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Guide:Strategies
Welcome to IOP Wiki. This website is maintained by the Girls' Frontline community and is free to edit by anyone.
This page contains community suggested tips and information regarding optimized combat effectiveness and primary resource efficiency.
It is not meant to be a definitive guide, any tips or information here are suggestions that newer players may prefer to know earlier on and may keep utilizing once they are more experience.
As a friendly reminder, players should enjoy the game how they please as there are subjectively no incorrect play-style.
These are high correlating methods regarding the objective of utilizing the primary resources efficiently to accomplish certain goals such as clearing a stage. (Resources = Personnel/Ammunition/Rations/Parts).
Each T-Doll have their own "Formation Buff" tiles which intuitively boost the stats of other T-Dolls presiding within those tiles. T-Doll tile-set can be view within their information page below costume.
Generally speaking, -HG tile-set will buff all class of T-Dolls- / -SMG tile-set will buff AR class- / -AR tile-set will buff SMG class- / -SG tile-set will buff MG class- / -MG tile-set will buff SG class-
Some T-Dolls are exceptions to this generality, such as AR M4A1M4A1M4A1, AR RibeyrollesRibeyrollesRibeyrolles, SMG UMP40UMP40UMP40, RF Carcano M1891Carcano M1891Carcano M1891, and RF Carcano M91∕38Carcano M91∕38Carcano M91∕38. Each of these unique T-Doll tile-set buffs their own class.
To lower resource cost of leveling/progressing, it is possible to resupply a singular T-Doll, then place the resupplied T-Doll in an echelon with other T-Dolls that have not been resupplied, and then enter battle.
The idea is to defeat enemies with only one resupplied T-Doll doing all the shooting, one non-resupplied T-Doll that will operate as the "tank" taking on incoming fire damage, and three other non-resupplied T-Doll tags along for experience. Refer to the "Corpse Dragging" section below for full information.
Team Formation, Effectiveness Synergy, and Resource Efficiency[edit]
Given the game design of which T-Doll class tile-set buffs which class residing on their respective tile. Establishing the logical synergy of RF + HG as a team unit, AR + SMG as a team unit, and MG + SG as a team unit is intuitively clear.
HG tile-set is designed to be flexible and adaptive, efficiently utilize as a tertiary support class within AR + SMG team unit, and MG + SG team unit.
An echelon team may consist of five total T-Doll. The game is design in a way that a singular team possess a range of efficiency regarding enemies composition. With this information in mind, there is no ultimate composition that will handle all scenarios.
For enemies compositions that are numerous in enemies counts, the general strategy is to utilize ARs (Grenade Skill) + SMGs (Grenade) + [Optional HG], thus fully taking advantage of the Grenade Skills to damage many enemies.
For armored units, the resource effect team setup is HGs + RFs for regular battles, HGs + RFs (Long Initial Cooldown, Boss Killers) for armored bosses. HGs + RFs can also handle numerous enemies count that ARs + SMGs team are for if kited and retreated correctly via micro.
Which leaves us with MGs + SGs + [Optional HG] being the most costly, and also the most effective regarding most enemies composition. Some exceptions are unique bosses in which a HGs + RFs team would outperform.
The resource usage of a fully 5-linked T-Doll per singular battle of each class are as follow. With this table, you can calculate and compare different team composition regarding their resource usages relative to their effectiveness.
Class
Ammunition
Ration
HG
6
6
RF
11
18
SMG
17
12
AR
12
12
MG
28
18
SG
18
28
Frequent team archetype used is a combination of 3 DPS (MG/AR/RF) and at least 1 Tank (SMG or SG). Due to the flexibility of HGs to serve both as off-tanks and as support for other DPS, it may often be preferable to use HG depending on the difficulty of the stage due to their lower resource cost.
MGs deal all their damage up front, but will then have to reload for at least 4 seconds. As a result, they tend to be outclassed by AR and RF in longer fights. Consider this carefully when building your team, as their consumption is much higher in comparison.
Be aware of the effects of buff tiles. SMGs and ARs complement each other, MGs and SGs complement each other, and RFs reduce the skill charge time of HGs. HG buffs can affect all guns.
