Auxiliary Guide.md

Auxiliary Equipment Guide

For information on other equipment see the In-Depth PVE Equipment Guide.

This guide for auxiliary equipment is split off from the rest due to the relative depth variety of auxiliary equipment setups. Equipment will not be graded in this guide.

Defensive Auxiliary Equipment

Standard Defensive Auxiliaries

• Improved Hydraulic Rudder is the strongest evasion-focused aux. In addition to having the strongest raw stats boost from a defensive standpoint, this rudder has a 30% chance every 20s to evade all attacks for 2 seconds. Limited to one per ship.

• Beaver Squadron Badge provides a similar, but slightly weaker stats boost to the improved rudder. However, it trades the rudder's emergency evasion skill for a permanent fleet-wide speed boost. While the speed boost is only relevant for the vanguard, the boost is active regardless of where the badge is equipped.

• Repair Kit has the highest raw HP boost and slowly restores the equipped ship's HP over time. The heal-over-time from the repair kit can, in certain scenarios, make up for the repair kit providing a weaker raw eHP boost. While the repair kit is not limited per ship, the heal from only a single repair kit can be in effect.

• Pyoko-Pyoko provides the same HP boost as the repair kit, but trades the heal-over-time for a minor luck boost. While the luck boost is incredibly small, because the heal from multiple repair kits cannot stack, pyoko-pyoko becomes an optimal replacement for a repair kit when equipped to a ship who would otherwise gain the highest eHP boost from equipping two auxiliary equips that give this level of HP boost.

• Fuel Filter gives a moderate boost to HP and a small boost to evasion, while also having no bonus skill effect. It is suboptimal in nearly every situation.

• Ocean Soul Camo provides a marginal boost over standard naval camo making it technically the strongest evasion-focused auxiliary equip after the Improved Rudder and Beaver Badge, but its status as core data equipment makes it a relatively poor investment.

• Naval Camo and Hydraulic Rudder provide the exact same stats boost with no bonus skill effect, with a focus on boosting evasion. Despite their low rarity, they're very potent especially compared to their ease of access.

Specialty Auxiliaries

• Fire Extinguisher provides a moderate boost to HP and reduces the chances of a ship catching fire, reduces damage received when on fire, and reduces the duration of burn effects.

• High-Performance Anti-Air Radar increases anti-air stat. Aside from increasing anti-air damage dealt, the anti-air stat also reduces kamikaze damage received when enemy airplanes crash into your main fleet. Also reduces the likelihood of encountering Ambush/Airstrikes by 12%., similar to SG radar (see below); does not stack with SG radar.

• Repair Crane can only be equipped on repair ships. Every 5s, it heals the most damaged ship in the fleet for a flat 15 HP.

• Anti-Torpedo Bulge provides a moderate boost to HP and reduces damage received from torpedoes. Does not apply to damage from torpedo bombers.

• Pearl Tears provide an equivalent HP boost to the repair kit, but trade the heal-over-time for a fleet-wide heal when the equipped ship sinks. Useful when powerleveling low-level ships and especially useful in PVP.

Offensive Auxiliary Equipment

Vanguard Auxiliaries

• Type 93 Oxygen Torpedo has a very high torpedo boost with a moderate reload boost. For most ships equipped with torpedoes, it will provide a higher DPM boost than any other aux. However, as this is reliant on your torpedoes actively hitting targets, other auxiliaries may provide a superior effective DPM boost.

• Automated Reloader has a very high reload boost with a mild firepower boost. It is the only available offensive aux for gunboat light cruisers and generally the strongest offensive aux for gunboat heavy cruisers.

• Fire Control Radar provides moderate boosts to firepower and accuracy. Of the vanguard units, it can only be equipped to heavy cruisers. It generally pulls ahead of the reloader if the accuracy boost is valuable or if the equipped ship has strong firepower boosts.

Gunnery Main Fleet Auxiliaries

• Super-Heavy Shell has a very high firepower boost and increases shelling critical chance. While the lack of an accuracy boost reduces its hitrate compared to other aux, the crit boost more than makes up for it. Absolute strongest singular offensive aux for the majority of battleships.

• Type 1 Armour-Piercing Shell provides a high firepower boost and mild accuracy boost. Additionally, it increases shelling critical damage. The accuracy boost gives it a strong advantage over other firepower-boosting auxiliaries, but not by a significant enough to make up for the weaker crit skill compared to the SHS in most cases.

• High-Performance Fire Control Radar has stats similar but slightly superior to the standard FCR. It also reduces the reload time of the first round of shelling by 15%. Unlike the standard FCR, HPFCR cannot be equipped to heavy cruisers.

• Type 98 Firing Delay Device provides a moderate firepower boost and reduces the main gun's spread. It's similar in function to a fire control radar, trading the stat-based accuracy boost for a physical accuracy boost. Generally not worth using over other offensive aux.

• Type 91 Armour-Piercing Shell provides the same stats and skill effect as the T1 AP shell, but is weaker in potency and can be acquired from equipment boxes. Less practical than other budget alternatives due to its lack of repurposability once replacements have been acquired.

• Automated Reloader and Fire Control Radar can be used as budget alternatives to the auxiliaries listed above and are more easily repurposed than the T91 AP shell thanks to their ability to be equipped to vanguard ships.

Aviation Auxiliaries

• Steam Catapult provides the highest raw aviation boost and a minor HP boost.

• Homing Beacon provides a moderate aviation boost, but reduces the reload timer of all airstrikes on the equipped ship by 4%. While not a large amount, this allows buff-oriented carriers to equip higher base damage planes instead of speed planes while still aligning their airstrikes with other sources of burst damage. Also useful in clearing fleets where getting damage out faster is often preferable to dealing more damage.

