I've only got one friend despite issuing like a hundred requests, which is a bummer.
It took me a few days before I got any positive responses to requests. In the end, I've had better results with visiting random dormitories and sending requests to dorm owners than to go off the list in the add friends tab. This also nets you more veteran players with stronger support echelons, so taking down bosses becomes easier.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
My friend ID number is 688002.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Hmm. I can't figure a thing out: I've got two of the same three star AR. It's never been dummy linked. It doesn't show up as dummy link eligible. What do?
What is this I don't even.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
So, I see that I should probably focus crafting on aiming for a 5* AR, but should I wait until a specific point in the story to start trying to craft?
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Hmm. I can't figure a thing out: I've got two of the same three star AR. It's never been dummy linked. It doesn't show up as dummy link eligible. What do?
Is the one you're trying to link at the right level? I think it's level 10 for the first link.
So, I see that I should probably focus crafting on aiming for a 5* AR, but should I wait until a specific point in the story to start trying to craft?
You can start crafting right off, but it's probably a good idea to measure yourself until you've got your resource income in order. You should do three crafts a day for the daily quest, though. Even if you're just paying 10 of each resource for them.
Hmm. I can't figure a thing out: I've got two of the same three star AR. It's never been dummy linked. It doesn't show up as dummy link eligible. What do?
Is the one you're trying to link at the right level? I think it's level 10 for the first link.
Well, I am a bit weirded out that I'm trying this, but my ID is 685379 (Name is Zerthim)
I've gotten a couple 5* AR units (FAL and Zas M21), but the cost to upgrade(dummy link) them is cray, so I've put off linking them. The only cores I've used are for linking M4A1 (seems universally well reviewed) and TAR-21 (seems decent, and I like her design). I really only focused on SMG/AR units with a couple HG units thrown into the mix (I've really tried to make MP-446 work since she has like a 5 tile +damage buff, but since she has to be out in front, she dies way too quickly. So, I'm doubting whether I can pull it off). I'm a bit frightened by using any MG units since I've read that they burn through ammo like there's no tomorrow. I have a couple rifles, but haven't really done anything with them yet.
With the current event, it looks like if I can just keep farming 1-6 and 2-6, I'll be able to just squeak out getting the event unit before the event ends. I'm not confident at all that I'll be able to make it to 3-6. 2-6 seemed like a big spike in difficulty, and I don't imagine it'll get any easier.
It there a good way to farm 2* units to get fodder for increasing stats?
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
For 2-stars, i generally have a unit running auto battles, which nets a steady stream of them, plus the occasional 3-star.
And it gets me xp on my "I'll use these eventually"- team.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I've got an hour and a half left on a 3 hr cook, I'm excited to see what will come out. Other than that I've got one team thats all SMG and my one AR, and then a team thats a bunch of HG and a rifle. Then random 2* to fill two teams logistics runs on repeat.
Also, S ranking battles seems way more complicated than expected.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
I've got an hour and a half left on a 3 hr cook, I'm excited to see what will come out. Other than that I've got one team thats all SMG and my one AR, and then a team thats a bunch of HG and a rifle. Then random 2* to fill two teams logistics runs on repeat.
Also, S ranking battles seems way more complicated than expected.
I've had the most luck with getting S rank by using a second team to play defense/mop up enemies that aren't on the beeline to the HQ/boss that my A team is going for. But yeah, I think a couple of the early ones, it seems if the enemies run away or do some random move, then its really hard to kill everyone in time.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
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Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
Many of the early Gold Medals are rough because you have maps with fixed amounts of enemies and probably only the one echelon you can field. One important thing to remember is that while you can field friend echelons to help get S-ranks, you have to be very careful because friend echelon kills don't count towards S-rank requirements and so you are better off using them solely for repositioning and resupply (note: it does not take any AP to have two echelons swap places, regardless of whether they're your own echelon or a friend's).