Different gun types benefit more from certain stats. ARs tend to favor crit chance and damage over attack speed. RFs favor RoF and damage, MGs benefit greatly from accuracy and damage, and SGs require the greatest amount of accuracy to be effective. Keep these general guidelines in mind when equipping your team and choosing your buffs.
Typically your tanks will receive much less damage if they avoid the front row. This is because the time it takes for the enemies to move into firing position will be longer, and your own squad won't need to move forward to fire at enemies. It is often better to sacrifice tile buffs rather than losing valuable DPS time repositioning your team at the beginning of each round of combat.
Due to their naturally high evasion and the fact that no single instance of damage is capable of destroying more than 1 T-doll, High level HGs can be used as resource-friendly secondary tanks. Taking the above points into consideration, the formation pictured with the HG in the middle is very recommended if you're not feeling lazy and can swap the positions of the SMG and the HG at the start of every battle. Otherwise if you are lazy, leave the HG at top.
For player Tdolls, damage received does not carry over to other dummies. (If an x2 girl has 400 total HP and she takes two 150dmg shots, she'd be left with one dummy at 200 HP.) Because of this, prioritize evasion over HP against bosses, since no Tdoll in the game can take more than 2 150dmg shots per dummy.
One of the highest DPS compositions is 3RF 2HG. This can be used to farm most content because enemies will often be mowed down before being able to land a single shot. There are also other RF formations available, as demonstrated here. Mobs to take caution over when using this formation are Dragoons (mounted enemies), Dinergates, and basically fast moving enemies that may swarm the squad up and engage in close quarters. In addition to having high movement speed, they also deal high damage per shot and have high accuracy as well.
A safe, jack-of-all-trades, master of none composition would be 2SMG 3AR or 2SMG 2AR 1HG. As demonstrated here by the Anti-Rain squad, each unit has a role to play in near-perfect tandem. The same concept is demonstrated by Squad 404, and other 'canonical' team. Using other girls with similar skills, other fully-functioning AR SMG teams could be formed. Their only weaknesses would be armored enemies and 'RF/Shield' combinations.
All enemies have a noticeable delay between when they first get into position, and when they take their first shots. The length of the attack animation differs between different types of enemies; RFs and Nemeums have the most noticeable delay. This used to be exploitable by putting your tank in the front line, and right before they take their first shot, moving your tank back to the 2nd line. Now depending on the enemy composition, some enemies will be slower than others, especially if they are different class. For full effectiveness of kiting, command your tank to move from front line to 2nd line when the majority of the first wave of enemy class units are about to fire. The tank is now in the 2nd line position, the goal is to move the tank back to the front line before the second wave of enemy class units reaches the range to fire upon the first line, which will trigger the delay for the second wave of enemies unit. Then position your tank from the front line to 2nd line once again, thus forcing the second wave of enemies class units to walk further. Continue for third and forth wave if applicable.
Timing is crucial, and each battle tend to differ. For example, you would not move your tank from front line to back line at the moment the first enemy is about to fire if the other 4 enemies echelon within the same wave still have 2 seconds to catch up to their steadfast teammate. You would wait for the "majority". By kiting, you are effectively forcing the enemy to spend extra time not firing due to the amount of time they take to aim. So if you move your tank when 4 enemies are about to fire versus only 1, you are preventing 4x bullets shot.
While it is no longer possible to force enemies to restart their attack animation via kiting, it is still possible (and very advantageous) to use the Retreat option on an individual T-doll to force an enemy to move forward, you command the retreat when you know that the time it takes to finish the enemies off is less than the time it takes for the enemies to reach your bac kline and fire. In the Episode 5 Night missions, it is not possible to kite the Nemeums backwards because they begin combat in range of your whole team.
As of Patch 1.115, a bug still exists where retreated T-dolls still count as "active" for the purposes of target acquisition for certain enemies. Notably, Architect has a chance to shoot her RPG special attack at an off-screen T-doll.
All bosses except for Destroyer, the EP.5 boss, have some sort of special attack that could formerly be canceled by retreating the targeted T-Doll prior to boss skill activation.
By constantly moving a T-doll between 2 blocks in a row, 2 enemy columns can be prevented from advancing (especially the shield units and the mechanized ones since they can only be stop by blocking their exact column). However, that certain T-doll will be rendered unable to shoot/use skill and moving another T-doll is obviously impossible. After the enemies start shooting at that T-dolls, stop moving her won't cause enemy units to advance as long as they keep shooting.
