A losses and B likely gets the win. I will say final day of scouting be that Sunday or Monday will be truly lols, why you might ask. Figure a ton of people will have a pretty good idea of where they are in regards to the bracket margins and realize they can just leave their choice up to a truly RNG setup, even many in the top 100. The only people that will try to logic something out of this chaos will be the few that think they are on the margins of a bracket or know they are and think a scouting win will put them over or keep them in the bracket. Actually, I'd bet good odds that C losses badly that day because that's where those tops decide to go big and hope that no one else has the same idea. Granted, this is EN which has broken records on theater scouting, namely getting over 50% on one zone, which I gather no other server has done. So I'm likely trying to apply logic a very chaotic abyss that may decide to act in a way that defies all expectations to spite me.
Edit Edit: Also worth keeping in mind I'm looking at this through the lens of people that aren't going to read every detail. So they won't get that a draw is actual neutral points for all zones because drones cost the same amount of materials as the points awarded. Now to be fair to some number of these people, the menu interface and conveying of useful information in theater is all sorts of half-assed. If you don't read everything each time you click something, it's pretty easy to see drone cost of 30 because the investigation menu always starts you on zone A. Once you switch zones, the average user and most above average users will not think to read that cost again. Actually, going to revise my early critique of theater, the menu design and display of important information is probably the worth thing about theater. There is key information that is not included where it should be, key information conveyed in convoluted manners and info that users will desire this not made easily accessible. Like I shouldn't have to run a spread sheet or tally chart to quickly figure out my win, loss and draw numbers. Mica really should hire an expert on these things, which would probably be a psychologist of some sort. If they have crunch time as a thing for certain projects, that can easily lead to bad design getting through because the devs probably aren't mentally fit enough at the end of crunch time to realize something is badly designed. Also depending on the execs, most tend to have issues these days, they might not be thinking in terms of good design and if their heads are way up the ass on predatory gacha design, might happily jump at bad design in GFL with the mistaken impression that it'll get them more money. Anyways, we're dealing with the fact that most of EN is likely running on the assumption that drones cost a flat amount regardless of zone deployed. So a ton of C sitters are there not because of the various memes with C, but rather as a result of believing it is the safest bet. If it were me, I'd have all drone costs displayed together because it's pretty easy to see the cost for zone A, which IIRC doesn't specify it's for zone A and conclude they all cost 30 materials. Maybe when I'm feeling less lazy, I'll do the numbers for what people would actually need with all draws being draws and all loses being a 50% reduction in points earned compared to construction. In this context, it actually makes C a worst prospect because that's more points put in, so if you lose that more potential points lost. Again, I'd have to do some math to see how that would look for win loss ratios (aka how much do you have to win to offset losses). IMO even though I'm concluding the interface design is the worse thing about theater now, they really shouldn't have scouting count for nearly as much as it does currently.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
No, going to blame the interface for theater being crap because it kind of is and makes it easy to get things mixed up.
Anyways, I know I said I do this at the end of theater but I don't see much changing in the next day.
So on the off chance that this make sit before the eyes of something that matters for the development of this game, which seems highly unlikely, I'll do a pseudo approach for my theater critique and have my opening positive things be that overall I find theater enjoyable. I'll admit I cam ein with lowered expectations, but getting to play it made me really appreciate some approaches to theater.
No to get the negatives out of the way by starting with the worst.
-The interface, is garbage. I have feeling that all that information did overwhelm some and it's a nightmare to try and pull some information from. The big things that come to mind is that in squadron formation menu, it should tell which map these formations are for and the toughest enemies should be at the top of the list for at a glance reference. No one cares about strelets or prowlers. Scouting menu need s a bit of a clean up, with win loss draw record for the player displayed and probably a separate table that lists the record for zone (how many times A was a draw, a win or a loss). Some other information should probably be made more digestible. Also it should be easier to find advantaged units, I shouldn't have to consult the advantage unit tab to double check multiple times. Also no idea if today is the last scouting day or it's tomorrow. Then people see the 20/25 and are wondering if we'll have a few days of scouting. Should also incorporate the ribbon that allows fast menu changes instead of forcing us all back tot he main screen if we need to do things other than theater or moving gear. Interface being crap isn't unique to theater or GFL, seems fairly common to gacha games and I think that comes back to the predatory nature that many of them use and even though GFL avoids most, if not all of that shit, I wouldn't be surprised if devs brought in, that worked on other games, might not be on the look out for how those projects trained them to intentionally do bad interface design. Bad interface design means users get frustrated and frustrated user make mistakes and if someone makes enough mistakes they might open their wallet to fix it (Like I'm pretty sure this explains some of the really oddball shitty choices for Arknights menu design, as in they don't want you be able to easily check if you're practice mode normal, practice mode challenge, challenge mode or normal mode because if you can, less chances of someone accidently running something that they likely can't complete, thus wasting sanity or time). Thing is, if someone is thinking hard on how not to be another predatory shitty gacha, they probably don't think of the interface that often. I mean when this game frustrates me at times, I'm pretty sure I either need to take a break or if it is bad design on the game's part, it was the devs trying to make a challenge and not realizing that the challenge isn't fun or feel that rewarding when you do beat it. With Arknights, I do think about a third of the shit that really frustrated me was in fact designed to piss me off, in hopes that I either paid money to make it less shit by overpowering it without a huge grind or to fix fuckups. Now, they could also mess up some of this stuff if they do the whole crunch time things, worn out people tend to make dumb decisions, just saying. Could also be a case of Donning Kruger effect, where the devs are well wasted and assume because they are good programmers that they choice of interface can't possible be bad. I do feel hiring a psychologist could go a long way to improving interface design because they can't more easily point out and explain why certain setups can't or won't work with the average user.
