Introduction
If you're reading this article, hopefully you were lucky enough to realize that rate-up didn't actually happen until September 12th.
Unfortunately for you, it is now the 12th and you have to make a hard decision between spending your resources now versus spending your resources in the General Rate-Up starting on Sep. 19th!
Do you blow all your contracts and resources on the targeted rate-up now, or wait for the General Rate-Up later? Check the section appropriate to where you are in the game!
For overviews/analyses of the new T-Dolls, click here or navigate to their individual pages below.
I'm pretty new to the game
If you're new to the game, the T-Dolls in this rate-up are not likely to help you much. (Except for SIG-556, but she's still pretty expensive to raise due to the core requirement!)
In terms of value per craft for new players, a targeted Rate-Up is always worse than a General Rate-Up - so you should stick to the 4-crafts-a-day pattern to pad your dailies for now (using the efficient AR recipe if you believe in it). Focus on completing the story for Career Quest Rewards and building your first two Combat Echelons to get through the campaign to unlock better logistics, and you'll be able to last until the General Rate-Up no problem and splurge your resources when it's gonna pay off.
To calculate optimal logistics for contract/resources gain, use this calculator.
I'm still missing a lot of dolls but I'm in midgame
If you're still missing a lot of dolls, the value of T-Dolls in this batch is not high enough that you should roll now instead of later. For a midgame commander, the value of these T-Dolls aren't great:
- SIG-556: Decent AR but nothing outstanding
- C-93: Too situational to be consistently useful and requires support from rare T-Dolls/Fairies you may not have
- CR-21: Not likely to be worth investing in over other ARs you likely have
- PDW: Too situational to be consistently useful
The same wisdom from the beginner section applies: a targeted Rate-Up is always worse than a General Rate-Up because the overall high-rarity yield per craft is much higher in a General Rate-Up (and you're more likely to get stronger units in the upcoming General Rate-Up). You probably can't spare four maxed out echelons for logistics yet, which further limits your ability to regenerate resources between now and the General Rate-Up later - so spending your resources now would be even more unwise.
Of course, if you really want to min-max, you could craft until you're under the softcap (assuming you haven't already been hoarding close to 300k in preparation for the General Rate-Up).
Staying under the softcap can grant you up to 1440/1440/1440/480 Manpower/Ammo/Rations/Parts additional regeneration per day, which is pretty good. If you're a midgame commander though, your softcap is probably not very high - which means spending your stockpiled resources to get under softcap can be inefficient since you won't be able to carry as much resources into the General Rate-Up!
In short, it's only a good idea to roll in the current targeted rateup to get under softcap if:
- You're hovering only slightly above the softcap anyway
- You have more contracts than you could possibly burn with your resources
I have almost everyone except the new T-Dolls
If you're only missing the new dolls, isn't it obvious? Just roll for them! The optimal recipes are in the header image (or you can find the full infographic here).
- SIG-556: At least she can outDPS G41, that's gotta count for something, right?
- C-93: Did you know she finally got used in Polarized Light ranking? No? What do you mean people just used StechkinMod instead?!
- CR-21: Listen, the golden ratio can be very persuasive...
- PDW: We all know you just wanted her damaged art anyway.
Stats for Nerds
If you are diligent about logistics, have teams that can achieve 50%+ Great Success, and don't drop a check cycle, you can expect to regenerate about 10-15k of each resource (except parts) per day from logistics, not including daily below-softcap regen. Confirm your own gains with the logistics calculator, subtract your daily expenditures (like expedition) and you'll have a pretty good idea of how much you can save up between now and the General Rate-Up.
Ok fine, I actually want to know how useful they are in the next ranking
They aren't. (Well, maybe SIG-556 can kill the KCCO dogs... but just use K2 or G11 or something.)
Don't believe me? You don't need to take my word for it, check this comprehensive prep doc and see for yourself. You can also see these KR stats as a reference:
If you want to know more, wait for me to finish the guide on this exact topic. It'll come within the next week!