"Corpse Dragging" refers to completing a stage with minimum resources spent. Efficiently gaining experiences and 'cores' or 'equipment' as reward.
Usually, only one singular T-doll will be resupplied, acting as the DPS to defeat enemies. The rest will remain without supplies, effectively dead weights only present to absorb damage or gain experience.
Role Terms:
DPS = (Resupplied) Defeat enemies, *DPS T-Doll looks around and notices her team is without Ammo or Ration*
Tank = (Without Supply) Absorb incoming enemies fire damage.
Buffer = (Without Supply) T-Dolls
Tourist = (Without Supply) Any tag-along T-Dolls needing experiences, not contributing to reducing resource cost.
Contrarily to common knowledge, HGs are more cost effective as tank role versus SMGs/SGs at least up to stage 4-3E.
Common HG PPKPPKPPK hold titles as the 2nd highest efficient HGs at stage 4-3E, taking no damage or only one or two hit at 5-link and adequate DPS on stage 4-3E. 1st = HGs goes to HG PSMPSMPSM.
The way damage works is [Enemy Fire - Ally Armor = Damage Taken]
IF IT IS A HIT from the enemy that is. SMGs and HGs with the same amount of evasion stat will perform identically as a tank in terms of damage taken.
SMGS will incure higher repair cost until DPS T-Doll is powerfully efficient enough to kill enemies wave in which HG tanks will be more efficient. Since HGs evasions are much higher than SMGs.
HGs will get hit less. HGs are inherently more repair cost effective than SMGs, and SMGs are more repair cost effective than SGs. HG PPKPPKPPK outperform even AR M16A1M16A1M16A1 at 4-3E.
Give the HGs some recognition!
As for SGs tanks, they shine within stage 0-2 and those alike due to damage mitigation. They perform poorly elsewhere such as 4-3E
The echelon needs at least one well-grown tanker. Although shotguns are preferred for their armor being able to reduce damage taken to 1, AR M16A1M16A1M16A1 with armor plates or her exclusive equipment or high evasion+health SMGs and HGs are great for lower areas. At least 5 links are recommended for HGs, 4 links are recommended for SMGs, and 3 links for Shotguns and AR M16A1M16A1M16A1. The tanker doll should be in the foremost lane in the center in order to draw all enemy fire.
The echelon needs a DPS doll with high initial DPS. Self DPS buffing or grenade ARs with short initial cooldown are preferred for their high DPS to resource consumption efficiency. Although the DPS doll isn't as selective as the tanker, 4-5 star dolls with least 4 links are optimal.
The rest 3 slots should be filled with those that needs XP, the "tourists".
Place whichever doll needs XP the most on the echelon leader slot.
There needs to be an extra empty echelon to be used to refill the DPS doll, along with an extra DPS doll.
These are stages where this strategy is usually used on.
"Progression Stage" are stages that are temporarily used to unlock the ability to perform "Final Stages". "Alternative Stages" could be considered as less efficient than "Final Stages". Final Stages are special and explanation on why of each one is listed below.
This stage is very different from other stages. In this stage, you only need 1 echelon and can only have 1 doll that needs XP grinding at a time, but you don't need to spend a single resource, not even for the DPS doll. This is because you can use the dolls the stage drops as the DPS dolls.
Once the stage ends, swap out the 4 exhausted DPS dolls with newly-gained 2-star dolls. Make sure to keep the XP grinding doll as the leader.
A 4-Linked level 70 AR as DPS carrier is adequate for this stage. This is the last stage where HGs are able to tank safely. Even with the ability to perform 5-2E and 5-4E, commander will realize after trying that 4-3E is the practical place prior to 0-2E
EXP lost threshold: Level 75
The problem is the enemy accuracy and damage is too high, HGs/SMGs/SGs all take huge damage, and continuous play is not practical.
EXP lost threshold: Level 88
This stage is a little different. This is where the player needs to:
Supply supplying echelon.
Evacuate supplying echelon.
Run around as much as possible against weakest enemies with the main echelon.
Forfeit the stage.
