Team building

Creating teams consists of 3 components: divas, episode plates, and fighters. While team formation can be automated, the process in how it is done is not perfect, and a better understanding on team building can allow players to not be completely dependent on using the auto-formation functions.

=Stats Composition= Divas and episode plates utilize an array of stats that determine scoring and a variety of other factors. Every diva and episode plate will contain the following stats:
 * Total - The sum of the 3 main stats that determine scoring. Generally, a higher Total will result with higher scores, but the individual stats can be important for making specialized team compositions. They are:
 * Soul
 * Voice
 * Charm
 * Life - The maximum number of BAD and MISS notes the game will allow the player to take before failing a live performance. More life means the player can make more mistakes without failing the song.
 * Support - The stat that determines the effectiveness of fighters during Valkyrie Mode. Higher support will allow fighters to deal more damage and increase their chances of landing critical hits with PERFECT notes.
 * Bio Fold Waves - The stat that affects the rate of how fast the bio fold wave gauge fills up. Higher bio fold waves will increase the rate the bio fold wave gauge charges and can almost guarantee Valkyrie mode to trigger.

=Team Components=

Divas
Divas are the characters that perform the player's songs. While team formation allows you to field a team of 3 divas. Only the center diva will show up during the live performance. In terms of overall team strength, the base stats of divas do not contribute very much at all unless they are wearing special outfits. These outfits give an extra degree of customization by boosting certain attributes for that particular diva and the episode plates equipped onto them.

Episode Plates
For more in-depth information on specific episode plates, click here.

Episode plates serve as an extension to divas. Each diva may equip up to 3 episode plates, which gives the player the choice of 9 plates to use from in their team composition. On top of the regular common stats, episode plates also have:
 * Skills - Episode plates have a variety of skills that can be utilized during live performances. Every plate will come with 3 different types of skills.
 * Center skill - A skill that only activates if the plate is equipped onto the center diva. The center skill is usually a passive stat boost that is applied to all plates so long as the proper conditions are fulfilled.
 * Active skill - A skill that can be manually activated by the player during a live performance. The active skill will provide a temporary effect for a certain amount of time or recover life once during a live performance.
 * Live skill - A skill that activates spontaneously during a live performance. These skills are either activated on a timer, a certain percentage of life, or from chaining combos. Like active skills, live skills also only activate once, but with consistency, players can anticipate the timing in which these skills activate. Live skills can only activate if the diva has compatibility with the equipped episode plate.
 * Center main plates cannot activate their live skills without the use of plates with lucky leaf levels of at least 2 or above.
 * Note boosts - Some episode plates can boost the appearance rates of special notes during live performances.

Center Skills
Center skills typically passively increase stats of all plates and diva used by the player. However, some center skills are conditional and require a specific song type to be played, can only apply to certain plate attributes, or only apply onto plate stats and not the diva's base stats. The following table below gives a description of what each center skill does for clarity on exactly what is being increased with each center skill:

Fighters
More information on fighters can be found here.

The last component to the player's unit is the Valkyrie fighters themselves. However, unlike the other components that contribute to scoring and overall game play, fighters only contribute during Valkyrie Mode. Valkyries have 2 main stats: attack and accuracy. Attack is the raw damage output the player deals upon landing successful notes with their weapons charged. Accuracy, on the other hand, affects the probability of critical hits occurring with PERFECT notes during Valkyrie Mode. Both are needed in order to make the most out of Valkyrie Mode and the support stat from divas and episode plates contribute even more to the effectiveness of the player's fighters during Valkyrie Mode.

=Team Building= Uta Macross gives players a lot of freedom to equip whatever plates they may want on their divas. However, fulfilling goals or being optimal requires knowledge of combining episode plates to fulfill a specific targets and objectives. While starting players may not be able to fulfill the plate requirements for a specific composition, this section can give pointers on what to do with drawn plates in the future or goals for what kind of plates to draw from.

High Total Teams
High Total Teams are very straightforward. These teams simply take the best plates in terms of Total stats.

Stat Attribute Focused Teams
Stat attributes focused teams revolve around creating teams that maximize one of the three total stats: charm, voice, and soul.

Song Attribute Focused Teams
Attribute focused teams aims to create a team specialized around the three main song attributes: life, love, and star.

High Luck Teams
High luck teams focused on stacking luck for more rare drops. These teams excel for farming tickets during ticket events, where higher luck practically guarantees multiple ticket drops from playing one song and general game play as players can be reward with crystals and episode plates.

Item Farming Teams
Item farming teams focus on maximizing item drops. These teams also excel during ticket events, where players can get a small boost in item drops and event points. Item farming teams should also utilize high support stats to guarantee super diva mode and maximize item drops.

High Life Teams
High life teams focus on simply having as much life as possible. Scoring and item drops are not a concern as these teams only aim on completing the song in one piece. These teams are great for sightreading or practicing higher difficulty songs, but players should not expect much more from this type of team composition.