For early game I would advise that you should at most focus on raising a single 5*, if at all. Like i mentioned before, you will get 3 perfectly good ARs just by clearing chapter 3 and while most 5* ARs are good, they are not essential in the early game and you will not have many cores to spare.
I would also highly recommend doing SMG builds and trying to get UMP45. She is the gold standard of performance for SMGs with a godly mix of survivability stats, amazing tile buffs/coverage for the ARs behind her, and a great skill for slowing down enemies, all in a 4* package which is cheaper to raise than 5*s (more chances of crafting dupes, too). Her sister, UMP9, isn't bad either as a consolation prize.
I think that my original team was mostly 4* and 5* units. If memory serves, my first team to reach level 90 was FAL, SVD, WA2000, Skorpion, and ump45. It misses out on tile buffs something fierce, but the biggest problem that I ran into was getting picked apart by snipers while AR's were getting bogged down by the shield bearers. The smgs did a better job of tanking than sub level 80 handguns would have, the targeting priority of the rifles solved the sniper problem, and the incendiary grenade dealt with swarms. Star 15 probably would have been better than FAL, but I had already started myself down her path. I had enough cores to link as I leveled up, but basically 100% of my cores went to the one squad.
Before I adopted the rifles onto the team, I was running AR's like F2000 and stg44. FNC would have been sooooo much better, but she evaded me for a statistically improbable period of time.
M14 was on the team for awhile before WA2000 replaced her.
Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
P.s. the production timers map to specific tdolls with a teeny bit of overlap between certain categories, but you can basically know ahead of time if you got a 4/5* tdoll assuming you weren't using a generalist recipe which could yield multiple types of tdolls
For a quick and loose frame of reference here are the general "winning" time ranges
HG: 1:00-1:10 (1:10 is sometimes a trap of IDW DA NYAAAA)
SMG: 2:15 - 2:35
AR: 3:40 - 4:12
RF: 4:15, 4:32 - 5:00
MG: 6:30 - 6:50
SG: 8:00 and above
All the guides I read said basically don't play with any 4 or 5's at all, just get a functioning 2/3 team for your first team.
Recognize that they're trying to keep you out of core hell. However I think that they get a bit carried away with hyping up the risk. If you invest in any 4* or 5* units though, then you had better commit to them. Resources invested in 2* or 3* units can be more readily rotated out of your A-Team, especially if managed to link them with duplicates instead of cores. The morale of the story is less to avoid 5*s like the plague, and more to avoid spreading your core investments out between all of your echelons before you get one workhorse team capable of farming cores.
If you run with just 2*s and 3*s, then you'll have a ton more breathing room with your core budget. But imo running a 5* or even two isn't automatically the kiss of death.
I also think that my aforementioned team was capable of farming 0-2 for core drops by the time that they were 4x linked.
Swapping in WA2000 was a very expensive choice on my part. It paid off though since she's kinda a beast on the battlefield. Investing in FAL so early was a mistake however you slice it, but not severe enough of one to doom me.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should stick to mostly 3* units at first, but don't let that stop you from using a 5* that speaks to you.
General_Armchair on
3DS Friend Code:
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
It sounds more like "If you start linking a 5*, finish linking that 5* before you start on something else (with cores)".
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
It sounds more like "If you start linking a 5*, finish linking that 5* before you start on something else (with cores)".
Pretty much. As a new player you're guaranteed a quick influx of cores from stuff like level up rewards, story chapter medals, etc. Once that dries up, then you're core income mostly comes from dolls that you craft and dolls that you rescue on the battlefield. The rescue rate for 3* dolls is pretty low in the first few chapters. A lot of players think that the map 0-2 is the first map that has a 3* drop rate that's high enough for them to breath easy. So it is beneficial for you to upgrade a team to the point where it can comfortably run 0-2 before you run out of that initial supply of cores. Depending on your team's composition, you might be able to do that with just 4x linked dolls. 5x linked dolls can certainly do it.