This stage is also great for boss grinding. However, this is very different from corpse dragging as it requires the tanker to be an SMG and the whole echelon needs to be supplied for this.
XP decreases after level 93. This means the dolls can quickly get to 5 links. However, this stage does not give as much cores as 4-3E.
The most optimal stage for core farming via retiring dropped 3* T-Doll.
There are multiple routes, however only one that would claim an S-Rank victory of the stage, which gives the the exclusive drop % (Thus increasing core % per run).
This route is the middle route, middle lane two enemies, then the most top three enemies.
For optimal result, T-Dolls with armor +11 can mitigate incoming damage to 1. The drawback being that SGs armored T-Dolls do not possess high evasion, SG Super-ShortySuper-ShortySuper-Shorty, being the highest at the moment at 20, whom repair time average 11 minutes with setup = AR G11G11G11 | HG Grizzly MkVGrizzly MkVGrizzly MkV | Parachute Fairy
Thus, AR M16A1M16A1M16A1, utilizing both special equipment armor plate Custom Exoskeletal Armor (Dropped from 6-4N) and exoskeleton IOP T4 Exoskeleton is #1 optimal tank setup for this stage due to her +89 evasion setup.
Tank Role Key Info: Any armor above +11 is trivial, remove plates from traditional SG such as SG Super-ShortySuper-ShortySuper-Shorty to avoid negative evasive stat.
With that in mind, meet the #2 optimal tank and #1 overall efficient all-star for this stage. AR M4A1M4A1M4A1 with Special Equipment Inherited Weapon Arsenal, which gives +11 armor. Only a +11 armor requirement is needed, thus AR M4A1M4A1M4A1 may act as both tank and dps role simultaneously, giving commanders another tourist spot.
Surprisingly, HGs tank can survive this stage non-kited, although repair time exceed +30 minutes, so for newer players without access to SG. SMGs tank receives more incoming bullets, but possess more HP to survive. HGs actually outperform SMGs here as well, IF the team composition is set up properly. HG tanks requires high evasion, such as HG PPKPPKPPK, reaching inherent 118 evasion with Special Equipment PPK Suppressor.
Due to the larger amount of enemies unit and health pool, only some notable DPS dolls will clear this stage efficiently.
In general sense, they are most effective in the following order.
The process is a little different for this stage too. On this stage, the player can play the stage infinitely without completing or forfeiting from the stage. This means the process becomes a lot quicker, but the fact that the enemies generated from enemy heliports don't drop dolls means it gives you no core at all.
The armor requirement is 11 and XP decreases after level 115. This means you can farm here for MOD3 Neural Upgrade here.
On 6-3N, the player can use 1-linkAR Zas M21Zas M21Zas M21 to minimize the resource used even further. The resupplying process is very similar to rest of these runs, the process is extremely specific. However, this is a very resource-efficient XP and equipment grinding method.
Both needs to have skill damage of at least 77 while keeping damage below 90! This is to make sure the grenade does at least 65 damage to every link of every enemy echelons while none of the enemies die from base attacks, which causes them to attack before the grenade goes out. See the table below.
Not only do you have to worry about the damage, but you need to cut the Rate of Fire at specific value to make sure The delay made by her base attack doesn't delay the skill too much that the grenade goes out too late and get hurt. Rate of fire can easily be adjusted using red dots or eotechs. Also see the table below.
Automatic skill use needs to be on.
Although XP grinding dolls having ammo/food or not wasn't a problem, for Zas run it's important that the rest of the dolls are unable to attack or use skills.
You need the same 2-echelon like the rest of these runs.
The formation needs to be L-shape formation as seen in the gif above. Make sure to place Zas where it is shown.
Mind the buffs! Keep watch on the Damage and Rate of Fire buffs applied to the Zas, including the Technical Fairies' buffs!
Process is mostly similar to the original. You engage the Tarantulas and let the auto-skill do the job. Keeping Zas at 1-link for this will save you even more resources as more dummy links will use more resources while extra links don't affect grenade skill.
Airstrike run is another extremely useful grinding method that can be used on 5-2N, 6-3N, 8-1N, and 10-5. It utilizes Airstrike Fairy to wipe out the enemies. This method does not consume any resources, but it does constantly drain Support Order.