• 100/150 Aviation Fuel has a moderate aviation boost, and increases the HP and the flight speed of launched aircraft. Generally a PVP aux, as the plane HP increase does nothing in PVE, but the flight speed increase gives it potential niche usage.

Miscellaneous Auxiliary Equipment

Accuracy Boosting Auxiliaries

• SG Radar is a core auxiliary equip for any fleet. It has a split of evasion and accuracy making it the only true hybrid offensive/defensive aux. More importantly, the SG radar improves your chances of evading ambushes; does not stack with the high-performance AA radar (see above). While slightly weaker than the naval camo in terms of raw eHP, the accuracy boost and ambush evasion make SG radars a generally more useful aux.

• Random Word Generator provides a similar statline to the SG radar, but with a slightly lower accuracy boost and without the ambush evasion effect. It is currently the strongest accuracy-boosting piece of equipment for carriers, as they cannot equip the SG radar or gyroscope.

• Type 94 High-Angle Director has a moderate boost to anti-air and a mild boost to accuracy. Generally not useful as a more dedicated piece of equipment will provide a far more potent boost to either of those stats while also bringing a bonus skill effect.

Speed Boosting Auxiliaries

• Gyroscope and Improved Boiler both provide a movement speed boost, with the gyroscope providing a high accuracy boost and the boiler providing a minor HP boost. In general, the ships that would value the speed boost will value the accuracy boost of the gyroscope over the boiler's HP boost.

Submarine Auxiliaries

• Improved Snorkel boosts the O2 stat of the equipped submarine, increasing the amount of time they can stay submerged. While not directly offensive, it enables certain submarines to fire off an extra volley with their equipped torpedoes, which provides a greater increase in damage than the large torpedo stat boost of an oxytorp. Only one oxygen-increasing aux can be equipped per submarine.

• Improved Storage Battery provides a mild evasion boost and increases a submarine's hunting range by up to 2 levels. Only functions when equipped to the submarine fleet flagship. As meowficers can provide the same increase in hunting range while also boosting stats and not coming with the opportunity cost of occupying an aux slot, the battery is generally not worth investing in.

Ship-Specific Auxiliaries

• Z Flag when equipped to Mikasa, provides similar stats to an SG radar, but trades the ambush evasion bonus for a fleet-wide firepower and accuracy boost.

• Unfulfilled Promise can be equipped on either Bismarck or U-556. In either case, it provides a negligible stats boost, with a very small boost to HP and mild boost to evasion. When equipped on Bismarck, it reduces the effects of the Out of Ammo penalty on the main fleet from 50% to 35% and is not worth the opportunity cost involved in equipping it. When equipped on U-556, it increases her hunting range by 1 level and the amount of time she can stay in combat after surfacing by 4s, the equivalent of 40 oxygen. As it does not increase her oxygen directly, can be equipped alongside a snorkel.

• Cat Punch provides a moderate boost to HP and, when equipped by Akashi, increases the output of her healing effects by 20%.

Auxiliary Selection Guidelines

As a general rule of thumb, for standard maps, your fleet will always contain at least one SG Radar. Additional aux will depend on the class of ships in your fleet and the function of the fleet itself. Boss hunting fleets will typically want to go all-out on offensive aux, avoiding defensive aux as much as possible while still maintaining a desirable battle ranking. Trash clearing fleets will generally focus more on defensive auxiliaries. If a vanguard ship can complete a clear of a map with an offensive aux equipped, a cheaper ship will generally be able to clear that map with a more defensive setup.

• The most generic defensive setup for any vanguard unit will be a repair kit and an improved hydraulic rudder (referred to as a wheelbox setup). While not purely optimal on every unit in every situation, it is going to be optimal for most ships in most scenarios and good enough for any vanguard unit that might have a different, more optimal setup.

• In order to min/max eHP beyond just using a wheelbox setup, you will generally want to shore up a ship's weaknesses, rather than build upon their strengths. Equip HP-boosting aux to ships with low base HP and high base evasion (destroyers); equip evasion-boosting aux to ships with high base HP and low base evasion (heavy cruisers).

• Ships with high luck stats will generally gain more out of every individual point of evasion due to the way luck interacts with the hitrate calculations. Conversely, ships with low luck will often find HP boosts more desirable.

• The hardcap for evasion is 90%. Ships who boost evasion rate directly (not evasion stat boosting) by significant enough degrees run the risk of hitting this cap and will therefore gain more out of HP boosts.

• Due to the generally reduced pressure placed upon the main fleet, these units will typically want to focus more on offensive auxiliary equipment. When main fleet units do equip defensive aux, they will typically equip specialised equipment to deal with a specific threat, such as a fire extinguisher in maps with heavy enemy shelling, or an anti-air radar in maps with heavy aviation presence.

• The most generic offensive setups are double steam catapults for all carriers and both a T1 shell and SHS (double shells) for battleships. The T1 may be replaced for an HPFCR, especially for clearing fleets.

• In event maps with limited fleet movement, the SG radar can be skipped due to the lack of ambushes. Additionally, equipment that increases the speed stat of the ships in your fleet can increase the range of movement available to your fleet. Note that this only applies to stat-based movement speed. While the Beaver Badge's skill effect will increase the movement speed of your fleet in combat, it will not boost movement speed on the map.

• As ramming damage cannot be evaded, a ship's eHP might be higher with an HP-focused loadout in maps whose spawn patterns lead to heavy ramming damage even on a heavy cruiser who might typically gain more eHP for other maps with a non-HP loadout. Additionally, bosses in EX stages cannot miss their attacks. While these stages are generally designed for manual play under the assumption that you will manually dodge enemy shelling patterns, HP-boosting aux will provide a safety net evasion-boosting aux cannot.