That initial supply of cores IMO is large enough that you can budget running a few 4*'s or even a 5*. The problem is if you start investing in a 4* or 5* unit and then change your mind and replace the doll with someone else. That's a costly change of heart that could quickly rack up costs above what you can afford.
Some other popular leveling maps if you're not quite strong enough for 0-2 yet are 5-2E, 5-4, and 4-3E. Those maps are popular because they both contain groups of enemies that are relatively weak relative to the EXP that they reward, and because it's possible to queue up an auto-battle to win the battle in five fights or less. That later point is key for players who intend to use those maps to "corpse drag."
If you're not corpse dragging, then there are some harder maps that hand out more experience and more cores per run than 0-2. 7-4 and 7-2E are IMO pretty tame for their chapters, and have good core rates. I've personally been running 6-2E a lot since it has a convenient route where I can queue up many turns worth of battles in advance and just let it play. Over the course of running 6-2E, my team ends up defeat a multiple boss mobs per run, and boss mobs have better EXP and doll drop rates than regular mobs. A lot of players are anxiously awaiting the release of chapter 10, since it contains a map with a ton of elite mobs with superb drop tables that can be readily farmed by one of the carcano sisters or M4 mod3.
Corpse dragging is basically how you might powerlevel in an MMO where a lowbie friend groups up with someone at levelcap and just follows around leeching EXP. It exploits the fact that ammo and rations are tracked on a per-doll basis and not on an echelon level basis. So you deploy a team consisting of one over-leveled DPS doll who can solo the fight, one over-leveled tank who can shrug off the enemy fire, and three "corpses" who just tag along for the EXP. So you can get up to five battles worth of experience for the cost of only equipping a single Doll with rations and ammo. It is by far the most resource efficient way to level, but on the flip side it's time inefficient since the lone DPS doll is still slower than a full echelon shooting and you waste a lot of time rearranging echelon compositions to swap in fresh resupplied DPS units.
3DS Friend Code:
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
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Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
So, can I clear all of chapter 1 again to try and get more Metal Zonghi? Cause I killed the boss a second time and got nothing.
it's 1 drop per clear of x-6 (up to CH. 6) per day, so no. You don't have to reclear all the stages in the chapter. If you want more metal zongzhi you'll have to try and clear chapter 2 and up for access to those stages. I wouldn't worry too much about missing out on this event if you just started though since TAC-50 will very likely return as a reward in another event.
You can in fact see if you've gotten your daily clear since the Event Currency will show up on the X-6 stage as an icon and go away once you've cleared it! They used to not have that and you had to either manually keep track or do math. It sucked!
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
edited June 2019
Awesome, thanks!
Edit: Is there a way to resupply Echelons low on ammo?
Brody on
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Edit: Is there a way to resupply Echelons low on ammo?
Echelons can be resupplied at any friendly airfield or command post. By default they'll do it automatically if they start their turn on a relevant space, but you can manually resupply an echelon by clicking on them to bring up the maintenance menu when they're on a relevant space. You can also perform field repairs at airfields and command posts by bringing up that maintenance menu. Performing a field repair consumes a quick repair ticket, costs double the usual repair cost, and disqualifies you from earning silver and gold completion medals (I forget about bronze).
You can access that maintenance menu anywhere to rearrange your echelon's formation on the fly if you encounter a situation where you think that is a prudent thing to do.
Additionally there are single-use resupply points on some maps that you likely haven't encountered yet. They were first introduced in operation cube and look like circles with a little box in the middle. You may raid them for supplies even if the tile is under enemy control, but the tile transforms to an ordinary tile afterwards.
Sometimes those random boxes can result in getting ambushed with a battle. I think that I've only seen that happen in events though. It can be hell if you had carefully budgeted ammo and then the surprise battle makes you consume more than expected.
Every now and then those tiles gives you a few points of skill training data.
3DS Friend Code:
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Sometimes those random boxes can result in getting ambushed with a battle. I think that I've only seen that happen in events though. It can be hell if you had carefully budgeted ammo and then the surprise battle makes you consume more than expected.
