Blueprints often get overlooked by players, mainly because they're confusing.  Hopefully this guide should help:

Unit Modification Blueprints

Beta is giving us a sneak peek at some new Easter content that will make its way to the main game soon.  You will need to upgrade your game version to 3.81.0 to see the new content (as of today it's still only on Beta).

First of all, we get two new Officers:

 

Both are Assignment officers.  Bonnie (S) is assigned to the Defense Department for a boost in HQ Defense, with double effect on other battlefields.  Lapine (S) is assigned to the Military Department to give a large boost to your effectiveness in joining a Joint Defense.  Neither are AMS officers.

There are four new troop types that will be introduced, and these align with the Nostalgic/Arcade content:

   

There are two new Personalized Appearances:

 

The bonuses of the Nostalgic Arcade Machine focus around boosting the attributes of the Arcade Troops listed above, while the buffs for the Easter Tank appearance increase your attack attributes on other battlefields.

Finally, there is also one new Avatar Frame, one new Chat Box, and one new Nameplate:

 

If you have any ideas or thoughts on how to use this new content, feel free to leave them in the comments.

The following questions are asked in the Anniversary Celebration - Anniversary Glory Quiz, with the correct answers listed in bold.

Which statement is NOT true?

1. In the Ace Commander event, the daily preparation time is 10 minutes
2. In the War Game event, players can be robbed of Silver even during the preparation time
3. Each round lasts 4 hours in the Inferno event
4. In the Battlefield event, the daily preparation time is 15 minutes.

 

Which statement is NOT true?

1. The level cap for planes is 50
2. Robots take effect immediately after they're assembled.
3. Battle buffs take effect immediately after capturing officers
4. The level cap for officers is 120

 

Which statement is true?

1. Units in AMS will starve to death without Plastic.
2. Resources in a Moneybox can be stolen by other players
3. Only players who complete the 3rd point objective can make it into the ranking in the Inferno Event
4. Only resources are needed to convert buildings

 

Why isn't my 5-Min Quick Movement effective in an attack?

1. The opponent has a Flame Feather.
2. The opponent has activated a Terminator.
3. The opponent learned a Special Class Skill.
4. None of the above

 

What's the resource storage limit?

1. 10M
2. 50M
3. 100M
4. 2.1B

 

Which Anniversary is AMS celebrating this year?

1. 1st
2. 2nd
3. 3rd
4. 4th

 

Which of the following can increase your marching queue limit?

1. VIP
2. Robot
3. Plane
4. HQ Appearance

 

Why do some officers can upgrade their skills with Merit Medals, and some cannot?

1. The officers that can't use Merit Medals are no longer available.
2. Some officers do not need to upgrade their skills.
3. Some officers require Training Dummies to upgrade their skills.
4. AMS customized officers require officers (complete or fragment) with the same name to upgrade their skills.

 

What's the best thing to do with your extra Plane Parts?

1. Use them to upgrade Plane Cores or Convert Planes.
2. You can fuse them into AMS Points.
3. Completely useless; you can only sell them at low prices.
4. You can fuse them into other planes.

 

What's the upper limit of a rallied/reinforcement army (excluding yourself)?

1. Five
2. Seven
3. Nine
4. Ten

 

How can you light up spotlights on the battlefield map?

1. Activate a Boxing Duck
2. Enhance all units to max level
3. At least one unit in unit modification has a complete set of gold-quality Modification Blueprints.
4. None of the above.

 

Why did my Power turn red?

1. I was scouted
2. I was attacked
3. I was assisted
4. My Power changed

 

How do I know how many Spades and Advanced Blueprints I need for a rebuild?

1. Loop at Spade's Item Description
2. Search for Spade and Advanced Blueprint in the FAQ
3. Look at Advanced Blueprint's Item Description
4. None of the above

 

I took on the War Machine by myself and killed it with 4 attacks.  Why did I only receive 4 lucky prizes?

1. The War Machine was in a bad mood.
2. There are only 4 lucky prizes
3. Only 1 lucky prize can be given for each attack
4. McDevils stole a lucky prize

 

If you damage the War Machine by 70% of its Max HP with one hit, how many lucky prizes will you get?

1. Three
2. Two
3. One
4. None of the above

 

Which of the following can increase your Resource Assistance amount in a single attempt?

1. Increase the command effect of auditors
2. Upgrade VIP level
3. Level up the Nexus
4. Level up the corresponding resource buildings

 

Which of the following will trigger protection for your Corps Command?

1. Recycle it, then place it again
2. Place it again after it's destroyed
3. Upgrade the Corps Command
4. Place the Corps Command for the first time

 

What's the requirement for activating the gem resonance effect?