-Scouting matters too much. I get the idea is to probably shake things up, but I would like to see the shake up mechanic be something that isn't, "how good are you at shibboleth that is the EN server." I don't know what could be put in it's place because I'm pretty sure they don't want RNG from waves to matter more and that they do want it be something that the top can't just easily skill play and end up with the setup where things are static for most theaters. Maybe it's the best of a multitude of bad options, but seems like there has to be something else to shake up things that'll be a little less aggravating.
-Backstabbing. I'm thinking we didn't see the BS KR experienced, but would like to make that a non-factor and even though I think I might be in a spot where resource hoarding won't fuck me out of the top 10 spot, I'd like to see something in place that makes this shit unrewarding. It goes against the spirit of cooperation and I get the feeling many that do it, do it less for a potential shot at the top spot and more to be dicks and to get off on ruining the experience for others. In my mind, that shouldn't be rewarded, is should be smacked down. Yes, things should be static enough that on the last day the top 100 is still in flux, but I don't think someone should be pumped up thinking they be in the top 5% or 10% and then get punked because enough people held onto enough resources to drop them out of those brackets and they might be sitting in 3% or 8% or hell, if enough do it, you could see someone move 3%. I do like the idea of a quest that makes it so people want to turn stuff in because the rewards are more advantageous than being a dick and make it harder for the dick play to pay off. For instance maybe phase one has a daily that asks for 20 materials, rewards some allotment of resources (data, combat reports, sample whatever) and 100 points. I'm suggesting a small number here because we get like fuck all in the way of points on day one. Also so this doesn't screw up things in core, any mats turned in for this quest will result in 20 materials for each structure, even the unavailable core structures. In phase two, that goes away and we given one where the turn in amount for the daily scales up based on what map is open, up to probably core 6. you want to make sure people can still scout, keep stuff just in case they fucked up and do the daily, but have the amount stop at something reasonable for people that are fairly new. Have it reward 2k worth of points, you don't want to completely hose people that miss a day (I know I nearly did because of power outages), but have it be enough that'll really sting if someone hoards resources. Also like phase 1 daily, each structure will get an equal number of points from the turn in, maybe not 100%, but enough that it was a better turn in option than just dumping stuff in one building (coughHOCschough). Now before someone says "But, Mill, you could still hoard enough to be a dick." You tweak the turn in for buildings in core 2 so that up to like X number of times, for every X amount of materials, you get a loot crate. You pick something that is forgiving to those that might forget to turn stuff in for a day or two, but low enough that people hoarding are just fucking themselves out of free loot because they'll hit a threshold where they'll have maxed out the number of crates they can get.
-CE stacking, I'm going list this as a neutral. There are problems with current CE formula, 2* slugs shouldn't be a better deal than gold items and that is a sign that something is way off. I applaud them for trying to make CE relevant, but I don't think it quite panned out. Armchair's observation of how it's a mechanic to get high end players to handicap themselves is actually pretty good and has made me had this far less, but I don't think the devs foresaw the full impact of this design choice. At best, they figured people would run with less echelons capable of clearing the waves for more MGSG teams and doubt they saw Ceia's one size fits all echelon coming. I'd actually like to see this developed into a proper system where the player is told they could get more points for using as few echelons as possible or not using certain things (maybe bonus points if your AR don't have gold HV ammo). I'm also perfectly fine if this means huge points loss because that fits in the spirit of things. If you overestimate your abilities you et burned, be that going into core 8 from core 6 without being ready or handicapping yourself beyond what your skill allows you to overcome.
