Specialist Missions

Daily Missions

Specialist Missions

Technical Details & General Approach to Daily Specialist Missions

The mission debriefing will only come at the fastest, 15 minutes after the mission reset time.

Daily Specialist missions are only available for Colonel, Major, Commander & Marshal ranks. Daily Specialist missions are always the middle or rightmost mission in Colonel, Major & Commander ranks (the harder 2 missions, never the easiest one). Daily Specialist missions are always the SSS or SSSS mission in Marshal rank (the harder 2 missions, never the easiest one). The Daily Specialist mission and the harder normal daily mission will alternate between the 2 difficulties every day. E.g. Specialist Daily Difficulty A & Normal Daily Difficulty S on Day 1, then Specialist Daily Difficulty S & Normal Daily Difficulty A on Day 2, then Specialist Daily Difficulty A & Normal Daily Difficulty S on Day 3, and so on.

You can only participate in specialist missions if you have at least one of the ships on the roster. There are 2 types of specialist missions. The first type is group Specialist missions. These have a specific theme to it, usually involving a specific Aura or Zen. There are also other available themes, such as Phoenix HD ships (Phoenix, Corsair, Shogun, Mirage and Trinity), main weapon types which are Fire and Forget and Spray & Pray, or even Speedy Ships or Powerful Ships. Group specialist missions are available for gold ranks and Marshal rank. 3 - 5 ships are available for group specialist missions.

The second type is solo Specialist missions, which are exclusive to Marshal rank players. Only one ship is available for use in these solo Specialist missions. Thankfully, the invaders' type will always match the solo ship's weapon affinity.

If you do not have a ship for the specialist mission, there will always be one on sale in the Get Ships shop, but it is not recommended to buy them if you are purely looking at an economical perspective as the maximum reward of a specialist mission, at ¢200, will always be less than the cost of the ship (minimum ¢500).

A general advice for specialist missions is to use your most upgraded ship in the ship roster given. When in dilemma (more than one of your ships are roughly the same upgrade level), check the Basic Tier List (Survivability). If your most upgraded ship is of a mismatch archetype, try to get as far as you can first. Then if you can't clear, try your next most upgraded ship if it is the matching archetype. If you don't have any of the ships upgraded, then use the Basic Tier List (Survivability) to find out the most survivable ship to use and just do your best to get as many credits as you can.

Never buy a ship just to compete in specialist missions since the maximum amount of credits is ¢200, more than buying a ship of any rarity. However, if you intend to use this ship for daily missions as well, you may consider. But you should use that ship often enough to warrant the purchase. Do not upgrade a ship just for the sake of the Specialist Mission unless it is a high survivability ship as reflected in the Basic Tier List (Survivability) (since you can prepare for future specialist missions as well). However, it might be a good idea just to unlock the Zen as it makes a ton of difference in getting further. The Auras and Zens section discusses how to best use them at Level 1.

If you can consistently clear the normal daily missions without the need for revives, it may be to your advantage to simply burn your revives to keep trying to get further, since after all, you don't need your revives for anything else anyway. Credits are always a scarcity in this game as you can only earn so much in a day, while you can simply watch ads to get many revives.

Trivia: Prior to the v5.6 update, players used to be able to take an unlimited number of revives to any mission. Thus, as it takes really long to earn credits to upgrade ships, extremely skilled players like Elegator and myself included would take on a challenge known as Masochist Mode, which refers to using barely upgraded ships, even as far as 1-1-0 ships, to clear specialist missions. Here's a fun video showcasing how it was like in the past to play with such extreme dedication:

So much so that in fact, I have compiled a list of videos dedicated to this craft in the playlist link below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OGXfbQ3AnU&list=PLaRb57eN7IqeXM7bVqP4GEczaLoaJ2KuD&pp=gAQBiAQB

A better overall strategy is, because of the existence of specialist missions, save up credits and upgrade the most appropriate ship to a suitable level (5-1-6 or 5-6-1 is recommended). Such a ship is usually practical enough to handle most specialist missions, and it only costs you either ¢4.750 for 5-1-6, or ¢4.700 for 5-6-1. (For the main, it costs 100+250+350+750 = ¢1.450. For Aura, it costs 150+300+450+750+1500 = ¢3.150. For Zen, it costs 100+200+300+450+750+1500 = ¢3.300) That is about half the cost to fully ult a ship (which costs ¢9.300). However, only do this once you have the ships to consistently clear the 2 Marshal normal daily missions as specialist missions only happen so often and credits spent just for specialist missions will not be recovered as quickly as in daily missions.

Prepare for group specialist missions by spending the credits to upgrade a few ships of each type of weekday specialist mission. If you see a viable ship appearing on group specialist missions though, you can choose to upgrade it, especially if it has potential to cover normal daily missions too. All in all, if you are looking to be very practical, save for specialist missions (only if you have the ships to clear daily missions consistently) and carefully choose the ships to upgrade.

Marshal specialist missions can get extremely hard, especially with ships that are of a lower survivability rating. To get better, try to read some of the survival tips here. Particularly, learn to prioritize what to eliminate first by visiting this section. Another thing that might help is to start up another account (local or Firi account, doesn't matter), and get to Colonel rank. Then, try to clear specialist missions with un-upgraded ships. Doing so trains your survival skills in preparation for Marshal. Slowly go up the ranks to Commander and see whether you can still clear the rank's specialist missions with un-upgraded ships. Do remember to clear a separate daily mission for the day in the alternate account so you can maintain your rank.

The mission cycle for specialist missions can be found in Appendix B1 for Colonel, Appendix B2 for Major, Appendix B3 for Commander and Appendix B4 for Marshal.