1. 1 gem inlaid into a piece of gear reaches the required level
2. 2 gems inlaid into a piece of gear reaches the required level
3. 3 gems inlaid into a piece of gear reaches the required level
4. 4 gems inlaid into a piece of gear reaches the required level

 

Which statement is NOT true?

1. The level cap for planes is 50
2. Robots take effect immediately after they're assembled.
3. Battle buffs take effect immediately after capturing officers
4. None of the above

 

Which situation will trigger Camouflage to disguise your HQ?

1. There are enemy activities within range
2. Activating Camouflage after units within range are targeted by enemies.
3. Teleporting to the Camouflage area after activating it
4. Camouflage getting destroyed

 

Regarding gem upgrade, which statement is true?

1. 3 gems of the same level can be fused into a gem of a higher level.
2. 3 identical gems of the same type can be fused into a gem of a higher level.
3. 3 identical gems of the same shape can be fused into a gem of a higher level.
4. 3 identical gems of the same type and level can be fused into a gem of a higher level.

 

Which of the following can NOT increase your marching queue limit?

1. Command Officers
2. Officer Assignment
3. Technology > Legion
4. VIP

There is a new officer in Beta as of version 3.79.0: Rock Howard (S)

Rock Howard is an Assignment type officer, to be assigned to the Logistics Department.  His battlefield skills focus on gathering boosts, giving extra resources on the first 3 gathering marches of each day.

No info yet on how to get him, or when he will be available in the production game (although I assume in a couple of days).

I'm writing a huge section on Planes at the moment (soon to be published), and a statement I saw on Facebook got me thinking.  The post was discussion of max resource production, and the statement was as follows:

"vampire is better than f117, just more expensive"

This was in reference to Development Zone garrison slot, where I've been using F117 with Christmas Frost gears for a long time, and I'm reasonably happy with my development numbers.  As many of us did, I started out with Vampire garrisoned in development zone until I got an F117 and was amazed by how fast I was able to max it out.

I'll delve into which plane is better to garrison in Development Zone in my Planes write-up, but the question that got me thinking is: how expensive is it to max out a Vampire?  The only way to know this is to predict the cost in Air Force Tactical Points for Attribute steps beyond what I've already unlocked (and thus know the costs for).  Therefore, I want to write a formula that will allow me to calculate the cost in AFTP for a given Attribute step.

Here are the steps and their associated costs that I know so far (from my own planes):

Level	Cost
1	1
2	2
3	3
4	4
5	5
6	10
7	30
8	60
9	90
10	120
11	160
12	200
13	250
14	310
15	390
16	485
17	610
18	760
19	950
20	1185
21	1480
22	1760
23	2070
24	2435
25	2865
26	3370
27	3965
28	4665
29	5490
30	6455
31	7595
32	8490
33	9435
34	10,485
35	11,650
36	12,945
37	14,380
38	15,980
39	17,755
40	19,725
41	21,920
42	24,355
43	27,060
44	30,065
45	33,405
46	37,115
47	41,240
48	45,825
49	50,915
50	56,570
51	62,855
52	69,840
53	77,600
54	86,220
55	95,800
56	106,445
57	118,275
58	131,415
59	146,015
60	162,240
61	180,265
62	200,295
63	222,550
64	247,280
65	274,755
66	305,280
67	339,200
68	376,890
69	418,765
70	465,295
71	516,995
72	574,440
73	638,225
74	709,185
75	787,985
76	875,535
77	972,820
78	1,080,910
79	1,201,010
80	1,334,455
81	1,482,725
82	1,647,475
83	1,830,525
84	2,033,915
85	2,259,910
86	2,511,010
87	2,790,010
88	3,100,010
89	3,444,455
90	3,827,170
91	4,252,415
92	4,724,905
93	5,249,890
94	5,833,210
95	6,481,346
96	7,201,496
97	8,001,660
98	8,890,735
99	9,878596

I first tried to use an online pattern finder, but I was quickly foiled.  No section of the series of numbers was matched by any of the online pattern finders I checked.  (I also tried The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences® (OEIS®), but came up blank there too). More math was needed.

I started out by trying to classify the type of equation I was dealing with.  It's obviously not linear, so I looked to polynomials.  An online search led me to a paper at the Carnegie Mellon University Mathematical Sciences department titled "Finding a formula for a sequence of numbers".  This paper described a process for determining if a given sequence of numbers could be solved by a high-degree polynomial equation, but following the process led me to determine that my desired formula was not a polynomial sequence.  The suggestion of that paper was to investigate an exponential sequence.

I had already checked to see if this was a logarithmic sequence, and had determined that it was not.  Another Google search took me to a lesson on CK12.org titled "Geometric Sequences and Exponential Functions."  Now I was getting somewhere.