-Advantaged dolls. I like seeing dolls made relevant because there are a ton that get mothballed because they are only tier A and not tier S and you only need one. My only concern, is that this probably won't result in some units getting fixes they badly need. If I make a spectator unit, I want that to be a result of either not having the skills trained up, so it's not worth using even at 100 and/or the comp it's in being a really good CE pad, but terrible against the waves in the zone. I don't want to spectator echelons, like what I had, where even if JS05 had max skill level, she'd still be kept in a spectator echelon or discarded altogether if one could get 24% advantaged bonus without her. My concern is someone at Mica will pull up a data chart showing she was used by X number of commanders and decide all is well, while missing that like 90+ percent of those commanders used her as a bench warmer. Advantaged units a great, but I'm hoping too the devs use it as a means to spot troubled units, rather than use it as a means to ignore trouble units.
-No dupes & wave tailoring. I love this because it forces me to look at all units I have on hand because it's easy to forget ones that aren't meta. Meta also forces you to go a more generalist route, unless you can ensure that a specialized unit can avoid stuff that will shred it to be bits. Okay, you get people like Ceia that still make the crazy generalist echelon, but most don't. Also the no duping forces everyone that wants to be creative to be creative because they can't fall back on the same uber units for a dedicated anti-uhlan team, that is separate from the anti-gundam team, but is also separate from the two anti-striker teams that can't be carbon copies of each other.
One thing that isn't negative or positive, is that I would like to see the option for having limited test runs instead of doing the theorycraft, fielding the teams and hoping you didn't just fuck yourself over.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Also, I saw someone post a link in one of the Discords about suggestions for Isomer. I'm not sure who the author is, but IMO the suggestions look sound.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10PosRae4tssQLyIXWU8Rlq04xUEijoqHXelwkFCCqgE/htmlview#
A few key points that I think bear mentioning about Isomer preparations:
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I'd have to check, but I think have every rifle slotted to be raised that is recommended, which I currently have and then some. Though saw one or two I had, but wasn't planning on raising anytime soon. G38 being one, might be worth considering since I don't dupe. Still don't have grape. Also same deal with handguns, but don't have steichkin, hoping she drops while I'm in the handgun crafting mode to conserve resources.
Also happy tomorrow is the last day of theater. I'll probably knock it out first thing after bombing 60 nodes in 8-1N and finishing equip crafts. I might be able to squeeze out one more CE on my setup, which is currently 9967 IIRC. I don't think it's worth seeing if I can get more CE on the fairies that I'm using. Doubt RNG will let me get more stars on my HoCs (2B and AGS). I'll have piece of mind knowing that if the forecast was slightly off and the storm system goes further north than expected that a power outage won't fuck me over. Can clear gear off of random units that aren't normally in use or forget to change AN-94 back to a scope before dragging 0-2 with her (feels like the peq results in the tank taking enough damage to double the repair timer). Can also really let the battery stockpile fill up some, still have pets to get and non-essential base structures to upgrade, but HOC power leveling and skill training uses a fuck ton of batteries, namely the skill training. Upside is that the original HoCs are close to being done with skill training. 2B needs like two more levels on her 2nd skill. I think BGM might be done if her 3rd skill is only worth getting to lvl 7, AGS might also be done if it's only really worth getting her second skill to lvl 4. AT4 needs almost everything except the first 4 lvls of her first skill.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
So got a little worried with my final run for theater.
1st run, got a 7th fucking gundam on like wave 10 IIRC. AGs and 2B weren't enough and I don't think AT4 would have saved me either. Had to abort that run. Worse thing was like 5 of them were back to back.
2nd run, got more striker packs than I would have liked, but got it down.
3rd run, got something like 5 uhlans back to back towards the end and this was after getting one on like wave 2. Was afraid wave 10 would be my 7th uhlan wave and 6th uhlan in the back to back group. I thinking I'd probably squeeze it out because I had all three HoCs available, but might lose handguns in front. Thankfully, wave ten was strelets and rodeleros, so didn't need fairy commands and I was out. I of course hit every HoC and bombed the shit out of them. Got my best final battle score too, 32654. Maybe that bumps me back into the 31% group, instead of 32%. I did notice that when I went from 32404 to 32651, that I went from 38% to 31%, so there is some major factor there that is causing that shift.
Current score before final scouting is 1150993 and that's top 8%. Assuming there aren't a ton of asshats sitting on mats behind me, remember to drop today and situated in a way that they can knock me out of top 10%, I'm probably making the cut for top 10%, maybe even staying in top 8%, doubt I'll move up further. Though will be happy with top 10% for the data, batteries, special combat reports and AT4 samples.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
nailed it
edit: lol, decided to pull twice on the radiant and got lee enfield's huntress' frock which would be really cool except I don't have a lee enfield to give it to qq.