Every now and then those tiles gives you a few points of skill training data.
I need to actually pay attention to how the ammo mechanics actually play out.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Sometimes those random boxes can result in getting ambushed with a battle. I think that I've only seen that happen in events though. It can be hell if you had carefully budgeted ammo and then the surprise battle makes you consume more than expected.
Every now and then those tiles gives you a few points of skill training data.
I need to actually pay attention to how the ammo mechanics actually play out.
For a moment, ignore your "ammo" and "rations" as in the resource displayed in the upper right corner of the screen. Also ignore for a moment that ammo/rations are tracked on a per-doll basis since 99.99% of the time the dolls in an echelon will have identical supply levels. About the only time that supply levels differ within the context of a single echelon is when you go out of your way to setup that situation (see "Corpse dragging").
When fully supplied, the dolls in your echelon will have five units of ammo and ten units of rations, as represented by the tic marks in the yellow and blue circles within their squad label. In order to use their weapons or abilities in combat, they need to have both rations and ammo. Engaging an enemy in combat will consume one unit of ammo and one unit of rations. Additionally, one unit of rations will be consumed at the start of each turn.
You can resupply at friendly heliports, friendly command posts, and supply caches. Resupplying will fully refill the ammo and ration supply of the entire echelon. The act of resupplying the echelon will deduct a certain sum of ammo and rations from your resource counter in the upper right hand corner. Precisely how many resources will depend on how many links are in the echelon and what type of Dolls are in the echelon. For example, handguns consume the least resources, machineguns consume the most, and everyone else falls in between them. A Doll that is 5x linked costs 5x the resources to resupply than a completely unlinked doll.
With cube+ coming up, it may be some players' first experience with night battles.
One thing that I forgot to warn you about is that the handguns with illumination flare skills don't work like you'd expect them to work and overall aren't very useful. It has to do with how the accuracy/evasion formula works and how night time and night vision affect accuracy. A tl;Dr is that the only dolls who will appreciable benefit from the flare are ones who already have night vision gear, but 99% of the time they wouldn't have needed assistance in the first place.
I'll write something more detailed up later tonight. I'm sorry that it slipped my mind. I forgot that flares were a thing.
It's dumb. I know. The game has undergone a few mechanics overhauls since its earliest days and I think flares are just an artifact from back when things worked a bit differently.
General_Armchair on
3DS Friend Code:
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
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Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
edited June 2019
i mean it's basically "flare accuracy buff is applied after the night accuracy debuff has taken effect, so it's useless" and any further exploration of that is just diving down into the math of it
just avoid flare HGs, kids - PEQs and grenades/skills are your only friend when it comes to night battles
Orphane on
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I feel like I have very little idea what I should be doing for good echelon setups when most of all of my dolls are the free 2-3* ones.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
You practically can't go wrong with a basic 2smg/3ar setup. You could even easily replace one AR with a rifle or handgun. You can achieve varying degrees of improved performance, depending on the specific smgs or AR's, but most anything should be adequate for the story assuming appropriate level and link #.
Usually people make use of what's called an 'F' formation. If you use number pad notation to designate the nine tiles of the formation, then the DPS occupies the back colum of numbers 1, 4, and 7. The main tank will be dead center in position 5, and the off tank will be at the top in position 8. The main tank will be an smg with high evasion and a defensive skill like a flashbang, smoke grenade, or defensive self buff. The off tank will be an smg with an offensive skill like offensive grenades or a damage buff.
IIRC f2000 and L85A1 have above average DPS performance for 2* ARs, but you can probably get away with using whoever strikes your fancy.
These 2* and 3* dolls will likely be rotated off of your combat teams and placed onto logistics mission teams once you start replacing them with stronger dolls.
If you've been progressing through the story, then you should have some members of the AR team. A very solid starter team would be the following:
*STAR 15 in position 7 as your main DPS.
*M4A1 directly below her in position 4 as additional DPS and a buffer for your other ARs.
