Board Thread:Fleet's Prepared-ness/@comment-27719994-20160718140315/@comment-232062-20160718193719

LBAS planes are/were only obtainable as event rewards, it is safe to assume LBAS will be back for this event as well as more/new planes.

Like Nerfx said, they do fill a niche but in terms of priority I only covered the most important based on your showcase and the upper end of the full ship list (im lazy).

You should level Akitsumaru though, she really can be a huge help in some event stages. I'd guess taking her to about 50 would suffice, I leveled mine solely through leeching xp in pvp. Use her as a Fighter mule to either get AS/+ or to deprive the enemy pvp fleet of their AS and if you can, put Katori/Kashima in the fleet for that little extra xp. You should still focus the vast majority of your pvp and levelling efforts on the other ships I mentioned. Those kind of special branching auxiliary ships are something that shouldn't be ignored but when you've got actual fighting ships to work on they can get put on the back burner catching some occasional xp when the opprotunity presents it's self.

The reasons you should go Shoukaku are, Shoukaku/Zuikaku K2A are top notch ass kickers and their questlines for the catapult and their named planes will ultimately give you 2 bad ass CVBs, the best fighter normaly available, the best torp bomber and if you wish, a nice fighterbomber ( though you can opt to not convert it and keep the fighter that it converts from). The quest line for the deck (if you don't have one) Prototype Flight Deck Catapult The conversion quests (Iwai) (Iwamoto)Sandbox/Aircraft Conversion Flowchart (wikiwiki ver.)