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Optimal SG Recipe: 6/2/6/4 vs. 8/1/8/4

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TLDR

8/1/8/4 is the only proper SG recipe. You should not be using other recipes.

Introduction

How does GFL’s “Low Cost” SG Recipe stack up against the Developer-recommended full cost SG Recipe added to the game by MICA a while back? With the new SG T-Dolls coming up, players who want to maximize their odds in the Heavy Production gacha may be surprised to find that the “low cost” recipe is actually a lot more expensive than the name might indicate.

This is more of a Girls’ Frontline Public Service Announcement than a guide - it’ll be fairly brief.

Note that while the new T-Dolls (Saiga-12 and FP-6) will be added to Heavy Production after Tuesday’s maintenance, their rate-up is not until the weekend!

Players are advised to hold off on crafting until Saturday. MICA Team has hinted in the Monthly Discord Q&A that players' first craft during rate-up will very likely be a banner unit - therefore, using T3 T-Doll Heavy Production once at the start is highly recommended, to remove M1897 from the possible outcomes.

Recipe notations of a/b/c/d refer to a000 manpower/b000 ammo/c000 rations/d000 parts.

SG Recipes

Astute commanders might be wondering: “hey, why is there a guide for this? Doesn’t the game tell you which one is better?”

Unfortunately, not all players are aware that this tab exists, since it was only added to the game long after its initial launch. Foreign servers like GFL CN/KR were left in the dark about production recipes for years and had to figure out SG recipe by trial-and-error with unreliable statistics, leading to the vast majority of GFL guides recommending 6/2/6/4 as the Shotgun production recipe. 

Now that the in-game recommended recipes are available, it’s a showdown between the following three crafting combinations: 

  • 8/1/8/4

  • 6/1/6/4

  • 6/2/6/4

GFDB Production Data

Now that GFDB EN is available, providing hard data and detailed statistical analysis, the guesswork and crafting recipe superstition has mostly been taken out of the equation. Take a look at the S.A.T. 8 crafting rates between June and August:

The 8/1/8/4 recipe has 50% better yields than the 6/2/6/4 and 6/1/6/4 recipes! Taking a look at the full yields list, the same trend applies to all available SGs:


Amazingly, the additional 1000 Ammunition used for the 6/2/6/4 recipe actually seems to have either not changed SG rates or simply made things worse, so it appears that spending more than 1000 Ammunition when trying to craft SGs is wholly unnecessary.

Conclusions

Given that 8/1/8/4 is only marginally more expensive than 6/1/6/4 and 6/2/6/4 but gives at least 50% more 5★ Shotguns, it’s a no-brainer to recommend 8/1/8/4 as the undisputed optimal SG Heavy Production recipe - the SGs-per-resource and SGs-per-contract ratio both lean heavily in its favor, meaning there is no reason to use anything else. 

Disclaimer: 8/1/8/4 does not guarantee shotguns. You still need to get lucky. 

(Credits to /u/thebigmike1983)

FAQ

What about Tier 2 and Tier 3 Heavy Production?

  • 8/1/8/4 remains better. Due to low sample size, the data isn’t always available on GFDB - but when it does show up, 8/1/8/4 still outperforms the other recipes. 

So 8/2/8/4 is no good either?

  • 8/2/8/4 seems to actually be worse than 8/1/8/4. You can check the numbers yourself in the GFDB link provided above. 

Is GFDB reliable? 

  • In short: yes, if you pay attention to CR (Capture Rate) on the page you’re looking at. See the developer’s blog post here for more information.

If I don't get the guaranteed pull, exactly how much does the rate-up boost rates? 

  • Heavy Production Rate-Up appears to be fairly negligible at about 25% more SG rate than usual - check the article below for more information. 
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About the Author(s)

(AKA Nonotan, Discord Cleista#7481)

Guide writer and editor for Girls' Frontline, and one of the few people who like its gameplay more than the gacha. Got MICA to pay me 8000 gems once. 

Send guide suggestions and ideas via DM on Discord, or drop some in the #gf_site_suggestions channel on the Community Discord