*SOPMOD can go in position 1, or you can run FNC or any other low rarity AR to save on cores.
*Skorpion and PPS-43 are solid off tanks that are fairly common.
*STEN serves as an admirable main tank. Eventually you'll probably replace her with one of UMPs or RO 635.
That team should be strong enough to take on most of the content in the story.
Posts
It took me a few days before I got any positive responses to requests. In the end, I've had better results with visiting random dormitories and sending requests to dorm owners than to go off the list in the add friends tab. This also nets you more veteran players with stronger support echelons, so taking down bosses becomes easier.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Is the one you're trying to link at the right level? I think it's level 10 for the first link.
You can start crafting right off, but it's probably a good idea to measure yourself until you've got your resource income in order. You should do three crafts a day for the daily quest, though. Even if you're just paying 10 of each resource for them.
That's probably it.
I've gotten a couple 5* AR units (FAL and Zas M21), but the cost to upgrade(dummy link) them is cray, so I've put off linking them. The only cores I've used are for linking M4A1 (seems universally well reviewed) and TAR-21 (seems decent, and I like her design). I really only focused on SMG/AR units with a couple HG units thrown into the mix (I've really tried to make MP-446 work since she has like a 5 tile +damage buff, but since she has to be out in front, she dies way too quickly.
With the current event, it looks like if I can just keep farming 1-6 and 2-6, I'll be able to just squeak out getting the event unit before the event ends. I'm not confident at all that I'll be able to make it to 3-6. 2-6 seemed like a big spike in difficulty, and I don't imagine it'll get any easier.
It there a good way to farm 2* units to get fodder for increasing stats?
And it gets me xp on my "I'll use these eventually"- team.
Also, S ranking battles seems way more complicated than expected.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I've had the most luck with getting S rank by using a second team to play defense/mop up enemies that aren't on the beeline to the HQ/boss that my A team is going for. But yeah, I think a couple of the early ones, it seems if the enemies run away or do some random move, then its really hard to kill everyone in time.
For early game I would advise that you should at most focus on raising a single 5*, if at all. Like i mentioned before, you will get 3 perfectly good ARs just by clearing chapter 3 and while most 5* ARs are good, they are not essential in the early game and you will not have many cores to spare.
I would also highly recommend doing SMG builds and trying to get UMP45. She is the gold standard of performance for SMGs with a godly mix of survivability stats, amazing tile buffs/coverage for the ARs behind her, and a great skill for slowing down enemies, all in a 4* package which is cheaper to raise than 5*s (more chances of crafting dupes, too). Her sister, UMP9, isn't bad either as a consolation prize.
Before I adopted the rifles onto the team, I was running AR's like F2000 and stg44. FNC would have been sooooo much better, but she evaded me for a statistically improbable period of time.
M14 was on the team for awhile before WA2000 replaced her.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
For a quick and loose frame of reference here are the general "winning" time ranges
HG: 1:00-1:10 (1:10 is sometimes a trap of IDW DA NYAAAA)
SMG: 2:15 - 2:35
AR: 3:40 - 4:12
RF: 4:15, 4:32 - 5:00
MG: 6:30 - 6:50
SG: 8:00 and above
Recognize that they're trying to keep you out of core hell. However I think that they get a bit carried away with hyping up the risk. If you invest in any 4* or 5* units though, then you had better commit to them. Resources invested in 2* or 3* units can be more readily rotated out of your A-Team, especially if managed to link them with duplicates instead of cores. The morale of the story is less to avoid 5*s like the plague, and more to avoid spreading your core investments out between all of your echelons before you get one workhorse team capable of farming cores.
If you run with just 2*s and 3*s, then you'll have a ton more breathing room with your core budget. But imo running a 5* or even two isn't automatically the kiss of death.
I also think that my aforementioned team was capable of farming 0-2 for core drops by the time that they were 4x linked.
