User blog:Hayashi H/Fall 2015 Fleet Setups

Introduction
This is partially for my own reference and partially for whoever wants to use them. Unlike the event pages that compile all the possibilities, for this I try to focus only on the possibility I care about - that is, the one most efficient at ship farming using only ships I possess. Anything with a [Done] tag is something I actually used and confirmed. Everything else at this point is theorycrafting - I make no guarantees something will work unless there is a '[Done]' tag on it.

Initial resource state: 39813, 22536, 40201, 24324, 477, 250

Resource state immediately after clearing E3 Hard: 11672, 12598, 40426, 26199, 245, 172

Current resource state: 11672, 12598, 40426, 26199, 245, 172

The reason for stating the above is to indicate how well (or badly) these handle resources. How many runs were actually done based on these resources are detailed in each separate map section below.

'''This is a personal blog, not a collaborative wiki page. The opinions expressed here are that of the author, not a social consensus of wiki editors.'''

E1
All ships use standard builds except Choukai who swaps a radar for a Fleet Command Facility, and Mizuho who goes triple Hyoteki in order to maximise your initial strike (which will be essentially all the escort fleet ever does. Hiryuu goes Murata-Iwamoto-Saiun-SCAMP for firepower cap and 2nd shelling order behind Roma, so that the initial shelling phase (which generally kills everything) tends to proceed in descending order of firepower. Weaker destroyers can be used. Support expeditions and sparkling are unnecessary even for farming Hard.

Results: 100% S-rank boss rate on Hard. The rare cases where one ship gets randomly taihaed by Ta or Ru are handled with FCF, so the fleet was never turned back. Number of attempts ~ 40.

Notable drops: Hayasui, Kazagumo - stopped at Kazagumo drop, for she was all I wanted from this map.

Note: While I used Roma, it has been discovered after that that an Italian ship is required for E4 CTF branching. Given the low battle potential of Libeccio, using a Kongou class would have been better here in retrospect. I'm leaving this as it is, since it's a record of what I actually used, but others might wish to NOT do the same.

E2
Routing = ADFIJK. Farm in Easy in full power first, then swap to hard and replace Radars with Drums for the clear once all desired ships are acquired. For the Hard clear, sparkle ships before every run. It's not 'necessary', but it reduces the bucket usage requirement. Yasen node F on this map is always done in Line Abreast as none of the ships in the node are capable of using Cut-in attacks. Support expeditions are not necessary except for S-rank farming Hard.

Results: 95% S-rank boss rate in easy farm (other 5% preboss taiha). Number of attempts ~ 80.

Notable drops: Nowaki x3, Maruyu x2, Takanami and Amatsukaze x2 - stopped at Takanami drop. The second Amatsukaze dropped on the only S-rank during the Hard clear attempts (without any support expedition use).

E3
Routing: Farming boss and clearing: 100% ACDGIHK. The purpose of this type of combined fleet is for the escort fleet to do all the fighting and literally escort the ships in the main fleet. The main fleet's power value is extremely low for the most part except Hayasui, and its main use is only to eliminate any non-AV hime target so the escort fleet can concentrate firepower in yasen. Ships in escort fleet are listed in reverse order of firepower (lowest first) so that even if the earlier attacks hit under the AV hime's armour value they can still scratch effectively, while the later attacks are almost guaranteed not to scratch - FCF activation also consistently removes the weakest destroyer this way, preserving maximum firepower for the encounters. Main fleet is listed in order of firepower (highest first) so that the ships with the greatest damage potential fire under minimum risk of being chuuhaed/taihaed first during shelling phase II.

When farming in easy do NOT repair ships in the main fleet until they are taiha, reason being that the only ship that would ever get to shoot them for the most part will be the AV hime, who is capable of one-hit taihaing ships regardless of their health state - and by the time they get to fire, the only target left will be the AV hime, who they will scratch regardless of their health state. If you repaired them earlier it would be a complete waste of buckets in a map that already wastes buckets like nothing. In contrast, since the escort fleet does the heavy lifting, they need to be kept at shouha or above, and CAs in particular should be kept at clean health since shouha reduces Artillery Spotting rates.

Do not FCF away more than one ship from escort fleet in the Hard clear - if the taiha ship is in the escort fleet just abandon the sortie as it will likely fail to achieve A rank at boss unless you have boss support expedition activated. In the easy clear do not FCF away more than two ships from escort fleet, and even two already risks failing to get S-rank.