The process on that lesson suggested that I investigate the Common Ratio, or the ratio between successive terms in the sequence.

This is what I found:

Level	Cost	Common Ratio (Tn/T(n-1))
1	1
2	2	2.00000000
3	3	1.50000000
4	4	1.33333333
5	5	1.25000000
6	10	2.00000000
7	30	3.00000000
8	60	2.00000000
9	90	1.50000000
10	120	1.33333333
11	160	1.33333333
12	200	1.25000000
13	250	1.25000000
14	310	1.24000000
15	390	1.25806452
16	485	1.24358974
17	610	1.25773196
18	760	1.24590164
19	950	1.25000000
20	1185	1.24736842
21	1480	1.24894515
22	1760	1.18918919
23	2070	1.17613636
24	2435	1.17632850
25	2865	1.17659138
26	3370	1.17626527
27	3965	1.17655786
28	4665	1.17654477
29	5490	1.17684887
30	6455	1.17577413
31	7595	1.17660728
32	8490	1.11784068
33	9435	1.11130742
34	10,485	1.11128776
35	11,650	1.11111111
36	12,945	1.11115880
37	14,380	1.11085361
38	15,980	1.11126565
39	17,755	1.11107635
40	19,725	1.11095466
41	21,920	1.11128010
42	24,355	1.11108577
43	27,060	1.11106549
44	30,065	1.11104952
45	33,405	1.11109263
46	37,115	1.11106122
47	41,240	1.11114105
48	45,825	1.11117847
49	50,915	1.11107474
50	56,570	1.11106747
51	62,855	1.11110129
52	69,840	1.11112879
53	77,600	1.11111111

(That 1/0.9 pattern continues throughout the data that I've collected, I've just cut it off to shorten this already very long entry.)

I can see five distinct sections that have patterns:

1. 1-4: linear
2. 5-9: possibly exponential with a rounding error
3. 10-21: exponential with a common ratio of 5/4
4. 22-31: exponential with a common ratio of 1/0.85
5. 31-?: exponential with a common ratio of 1/0.9

The final values are also rounded to the nearest number divisible by 5.  Here are my resulting Google Sheets formulas (where n is the step, or level of the next Attribute, and X_n is the cost of that Attribute):

1. 1-4: X_n = n
2. 5-9: X_n = 5*ROUND((1/5)*(3/2)^(n-1),0)
3. 10-21: X_n = 5*ROUND((51/15)*(5/4)^(n-1),0)
4. 22-31: X_n = 5*ROUND(58/5*(1/0.85)^(n-1),0)
5. 31-?: X_n = 5*ROUND(11665/36/5*(1/0.9)^(n-1),0)

These formulas are not perfect, but they successfully predict the known costs of an Attribute for each step up to level 99, with a margin of error of about 0.028%.

The question is, how high does this formula take us?  Some AMS systems reach a plateau for costs (troop enhancement via spray, I believe), so does this formula go to ∞, or does it peak out at some maximum cost per step?  If we assume it applies to ∞ (and this is a big assumption), we can build a spreadsheet that gives us the cost for each step.

Getting back to our Vampire - the Vampire attributes have two tracks: the right side is the development track, where most (but not all) of the attributes we want for maximum resource production are.  The left side is the deployment track, which is mostly (but not completely) comprised of battle attributes.  We can now count the number of steps required to max out a side, then sum up the costs for each step to find out how many Air Force Tactical Points it takes to max each side.

To max out the left (deployment) it requires 150 steps (we get this by adding the number of steps for each Attribute).  If we assume the formula above carries on to ∞, my calculations show that this equates to 21.3 Billion Air Force Tactical Points to max out a Vampire for Attack purposes.  This is compared to the 109.8 Million required to max out the F117.

To max out the right (development) side of a Vampire it requires 162 steps.  Again, if we assume the formula above carries to ∞, my calculations suggest that it takes 75.4 Billion Air Force Tactical Points to max out a Vampire for Development purposes.

What if we want to max out the Vampire for both sides?  We can't simply add 21.3B + 75.4B.  Instead, you have to calculate the sum of all costs for 312 steps.  This calculates to a whopping  495,911,656,025,378,000, or 495.9 Quadrillion Air Force Tactical Points.

The good news?  You can use the Air Force Tactical Points +50% Battlefield Buff to cut all of these numbers in half!

Now, I must admit, I don't know if my assumption that the formula applies to ∞ is correct, and that it doesn't max out at some steady cost instead.  I did hear on Facebook that one person was actually able to max their Vampire and it took them 3 years, and this suggests to me that there might be a maximum cost per step at some level higher than 98.  If anyone from AMS (or anyone else for that matter) wants to check my math and let me know anything I'm missing I'm all ears.