User:Fujihita/Archive

Fall 2014 Event E1 Analyses and Strategies

Jun'you bringing 2x Ryuusei Kai and 2x Reppuu did nicely against the Abyssal light fleets in E1. Although there was a bit of an issue when it came to T-disadvantage at boss, the extra torpedo power went a long way, focusing shelling power on heavier ships and thus saving us from troubles.

Weakest ship in the fleet was Satsuki, level 30-, unmodernized. She went into the red a lot of times until we realized the "actual" effect of Searchlight in event was making the ship carrying it fall to lower priority on the Abyssal's hit list. Admiral decided to take his chances and put nothing but Star Shell, Searchlight and damecon on Satsuki. It worked and somehow, she was no longer targeted by the enemy fleets. Repair cost dropped to about 2-3 buckets per run on average.

E2 Analyses and Strategies

The strategy deployed in E2 was probably the most unorthodox, a fleet of Sendai flagship and 5 DDs: 1 elite, 2 combat-ready and 2 radar/searchlight mule. A pattern emerged from our map early clears and Admiral took note of a few things.

• First, Yukikaze, or any night cut-in setup ships for the matter, was usually targeted at boss and crippled before night battle.
• Second, the rest of the map on and after last dance (referring to the last boss kill needed to clear a map) appeared to prioritize damaged and weak ships, while at boss Tsu-class and Destroyer princess preferred disabling ships, preventing closing torpedo and night battling. The exception to this rule happened when a heavily damaged ship was brought into a boss fight. Ships at boss would then prefer targeting and sinking the heavily damaged ship.
• Finally, evasion could not stop the Abyssal fleet at boss node, either their accuracy was unbelievably high, or goddess luck was on their side.

When improving your own strategy doesn't help, adapting to your enemy strategy will. So, Admiral devised a countermeasure according to the above:

• Akatsuki was set up with night cut-in equipment and was placed one slot before Yukikaze. As a result, she became the decoy, taking all the disabling hits from boss node in place of Yukikaze.
• Yayoi was a ship shield with damecon and 1x torpedo mount and 1x star shell. Her main attacking phase was the closing torpedo salvo.
• Mochizuki with radar, searchlight and damecon rarely got targeted in pre-boss night battle and pre-boss shelling, the same warding strategy used in E1.

With these latest adjustments, the ships that get moderately/heavily damaged after E2 shifted from slot 2 Yukikaze (almost always), slot 3 Ayanami, slot 6 Mochizuki to slot 3 Akatsuki (almost always), slot 4 Yayoi and slot 5 Mochizuki (less frequent). With the help of carrier support expedition, full torpedo bomber planes sinking 2-3 ships consistently at low cost, the outcome is more S-rank victories, which was good enough to farm there for 4 days straight, and more tolerable repair timers (since weaker and lower-leveled ships are focused).

Bucket loss ranged from 1-3 buckets per run in comparison to 3-5 bucket loss in the original fleet composition.

E3 Analyses and Strategies

This map was serious business without Akitsu Maru. Southern route had a chance of going north, into the storm and to an extra pre-boss battle. Nothing screams "Highway to oblivion" more than 4 battles (two pre-boss fights versus Ta-class flagship, Wo-class flagship II and a Ru-class flagship x2 battle) and an ammo-sucking maelstrom before event boss fight.

The main problem with pre-boss south and boss itself was the formation: Diamond. Maximum flagship protection and with Late Model Destroyers as meat shields, first fleet had a lot of trouble hitting important targets. Even hitting the destroyers themselves was a challenge.

Only one Torpedo Cruiser could be deployed, least one must face yet another maelstrom node. Opening airstrike with Ryuusei Kai was rather impractical in this map due to high AA bonus of enemy formation. However, it helped greatly in two earlier nodes, especially Ru-class node.

Kaga with 1 wild card, 2 Reppuu and 1 Saiun was able to AS everywhere except pre-boss south against Wo-class flagship II. Extra fleet anti-air equipment helped against Wo-class' airstrike. Sparkling the first fleet would help, since they are capable of taking out annoying late model DDs if hit.

If hit...

In the end, it all came down to night battle to take down boss fleet. The goal of day battle was only to take out as many meat shield as possible so that second fleet could attack more important targets, such as the boss herself. There wasn't really any strategy for this map except for using 2x torpedo mount setup for the non-elite DDs.

In this case, their primary attack phase became the closing torpedo salvo, which hopefully would hit and take out any remaining late model DDs. Unlike shelling, torpedo salvos didn't seem to be affected by combined fleet penalty and thus had a high chance of hitting something. Not like non-elite DDs could do anything in shelling, besides, this gave the girls a chance to cut-in and deal some actual damage to armored targets in night battle.

Most of the bucket loss for this stage came from the first fleet, since they had low evasion and had to withstand two shelling phases against very powerful opponents. Ninjas for the second fleet! Ninjas!

E4 Analyses and Strategies

A worthy extra event map, this operation pits the fleet girls against two boss-tier enemies. Given the two fleet choices, we decided to stick to Surface fleet and launched a sortie fleet with 3 Battleships and 1 fleet carrier as core fighters of the first fleet.

Despite erroneous branching rule posted on wiki page, our fleet reached boss with relative ease using the aforementioned setup. Major hiccups came from the pre-boss against Aircraft Carrier Princess after Kongou remodeled to Kai ni and lost her AA stats. Kaga with 3x Reppuu alone was able to AS against Carrier princess in exchange for shelling power and Saiun (not that Saiun would help since the last thing we wanted was T-advantage pre-boss). In initial form, the boss fight was simple. Even with a Wo-class Kai among the boss escorts, our light fleet was able to wipe out everything in night battle most of the time.

Things get ugly in last dance as boss. Topping at 190 armor, it became clear that our guns could barely scratch boss, both day and night battle. In addition, two Armored Carrier Princesses were added to boss escort, and further increased the amount of damage required to achieve S-rank victory.

In order to deal meaningful damage against boss, we swapped double attack with torpedo cut-in for weaker DD. More AA dedicated equipment allowed us to pass pre-boss Carrier-hime fairly easily, and a submarine with Repair Team to tank hits from the Armored carrier princesses at boss.

Regardless, as Kitakami was our only Torpedo cruiser and Yukikaze was our only cut-in DD at the time, we didn't have so much firepower to spare against powered up boss. And the last kill was a close match:

Night battle started. On our side: Shimakaze, Kitakami, Yuudachi, Yukikaze; on their side: full health boss, both armored carrier princesses and a late model destroyer. Then Kitakami cut-in boss for a staggering 200 damage. Yuudachi double attacked boss for 100 damage. Shimakaze tried to secure A-rank victory but missed the destroyer. Luckily, the lucky beaver torpedo cut-in and finished off E4 boss. A combined effort of everyone in the fleet, a memorable, well-earned, and no less miraculous victory it was.

Well done, everyone!