Farming F for Asashimo: 100% ABF. DDs run single sonar with twin LM HAs, due to their ASW boost. Couple it with Sonar to guarantee the S-rank on the first node on all except red T, though this is frankly optional since there are no notable drops. All larger ships hold sec for secgun CI, which eliminates the PT Imp(s) in F quite readily. Zuiun used for artillery spotting, to enable anti-sub attacks, and in the mainfleet's case, to get Air Supremacy - though the required air power value is >0 anyway.

For the Hard clear, use at least node support and sparkle at least the escort fleet and support shelling fleet. A ranks are necessary for gauge drain, which mean the Ta-classes need to be sunk. Don't expect S-ranks to be common. Given the extreme unlikeliness of S-ranks without at least two successful 300 damage-CIs at shouha or above health, attempting to farm this is impractical in the extreme. For the Hard Final clear, sparkle all four fleets and activate both node AND boss support expeditions. This is the single hardest fight in the entire event and underestimating it would be unwise.

Results: 95% S-rank boss rate in easy farm, remaining 5% are cases where everything dies except AV hime (with like <100 hp left). Was ~80% with Chikuma earlier, so that's how much of a difference Hayasui makes on Easy.

Hayasui is a liability on Hard since the higher base AA of Abyssals tends to shoot down all her bombers so she cannot even attack at boss, and even a taihaed Ru-class at node H can instantly taiha Hayasui. Her opening airstrike is also far less effective as the Abyssals on Hard have greater evasion and armour, and far less relevant as support shelling for the clear is far more devastating than her strike. Therefore a Tone-class CAV becomes optimal, especially with SCAMP - though both accuracy and Artillery Spotting rates for the main fleet in this Combined Fleet type seem SEVERELY nerfed, to the point that destroyers with virtually full accuracy in the escort fleets of other Combined Fleet types will only hit half the time when sparkled and mounting 3 type 33 radars.

On the very last clear, swap Chikuma Kai Ni to flagship and replace her SCAMP with the FCF, and put three fighters on Akitsumaru and drop her to slot 6, as that will be the only way to get Air Superiority against AV form 3.

In total, Akitsumaru has three configs - maxed 2-slot Eva + FCF for Easy, maxed 2-slot Airsup + FCF for Hard TP debuff and maxed 3-slot Eva w/o FCF for Hard Final.

Notable drops so far: Akashi, Akizuki. Number of attempts = 203 S ranks when Akizuki dropped. ~30 S ranks on F triggered an Asashimo drop. The 8th attempt to clear Hard Perfect-S ranked node H, resulting in a second Asashimo drop. All Hard clear attempts except one were A-ranks without boss support - it seems exceedingly likely that S rank on boss is virtually impossible without boss support expeditions. Boss support was used on the final clear and very barely succeeded with the 4th ship being sunk in yasen's last attack turn, due to Red T engagement form. 12 out of 15 attempts made it to boss with node support active, and all 12 were A ranks.

E4
If using Roma or Littorio here for pathing instead of Libeccio, replace Mutsu with the Italian battleship, and the J debuff composition keeps Fubuki and Shimakaze. Eugen farming is done on Medium as drop rates are basically doubled while the boss is not significantly more difficult to kill, while the diamond enemy formation drops Eugen unlike in Easy. Graf farming is done in easy; if U-511 is desired instead farm in Medium for the higher drop rate. Graf's drop rate in Medium is lower, however.

E5
Map should be farmed in Easy before final clears as the yasen nodes are deadly at higher difficulties. To deal with the boss, use Double Line formation for the increased accuracy - as far as possible you need to eliminate all Imp Packs in the day. The boss herself will fall very easily at night to the combined firepower of a triple gun sendai and double-attack Kitakami as long as these attacks are not wasted on Imps.

If farming for Harusame, do nodes J and L in Double Line formation for a greater S-rank chance at these nodes, in exchange for greater damage being taken and a higher chance of not reaching the boss. If farming boss, do them in Line Abreast formation to reach boss more often in exchange for reducing some possible S-ranks to A ranks in these nodes. As it is impractical to farm Harusame without also farming the boss, it might be good to start farming her first then swap to the more survivable formations later.

Optional modifications are to swap the third 15.5 sec on Sendai for a Night Scout specifically for farming for Harusame (Night Scout triggers ONLY in yasen nodes when you don't have Air Superiority, and Harusame drops only in yasen nodes, so...), and to swap radars for Star Shell if surviving cut-ins by enemy ships in yasen nodes is an issue even with Echelon.