I really need to start stockpiling my everything in preparation for the anniversary. I have 30 cores to my name right now, and I'll need more for all of the fairy crafting that I want to do.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
-I've mentioned HoCs are likely way too complicated and they need to do something to make them more intuitive. I think the big offender is the chips and that simplifying things down so that every chip has two stats at equal itemization value, rather 1-4 with random distributions, could go a long way to make them more user friendly.
-Don't know if anyone else has seen what a disaster KR server's theater has been. I can see a number of factors that could have fed into the current state of affairs there. I know there are on a rerun for HoC and I started to wonder if that HoC was either subpar or if they were at the HoC saturation point, where a good one might not excite players because they have more than enough other HoCs that can do what the new one does and are already fully raised. This also got me to realize that the HoC acquisition setup outside of theater, the one that future GFL players will contend with for AT4 and other yet to be released HoCs is actually fuck awful on a long term system. Each new HoC dilutes the pool players pull from. If you view this like the t-doll poll, it doesn't seem bad at first because with t-dolls you get the full unit, but that's not how HoCs work at all, nor do you have a means outside of their gacha to raise their stars. You need to pull enough samples of them to first unlock them, with exception of BGM and the current theater reward, should theater be active. You also have to do that song and dance to get more stars. Right now, this isn't bad since we only have three and most of us are likely close to being done with the first three HoCs for raising rarity. Add enough HoCs in and an event that requires more than 1* BGM and there will be problems. This isn't a problem that impact me and may not be an issue for me ever, but I do hope the devs are aware of this and looking into. No, rate ups are not a good solution to this IMO because HoCs are intended to be a very slow grind.
-I've mentioned quests. The worst offenders are repair because you need go out of your way most days to get 28 repairs in. I'd say the data sim dailies are also bad because they don't work with current sim design that wants you to do the max level you can, outside of data and defense drill doesn't really work with it at all. The combat sim dailies are probably the easiest fix, instead of X combat sims, make it X energy spent and it would be golden. The weekly could be changed, but it's not really an issue. The fairy ones are also pretty bad, I get they want people to do this stuff and these are meant to encourage and train people on how to maybe do so. The fairy enhancement could probably be salvaged as a monthly, but the calibration one needs to go because it's a trap. There is a point where you raise the first fairy you get for a certain type until you get a certain number, so of course you'll likely need to calibrate them. Then you hit a point where you only do that for ones with expensive recipes and you should for getting either dmg I, dmg II or Fervor. So you'll need to need to still do calibrations, but you'll eventually hit a point where you don't need ones from expensive recipes because it's not worth farming for their dupes for enhancement, you'll have them calibrated to either dmg II or fervor and if you need any from the 500x4 resources pool, you'll likely hold out for one that rolls dmg II or Fervor. So what this weekly does is train people to think they should calibrate dupes for enhancement which is a terrible idea; especially, with defense drill becoming less relevant thanks to data, memory fragments and soon SF capture stuff being more important. They probably should cut this weekly an d make sure we have the right career quests to help new players become aware of this feature, so they use it if they need it.
-Defense Drill cannot justify it's 5 energy cost. Again we have two things in game that are more important than calibration tickets and you don't need to spend sim energy in 5 sum clumps to farm them. It should be 3 energy.
-Sim energy cap needs to be raised to hold 12. One, they insist on having maintenance day on a data day, so people get screwed over if maintenance runs over a certain period of time. Two, shit happens and I don't think it's reasonable for any game to have a setup where you must log in almost exactly every 12 hours or you get penalized. I'm aware they probably lose some revenue if they do that, but I've had times where I've over capped on sim energy because of travel, long maintenance or getting sick and when it's a 12 hour timer before getting penalized, well that's bullshit. I mean, I'm compromising here by accepting a once a day thing because I'll likely still over cap at times, through no fault of my own. Three, there is no good way to get back to your old cycle if you over cap, other than to eat further penalizations because you'd have to over cap again.
I have other things that annoy me, battery stuff, but if they were looking into some QoL stuff over new content. IMO those are probably the big ones that should be a focus.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
my 4th 5* slugs.
i have two shotguns. arghhhh. i still don't have a single 5* exo!
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Though I'll see if I can track down the chart someone did, IIRC sopmod was at the top, even with buffs factored in.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
i use groups of 2 people because otherwise i have to repair m16 too often and it's too slow anyway, so it's pretty trivial to drag.