Exercises

Naval Excercises are practice matches where you combat the fleets of other Admirals.

Benefits of Participating

The first and most obvious benefit of exercises is that participation is required for several quests. The exercise list is updated twice daily, so you get ten chances total to complete all your daily quests.

Exercises are also a very safe way of gaining experience for your ships. Ships cannot sink, and are automatically repaired back to their pre-exercise status after a battle has concluded.

Finally, winning exercises generally results in your ships becoming sparkly. This can be useful if you wish to run long expeditions, or run repeated sorties.

When to Run Exercises

Generally, if the sum of the levels of the ships in the top two slots in the enemy fleet is roughly fifty or more, you can expect a base experience of about 500. The other four ships in the enemy fleet seemingly do not factor into the experience formula.

At low Admiral Levels, players have very low level ships, so the experience gain from exercises tends to be bad (sometimes far lower than running sorties). Simply put, it may not be worth running many exercises until you reach higher levels. However, there is usually one admiral in your list that is three or four times your level. Even though you will likely be slaughtered by a superior force, the high base experience still means that you come out with a great deal of experience.

Similar to sorties, you gain more experience with an S rank than with an A or B rank. If you can spare the resources and are certain of victory, it is almost always worth it to enter night battle to finish off a wounded enemy fleet. However, note that both A and B rank yield the same amount of experience. There is no point pursuing night battle if you have already won, and cannot finish off the enemy completely.

Do note that exercises reset twice daily, once at 03:00 JST and again at 15:00 JST.  This means you can run a maximum of 10 exercises per day.

Fleet Composition

As always, the flagship receives bonus experience. Thus, it makes sense to place a ship you wish to level in the flagship slot.

Running carriers in exercises is not recommended. Any competent Admiral will equip their fleet with lots of anti-air, which can utterly decimate your planes. A fleet equipped with type-3 ammunition can easily cost you 200-300 bauxite in planes. If you wish to level a carrier in exercises, consider equipping high angle guns on them instead of planes.

Battleships should form the backbone of your fleet. Their high HP and armor means that they can take a beating, and their firepower makes them effective against all ship types. The number of battleships you use should depend on the number of battleships and carriers in the enemy fleet.

The air combat phase and the opening torpedo salvo can often determine who wins the fight. To this end, make sure you equip sufficient anti-air to neutralize your opponent's carriers. Fielding Kitakami and Ooi is also generally a good idea, as they can very easily oneshot ships.

If the enemy has many light carriers, light cruisers, or destroyers, consider using a sub. As in sorties, anything that can target the sub, will, so you can effectively divert a significant portion of the enemy's firepower to the sub. Light cruisers and destroyers will continue to target the sub (if it is still alive) in night combat, so use this to your advantage.

Facing Submarines

When facing a fleet entirely made of submarines, the line abreast formation is recommended. As the enemy fleet's formation is based on the composition of said fleet, a fleet of four subs will always be in echelon formation. This is advantageous for you, as the accuracy of their pre-emptive torpedoes will generally suck because of this.

Using high ASW ships is helpful, but not strictly necessary. You will still deal good damage due to the line abreast formation. Stacking ASW equipment on your ships is highly recommended. Add in any battleship to enable the second round of attacks. Finally, take a light carrier (or a carrier if you feel you don't need the extra attack) equipped with a Saiun recon plane. The Saiun will ensure that the Crossing the T (Disadvantageous) formation is avoided, which is very important, as this particular formation significantly hinders your ability to kill subs.

If the enemy fleet has a sub supported by a real fleet (battleships, carriers, etc), the battle becomes more difficult. Consider running Kitakami and Ooi with minisubs and ASW equipment. Their pre-emptive torpedo attack will prioritize enemy ships over the sub, and they have reasonably high ASW. When using the torpedo cruisers, you should use line ahead formation in order to maximize their accuracy, as this strategy hinges on sinking or critically damaging one or two of the enemy's ships to win the surface battle. Field one or more battleships to cement your surface superiority, and possibly a carrier (light carriers will target the sub and deal very little damage due to the formation) equipped with a Saiun. Adding another good ASW ship such as Isuzu Kai 2 is a good idea too. The main problem of this enemy fleet composition tends to be killing the sub, not killing the surface ships.

As always, there is still some RNG involved with this strategy. If the enemy manages to inflict enough damage to your ASW ships, your chances of killing the sub are slim. Even then, you will probably still come out with an A or B rank.