What formations should I choose?
Nodes not involved in the pathing described above will not be mentioned.
 * E1
 * Formation IV: E, H, J.
 * E2
 * Line Ahead: D, K.
 * Line Abreast: F.
 * E3
 * Formation IV: C, D, F, H, K.
 * Formation I: B.
 * E4
 * Formation I: D, N, O.
 * Formation IV: F, G, H, I, J, M.
 * E5
 * Line Ahead: G, N (Medium, Hard).
 * Double Line: H, J (if farming Harusame), L (if farming Harusame), N (Easy).
 * Echelon: J (if not farming Harusame and doing Hard), L (if not farming Harusame and doing Med or Hard).
 * Line Abreast: J (if not farming Harusame and doing Easy or Med), L (if not farming Harusame and doing Easy).

The reason for how complicated E5 looks is that Echelon has the effect of reducing enemy cut-in trigger rates, while Line Abreast has the effect of reducing an enemy Double Line formation's accuracy bonus. Your fleet's accuracy is highest in Double Line, lower in Line Abreast and very low in Echelon, while your fleet's damage is highest in Double Line, lower in Echelon and lowest in Line Abreast. However, due to the fact that these targets are all easy to overkill even in Line Abreast, defensive factors and accuracy predominate as considerations. Also, Easy's boss has a lot of PT Imp Packs, so the accuracy of Double Line in the day is important to eliminate them, while Medium and Hard have Late Model Elite destroyers, so the damage of Line Ahead in the day is important to eliminate them.

What difficulty should I choose?
In general, higher difficulties have a higher drop rate. When farming with limited resources, what you want to do is to farm at the point where your overall drop rate is the highest after factoring in your S-rank rate, without using any support expeditions.. The reason for this is that the use of a support expedition not only costs resources, but also critically prevents you from using that expedition slot for resource recovery, so you lose resources twice over. In farming you want to try to keep your resource input and output rates as balanced as possible so you can sustain your runs without bleeding resources down to zero - unlike in clears, where the objective is to clear the map in the highest possible difficulty you can for the maximum reward. Since clearing a map removes ability to change difficulties, you must farm BEFORE clearing the map, or else clear the map in the difficulty you wish to farm it at, if you cannot guarantee being able to reach the end of the event due to an unreliable schedule. For the same reasons, any ship that can be farmed in both single fleet maps and combined fleet maps (Kawakaze comes to mind) should be farmed in single fleet maps, as single-fleet farming allows for all three expedition slots to be used for resource recovery.

As for how to choose difficulties, what is critical for getting one of each ship is not the drop rate itself, but the probability of getting at least one drop. By convention the probability used for this is 50% - the following numbers indicate the number of S-rank victories you must get in order to have a 50% chance of dropping at least one ship of the given type in the stated difficulty. The drop rates scale linearly with the probability of getting at least one drop though, so the decisions you make based on these will still apply even if you want multiple copies of each of the drops, and even if you want to use a different probability than 50%.

For those interested in the nature of the calculation, it is derived as ln(0.5)/ln(chance of not dropping), rounded up. The 0.5 can be modified to another probability, should you want to calculate a 90% chance of dropping at least one, for instance. The data used for this is from poi-statistics' drop database.

Note that there are also some other nodes that drop these, but they either have lower drop rates or accept only one difficulty - for instance, Hayasui drops only on Hard. In the former case, farming there isn't efficient anyway. In the latter case, you have no choice, so there's no need to calculate anything. Any calculation that does not change the decision you will make is a waste of time.

Admirals with more resources than time need not care about the support expedition caveat, and can proceed to simply multiply their S-rank rate by the numbers below, and pick the one with the lowest resultant number of attempts.

Note that the table only indicates uncraftable equipment.

If farming multiple ships at the same time, redo this calculation for each ship and decide based on your priorities.
 * Example: If you want to acquire Akizuki, you S-rank E3K Easy 90% of the time, Medium 70% of the time and Hard 50% of the time, the numbers of attempts you'll need are 40/0.9 = 45 runs on Easy, 42/0.7 = 60 runs on Medium and 35/0.5 = 70 runs on Hard. Therefore you should farm on Easy.
 * Example 2: If you want to acquire Eugen, you S-rank E4M Easy 90% of the time, Medium 70% of the time and Hard 50% of the time, the numbers of attempts you'll need are 76/0.9 = 85 runs on Easy, 33/0.7 = 47 runs on Medium and 31/0.5 = 62 runs on Hard. Therefore you should farm on Medium.
 * Example 3. If you want to acquire multiple Maruyus, you S-rank E5N Easy 90% of the time, Medium 70% of the time and Hard 50% of the time, the numbers of attempts you'll need are 24/0.9 = 27 runs on Easy, 18/0.7 = 26 runs on Medium and 12/0.5 = 24 runs on Hard. Therefore you should farm on Hard.