Swapping in WA2000 was a very expensive choice on my part. It paid off though since she's kinda a beast on the battlefield. Investing in FAL so early was a mistake however you slice it, but not severe enough of one to doom me.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you should stick to mostly 3* units at first, but don't let that stop you from using a 5* that speaks to you.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Pretty much. As a new player you're guaranteed a quick influx of cores from stuff like level up rewards, story chapter medals, etc. Once that dries up, then you're core income mostly comes from dolls that you craft and dolls that you rescue on the battlefield. The rescue rate for 3* dolls is pretty low in the first few chapters. A lot of players think that the map 0-2 is the first map that has a 3* drop rate that's high enough for them to breath easy. So it is beneficial for you to upgrade a team to the point where it can comfortably run 0-2 before you run out of that initial supply of cores. Depending on your team's composition, you might be able to do that with just 4x linked dolls. 5x linked dolls can certainly do it.
That initial supply of cores IMO is large enough that you can budget running a few 4*'s or even a 5*. The problem is if you start investing in a 4* or 5* unit and then change your mind and replace the doll with someone else. That's a costly change of heart that could quickly rack up costs above what you can afford.
Some other popular leveling maps if you're not quite strong enough for 0-2 yet are 5-2E, 5-4, and 4-3E. Those maps are popular because they both contain groups of enemies that are relatively weak relative to the EXP that they reward, and because it's possible to queue up an auto-battle to win the battle in five fights or less. That later point is key for players who intend to use those maps to "corpse drag."
If you're not corpse dragging, then there are some harder maps that hand out more experience and more cores per run than 0-2. 7-4 and 7-2E are IMO pretty tame for their chapters, and have good core rates. I've personally been running 6-2E a lot since it has a convenient route where I can queue up many turns worth of battles in advance and just let it play. Over the course of running 6-2E, my team ends up defeat a multiple boss mobs per run, and boss mobs have better EXP and doll drop rates than regular mobs. A lot of players are anxiously awaiting the release of chapter 10, since it contains a map with a ton of elite mobs with superb drop tables that can be readily farmed by one of the carcano sisters or M4 mod3.
Corpse dragging is basically how you might powerlevel in an MMO where a lowbie friend groups up with someone at levelcap and just follows around leeching EXP. It exploits the fact that ammo and rations are tracked on a per-doll basis and not on an echelon level basis. So you deploy a team consisting of one over-leveled DPS doll who can solo the fight, one over-leveled tank who can shrug off the enemy fire, and three "corpses" who just tag along for the EXP. So you can get up to five battles worth of experience for the cost of only equipping a single Doll with rations and ammo. It is by far the most resource efficient way to level, but on the flip side it's time inefficient since the lone DPS doll is still slower than a full echelon shooting and you waste a lot of time rearranging echelon compositions to swap in fresh resupplied DPS units.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
G41 is basically the bread and butter of 5* ARs. Just an extremely solid performance all around, you can't go wrong with her.
I'm completely aware of the risks and am fine with it.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
it's 1 drop per clear of x-6 (up to CH. 6) per day, so no. You don't have to reclear all the stages in the chapter. If you want more metal zongzhi you'll have to try and clear chapter 2 and up for access to those stages. I wouldn't worry too much about missing out on this event if you just started though since TAC-50 will very likely return as a reward in another event.
You can in fact see if you've gotten your daily clear since the Event Currency will show up on the X-6 stage as an icon and go away once you've cleared it! They used to not have that and you had to either manually keep track or do math. It sucked!
Edit: Is there a way to resupply Echelons low on ammo?
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Echelons can be resupplied at any friendly airfield or command post. By default they'll do it automatically if they start their turn on a relevant space, but you can manually resupply an echelon by clicking on them to bring up the maintenance menu when they're on a relevant space. You can also perform field repairs at airfields and command posts by bringing up that maintenance menu. Performing a field repair consumes a quick repair ticket, costs double the usual repair cost, and disqualifies you from earning silver and gold completion medals (I forget about bronze).
You can access that maintenance menu anywhere to rearrange your echelon's formation on the fly if you encounter a situation where you think that is a prudent thing to do.