Automatic Team Building
Automatic team building can be done in the Team Formation menu in the Units section or before starting a song. After tapping on the Auto Formation Button, the player will be taken to the following menu. Players can choose a song attribute type and the specific stat for the automatic team builder to focus on. Same song attribute bonuses will be taken into account when the automatic team builder creates a team. There are also extra criteria players can force onto the automatic team builder in the form of check boxes. The first box forces the team builder to keep the current main center plate equipped. This option is great for those that have a main center plate with center and active skills that are useful in all team compositions regardless of their song attribute. The second option forces to team builder to only select plates that are compatible with the diva. While this can maximizes the numbers of skills used, it may sacrifice stats and pass over incompatible plates of higher rarity for lower rarity compatible plates. While the automatic team builder is easy to use, it is not perfect and fails to take account for the following for maximizing the player's score:
 * Stat boosts from costumes the player's divas are wearing.
 * Score Up active and live skills.
 * Live skill timings
 * Center skills boosts (even if the first checkbox is filled in)
 * Whether an unused plate's Total stats contributes more than an equipped compatible plate (if the second box is filled in)
 * Optimal compatibility combinations for maximum live skill activations (if the second box is not filled in)
 * Lucky leaf benefits

Choosing Divas
While most divas have similar total stats with the exception of Mikumo, players should be conscious of which divas to utilize for maximum performance. If players have the proper outfits that further boost the potential of their team composition, they should use them without hesitation. Any outfit is better than the default costumes that do absolutely nothing and almost every diva has an outfit that will add 2% total stats to the diva and their episode plates.

Choosing A Center Skill
The center skill is the base foundation every team composition is built upon. The passive boosts specific parameter(s) and the right combination of diva outfits, episode plates, and center skill can create an extremely strong team. Center skills have a letter rating based on their strength, and players should strive to obtain 5☆ plates with S rank center skills. Total Up center skills are the easiest to use since their application is almost universal, it increases scoring stats regardless of attribute color or stat type, and the plates that have the skill are plentiful. With the exception of Battle events, players will utilize their own center skill plus another provided by another player in their support list. The table below shows the type of compositions each center skill excels with.

Picking Episode Plates
Picking episode plates is a relatively easy task once players have an idea what kind of team composition they are running. When picking out plates, players should keep the following in mind: The easiest way to manually create teams is to auto-build a base team and add/remove/shuffle plates around to accommodate for compatibility, costume bonuses, and event bonuses. The game will also allow players to save team compositions for quickly swapping out formations.
 * Using plates whose attribute matches the selected song gain a 30% bonus to Total stats.
 * Players should prioritize plates that have the most utility in terms of Total stats and scoring skills unless their team is based around farming or survival.
 * Live skill compatibility is a luxury, but not completely out of reach.
 * It's fairly difficult to assemble 9 optimal high rarity plates that are all compatible with the player's current divas, but eventually it will occur.
 * Just because a plate has a Score Up skill does not necessarily make it stronger than a plate that doesn't.
 * Scoring is heavily influenced by combo numbers and the timing and/or duration of a Score Up may not matter as much compared to having a higher Total over the entire length of a song if the skill is weak.
 * Players can make exceptions if the Score Up rank is rated A or S.
 * The strength of the skill and the fact these plates are typically 4-6 stars can make up for any Total and song attribute bonus deficit.
 * Well upgraded A and S ranked Score Up live skills can be on par or even stronger than active skills.
 * A diva's costume bonus will only be applied to the 3 plates equipped onto that diva.

Selecting An Assist
With the exception of battle events, players can fill in the last significant portion of their team composition with another player's main episode plate. The assisting player's plate is extremely important as all of their stats (including life, support and bio fold waves) and center skill will be added onto the player's current strength. This can be a boon for newer players with weak plates and a critical piece to rounding out compositions of veteran players. Picking an assisting plate simply requires combining knowledge of the sections above to make a good selection and sometimes patience when constantly refreshing the list of assists. The following benefits from an assisting plate will be added to the players team: It is important to note that note boosts from assisting plates are NOT applied to the player's unit.
 * Center Skill effects
 * Total Stats (Soul, Voice, and Charm)
 * Life
 * Support
 * Bio Fold Waves
 * Luck
 * Lucky Leaf bonuses
 * Event bonuses (if applicable)

Selecting A Fighter
With the exception of the default of Hayate's VF-31J and Alto's YF-29, all Valkyrie fighters have a combined (attack + accuracy) value of 410. This means that 410 points are split among the 2 stats. However, players will notice that different Valkyries perform differently and some fighters may fail to trigger super diva mode consistently. In general, the following should be kept in mind when selecting the best fighter:
 * Attack has more of an impact than accuracy, especially if a song's Valkyrie mode note count is too low to place chances on constantly inflicting critical hits.
 * Songs with high Valkyrie mode note density may benefit from more accuracy.
 * Attack is often the safer stat to stand by.
 * Regardless, fighters need high support stats regardless of which stat they are skewed towards for effective use especially when playing on higher difficulties.