What expeditions should I send?
The support expeditions are in the special event button on the expeditions page. There are only two expeditions on that page: a 15 minute node support expedition and a 30 minute boss support expedition. With only the exception of boss support on E5, all other support expeditions should be of the shelling support type due to their greater damage potential (the exception uses carrier support, as it spreads damage more evenly, and the targets you want eliminated by the support in E5 boss tend to have very little HP and armor; it also costs less to use).

As for resource recovery expeditions, bucket recovery specifically is taken care of by the 2-4-5 expedition set. For recovery of other resources, see the separate guide linked below.

Frequently asked questions

 * Why do you not load Type 3 Shells in the E4M main fleet?
 * The Anchorage Water Demon II and III forms that you'll be farming on Easy and Medium for Prinz have an armour value of 220. At minimum armour roll, it has 154 armour. The daytime firepower cap is 150. In the sec-gun cutin setup you'll need to kill the PT Imp Packs in the same node, you can output only 180 damage - which after armour deduction, means a maximum damage value of 26. The Anchorage Water Demon has 430 HP, which means scratch attacks will average 43 damage at full HP. The Nagato classes are unaffected as they are already at firepower cap, so usage of a type 3 shell makes no difference to pre-cap firepower but reduces their total damage potential to 165, which means only 11 damage; while an AP shell will increase postcap damage output - it increases the damage dealt to a potential of 224, which can deal at maximum 70 damage. The heavy cruisers would be better off having lower firepower - at 100 firepower, the special attack will not exceed 120 damage, which is a guaranteed scratch if it hits, while at 150 firepower cap due to Type 3 shell, they can deal up to 165 damage, which means the boss will take only 11 damage. Ergo, loading Type 3 shells on the main fleet always REDUCES damage output. Because the night battle damage cap is 300, however, the escort fleet which does enter night battle carries Type 3 shells.

It is not sufficient to memorise the mantra of 'always equip Type 3 Shells against installation bosses' because some rules have exceptions, and this just happens to be one of the exceptions.
 * Why do you not equip AA guns or Type 3 shells against PT Imp Packs?
 * While there are Admirals who believe these have effects, my personal opinion is that at present there is insufficient data to conclude that they have any effect and the general sentiment on these equipment might be based on confirmation bias. My opinion on this may change over time if we have more conclusive proof they work, but until then I will not advocate using them. Secondary guns and sec-gun cut-ins, however, are known to increase accuracy - in the first case because the developers specifically said so, and in the second because it has increased accuracy across the board ever since its inception - so even in the absence of a PT-specific effect, the general effect will still help.
 * Why should your opinion be trusted when you haven't even reached E5 yet?
 * My hit-rate will tend to be quite high since this isn't the first game I've theory-crafted in, this isn't the first guide I've written for this game, and I'm one of the main authors of the wiki event page itself. I'm quite familiar with the enemy compositions since I was the one who compiled them (though a great many number of users contributed the compositions so I had something to compile in the first place), even though I haven't tested them yet. However, since I haven't tested some yet, they will remain in italics until I do because no theory is complete until it can be shown to be representative of reality.
 * However, you should not trust it wholesale. Like anything else created by a human, this may have mistakes in them - low error doesn't mean no error. If you understand the game enough to analyse it independently and something here doesn't seem to make sense, ask about it - it is entirely possible you spotted a mistake I did not. Like in previous guides, if there's an edition due to someone else's input, a credits section will appear with the name of the person who contributed as well as the nature of what the person contributed.
 * I write guides both to act as a sounding board for my own benefit - since anything that doesn't make sense will show up more clearly to be wrong when written down than when simply thought about. If it's helpful to others that's great too, but it doesn't have to be read for me to want to write it.

Other guides

 * Advanced game mechanics, like overweight mechanisms and more
 * What equipment should each ship mount?
 * How much firepower is TRULY enough?
 * How to survive attacks by firepower-capped targets like the BWS
 * Levelling your CLs and DDs quickly and cheaply
 * Efficient formations used in repeated quests and EOs
 * Recovering resources at maximum rates

Credits
Exorathz for spotting the 2 CA composition limit for Escort fleet in a Combined Fleet.