Additionally there are single-use resupply points on some maps that you likely haven't encountered yet. They were first introduced in operation cube and look like circles with a little box in the middle. You may raid them for supplies even if the tile is under enemy control, but the tile transforms to an ordinary tile afterwards.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Every now and then those tiles gives you a few points of skill training data.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I need to actually pay attention to how the ammo mechanics actually play out.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
For a moment, ignore your "ammo" and "rations" as in the resource displayed in the upper right corner of the screen. Also ignore for a moment that ammo/rations are tracked on a per-doll basis since 99.99% of the time the dolls in an echelon will have identical supply levels. About the only time that supply levels differ within the context of a single echelon is when you go out of your way to setup that situation (see "Corpse dragging").
When fully supplied, the dolls in your echelon will have five units of ammo and ten units of rations, as represented by the tic marks in the yellow and blue circles within their squad label. In order to use their weapons or abilities in combat, they need to have both rations and ammo. Engaging an enemy in combat will consume one unit of ammo and one unit of rations. Additionally, one unit of rations will be consumed at the start of each turn.
You can resupply at friendly heliports, friendly command posts, and supply caches. Resupplying will fully refill the ammo and ration supply of the entire echelon. The act of resupplying the echelon will deduct a certain sum of ammo and rations from your resource counter in the upper right hand corner. Precisely how many resources will depend on how many links are in the echelon and what type of Dolls are in the echelon. For example, handguns consume the least resources, machineguns consume the most, and everyone else falls in between them. A Doll that is 5x linked costs 5x the resources to resupply than a completely unlinked doll.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Edit:
Your remaining supply should be visible on the screen where you select a support echelon.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
One thing that I forgot to warn you about is that the handguns with illumination flare skills don't work like you'd expect them to work and overall aren't very useful. It has to do with how the accuracy/evasion formula works and how night time and night vision affect accuracy. A tl;Dr is that the only dolls who will appreciable benefit from the flare are ones who already have night vision gear, but 99% of the time they wouldn't have needed assistance in the first place.
I'll write something more detailed up later tonight. I'm sorry that it slipped my mind. I forgot that flares were a thing.
It's dumb. I know. The game has undergone a few mechanics overhauls since its earliest days and I think flares are just an artifact from back when things worked a bit differently.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
just avoid flare HGs, kids - PEQs and grenades/skills are your only friend when it comes to night battles
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Usually people make use of what's called an 'F' formation. If you use number pad notation to designate the nine tiles of the formation, then the DPS occupies the back colum of numbers 1, 4, and 7. The main tank will be dead center in position 5, and the off tank will be at the top in position 8. The main tank will be an smg with high evasion and a defensive skill like a flashbang, smoke grenade, or defensive self buff. The off tank will be an smg with an offensive skill like offensive grenades or a damage buff.
IIRC f2000 and L85A1 have above average DPS performance for 2* ARs, but you can probably get away with using whoever strikes your fancy.
These 2* and 3* dolls will likely be rotated off of your combat teams and placed onto logistics mission teams once you start replacing them with stronger dolls.
If you've been progressing through the story, then you should have some members of the AR team. A very solid starter team would be the following:
*STAR 15 in position 7 as your main DPS.
*M4A1 directly below her in position 4 as additional DPS and a buffer for your other ARs.
*SOPMOD can go in position 1, or you can run FNC or any other low rarity AR to save on cores.
*Skorpion and PPS-43 are solid off tanks that are fairly common.
*STEN serves as an admirable main tank. Eventually you'll probably replace her with one of UMPs or RO 635.
That team should be strong enough to take on most of the content in the story.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Heavy manufacture is basically only for attempting to craft shotguns or if you are at hard resource cap and just want to see all of it evaporate
Even longtime players like myself only do once a week heavy crafts for the weekly quest and only do multiple HPs on rate-up events
Stick to regular crafting but use specific recipes for targeting the kind of tdoll you want