Combat and Missions Guide for Girls’ Frontline
The combat in Girls’ Frontline is a ton of fun. It combines a bit of turn-based strategy elements by allowing you to move across the map of every stage, while also offering lots of real-time combat every time you engage the enemy in the field. Moreover, considering the numerous types of T-Dolls that you can add to your roster, there’s quite a lot to consider when it comes to preparing for battle and actually fighting your opponent.
In this guide, we’re going to talk about the basics of combat, as well as talk about the mission system in Girl’s Frontline.
The Different Mission Types
The very first two types of missions available to you from the very beginning are Combat Missions, and Logistic Support Missions. These offer two very different types of gameplay: The former is the main bread and butter in Girls’ Frontline, offering lots of combat missions in various levels of difficulties. In other words, it’s where you’ll spend most of your time. The latter, on the other hand, consists of assignments where you can dispatch teams and that take a certain amount of time to complete. When the team returns, they’ll bring back the specified rewards, and have a small chance of bringing back some bonus prizes.
There are also Combat Simulation, and Campaign, but for the purposes of this guide, we’ll focus exclusively on Combat Missions since you’ll be fighting most of the time in the game, anyway, and we think it’s important that you actually learn how to defend yourself and emerge victorious.
Your First Echelon
Before you start fighting, you first need to create your first echelon, which is how the squads in the game are named. Your echelon consists of up to 5 characters, and can be freely arranged in a 3×3 grid. The positioning of your characters in this grid is important for two main reasons: First, it’ll affect which characters are targeted by the enemy first. And second, the positioning of your characters will determine who gets which buffs.
Tile Buffs
Every character in Girls’ Frontline offers a series of buffs to characters that are in specific positions (tiles) in relation to their own. In fact, the HG-type units are the best buffers since they have passive boosts that not only affect all types of units, but also across a wide area around them. Nevertheless, other character types can also offer buffs, albeit in more limited areas, and for specific unit types.
This distinction means that, while HG characters are arguably a good fit for most teams, there are specific types of characters that pair well with others. For instance, most SMGs can buff AR stats, and most ARs can buff SMG stats. For this reason, your first echelon should consist of units that complement each other with their tile buffs.
If you’ve read our Girls’ Frontline recipes and factory guide, you probably started off your game with lots of SMG, AR, and RF units. Your first echelon should consist of either an AR+SMG, or a HG+RF setup since these classes complement each other respectively. The characters that complement each other, and that make for the best echelons in the game, include the following:
- AR + SMG: Balanced, all-around performance for most situations and bosses, though they fall off when fighting against armored foes.
- SG + MG: Lots of tankiness and burst damage, but with a lackluster rate of fire. They can easily mow down the weaker enemies and lightly-armored foes.
- RF + HG: Ideal for dealing with heavily-armored individual enemies and smaller groups of opponents. However, they’re prone to getting swarmed due to their low rate of fire.
It’s important to consider, when it comes to assembling your echelons, that your stats eventually cap out and stop providing bonuses. For instance, shotguns max out at 60 rate of fire, and stacking more buffs above this is a waste. Moreover, some stats affect other types of units differently. For example, the increasing the RoF of a MG T-Doll only increases their reload speed and not their actual rate of fire. Finally, when it comes to gear vs tile buffs, the multipliers stack differently: The stats from your gear are added to the base attributes of the character, while the tile buffs further increase these parameters multiplicatively.
There’s much more to say about character stats and tile buffs, but this is all you need to know in order to create a strong first echelon. We suggest going the easy route and running an AR + SMG setup.
Deploying in Combat
When you enter a combat mission, the first thing you’ll need to do is deploy your echelons. This is performed at your HQ or in any allied Heliport. Keep in mind that, while you always start with an HQ, you can also start with a captured Heliport, which means that you can spawn from two different fronts simultaneously.
Every echelon you deploy to the map costs resources, mainly rations, ammo, and manpower, so always be mindful of how much you have left. If you’re like us, and blew all your resources on producing T-Dolls in the Factory, then you’ll probably run out in the middle of the battle and won’t be able to deploy echelons into the field, though this is highly unlikely.
Another important fact here is that your echelons all have limited rations and ammo in the field. Every battle they fight costs 20% ammo and 10% rations, and every turn that passes costs an additional 10% rations. If they run out of resources in the field, they won’t be able to fight and will become easy targets for the enemy. Luckily, they can resupply by walking to the HQ or any allied Heliport, which will carry an additional cost in rations and ammo.
Victory Conditions
Most maps feature straightforward victory conditions such as capturing the enemy HQ. However, these combat missions also feature different specific objectives which, upon completion, reward the player with medals and extra prizes. These medals are important because, once all 3 are collected, the stage becomes open for Auto-Battle, allowing the player to farm it automatically a number of times every day. Try to complete every stage with all 3 medals so unlock Auto-Battle and grind some easy resources.
The combat in Girls’ Frontline features lots of strategy and planning, especially if you want to fulfill all 3 victory conditions of any combat mission. Fortunately, with the useful tips in this guide, you’re now set to get started and prove your worth as a commander in the Griffin Security Contractor!
