User blog comment:Ofi123/Powerleveling kanmusus/@comment-861160-20140612132400/@comment-24702213-20140630144712

@SlashZero

I agree on the front of overall exp gained, but not for powerleveling a certain ship.

1) 5-4 does not gaurantee either a BB or carrier MVP.

2) CA will have a hard time to MVP in 5-4

On the front of resource usuage:

1) 5-4-A has flagship CA/elite Wo-chan/multiple flagship lvl ships, so higher AA power. Also it's harder to sink them elite and flaship with only red planes while blue planes incur higher bauxite cost due to their higher chance of getting shot down. So bauxite consumption WILL be higher than 3-2-A

2) With a sub, 5-4-A has only 1/3 patterns that WILL ONLY attack that sub, while 3-2-A patterns ONLY attack that sub. Thus, repair cost for 3-2-A should be lower for using buffer sub. Even on this front, it's more likely a lvl 1 sub to survive 1 run in 3-2-A than 5-4-A as 5-4-A DDs/CLs are either elite or flagship while 3-2-A DDs/CLs has only up to 3 being elite/flagship in 1 pattern.

3) Flagship can red a BB in 1 single hit, elite Wo-chan always have a chance to scratch your other ships in air strike phrase. In theory you can't run 5-4-A for hours without repairing your other ships while you can run 3-2-A while repairing the sub only for hours in theory. (I mention theory as there's a chance of getting to the torpedo phrase which could damage your other ships, but in that case 5-4-A will hurt more with all ships being elite or flagship. So even taking this into account 3-2-A should incur less repair cost and sub repair is dirt cheap)

4) Per sortie the best you can say is equal consumption of ammo and fuel, since using 3-4 CVLs, 1 BB, 1 sub, 1 flag is the cheapest I find for hitting them effeciently. For exp/sortie, 3-2-A will lose out a little but can overcome this with lesser repair cost. In training high level ships 1 hp repair can take 20 minutes (by using Akashi to top it at 20 minutes), time (or buckets) is also saved with the reduce need of repair the support ships other than the subs.