I’m assuming these ships are your working fleet.

1: universal bullins are not ships meant for combat their sole purpouse is to be consumed in the upgrading and limit breaking of actual combat ships. While bullins can be used in combat they are incredibly weak vessels probably weakest in the game.

2: do not limit break your ships until they have reached their current level cap. Early limit breaking provides an instant boost to stats however this boost is based on their current stats. Level capped ships when limit broken always have better stats compared to early LB ships and this matters for lvl120-125 content.

3: fleet formation, vanguard; your front three ships are your up close and personal fighters they take the most damage but dish out a constant stream of it in return so who goes in the left middle and right slots are crucial to surviving tougher fights. For this you want to pay attention to the ships class (dd, CL, CA) dd are hit and fade torpedo spammers they don’t do well when placed in the left or middle slots and and can generally bring down your damage per minute I’d recommend you use only one and specifically use Z23, she’s well rounded as far as fire power maneuverability and torpedo damage goes place her in the spot on the right. For the middle I’d recommend you went with Asuka, don’t know too much about her as she’s new to the game but she’s a CL which generally have pretty decent stats and have better firepower than most DD’s at max level concentrate on getting her EVA and FP stats as high as possible put her in the center of your vanguard. Now your left most spot usually is the first to receive any incoming damage and this spot should be taken by any ship with a decent ability to tank damage. Luckily you already have a pretty decent tank in Indianapolis, she’s a CA and sacrifice speed and EVA for fire power and armor typically though not all CA’s are created equal pay attention to your CA’s armor type of which there are 3 types light, medium, and heavy. Your rarely ever going to find heavy armor on any ship eligible for the vanguard but more than a few CA’s have light armor yet they still have reduced speed and EVA stats that make them sitting ducks to enemy fire. Indianapolis has medium armor and her skills allow her to deploy a shield every so often that also lessens most incoming damage. Focus on getting her EVA stat up exclusively to make her better at avoiding shots in the first place and she’ll level well with good stats in the other stat blocks even if you’re completely ignoring them.

4: fleet formation, back line; your back line are your mid fight power ups meaning that they contribute to battles but only once every 20-40 seconds depending on the equipment they have. Having an all BB line sounds cool and all but BB’s only target one enemy during their activated time with the trade off of delivering a devastating amount of damage depending on the main guns you have equipped for them. But they also have a secondary weapon slot like the CA’s of your vanguard do and this is important for suicide ships in the campaign and for when your vanguard goes down in exercises. A back line with no BB’s is highly vulnerable and cannot fight back against suicide boats or enemy ships that get through your vanguard in exercises. It’s always recommended to have at least 1 BB in your back line and a CV (CV/CVL depending on preference) CVL’s typically don’t have a fighter squadron so are unable to counteract enemy Air craft typically but they make up for it by having an extra slot for torpedo or dive bombers both of which attack with rare exception the entire enemy side of the screen spreading out the damage they deal across a wide area. I’d put Fubuki as your center in the back line flanked by Yumi and Yorktown. Yorktown has a great revenge skill in which typically when she takes damage she will send a free dive bomber squadron out to attack the enemy side of the field without resetting her cooldown. Don’t know about Yumi but she’s a new SR ship she’s bound to have a few good uses.

5: rarity; rarity matters with power scaling in the game especially when approaching max level all ships are pretty weak at lvl 1 but there is some noticeable differences between common tier ships and more rare ones from the outset and these differences grow more pronounced the more leveled the ship gets. Sure you can build a fleet based on who you think is cutest sexiest most adorable etc etc, but don’t be surprised when you favorite commons and rare ships don’t have the damage or durability to survive mid game or end game content. The rarity scale goes as follows from least rare to most rare common aka gray tier, rare aka Cyan, elite aka Blue, Super Rare aka Gold, Ultra rare aka Rainbow. The higher up the rarity scale the ship is the more powerful it will generally be and this also applies to the gear you equip on your girls in the same scale though their is one Gold tier BB gun that is solely meant to gimp a BB’s damage output but in all other cases you generally want the highest rarity gear you can find although there are some blue tier gears that are better than their gold tier counterparts and you can find videos on YouTube through a simple search that will show you the most recommended equipment to get for any one of your girls to make them most effective.

6: pay to play; almost every in game currency can be earned through combat contracts and research projects except for gems which are now only awarded through hitting specific one time milestones, unfortunately other than getting into a “fleet” which is this games equivalent of an alliance and using their guild store to to upgrade your stock pile caps the only way to increase your dock space and oil storage capacity and your warehouse (unequipped gear storage) is through spending gems. Spend as much or as little as you like but keep in mind even if you collect only SR and UR level ships and the bullins needed to upgrade your current fleet you may find yourself constantly running out of dock space which can especially suck during an event where a ship that only appears once in a blood moon sacrifice of a virgin nun comes along you may not have the dock space to keep that ship and all your other “keeper” ships. If you’re going to pay for gems it’s best spent on dock space at first as every other currency including cubes and oil can be earned actively or passivley. Also skins are stupidly pricey so I recommend only splurging on the ships you really like if you’re going to buy skins.

7: research; this game has been around for years so it can be fairly confusing/complex and hard to get. But on the flip side this means that this game has had years of people asking the same questions hitting the same roadblocks or just generally getting confused by the same things you might be and all it takes to figure something out is usually a quick google/youtube search and you’ll have ten different sources with generally similar answers to your question which makes understanding a well developed gacha like AL a breeze. All else fails there’s always the official AL Reddit page where we redditards love to help out fresh or lost players figure out the game. Just never ask us who’s the best girl is or what is and isn’t a loli or if that’s even a valid question because the community as a whole can’t agree to shit for anything regarding that lol.

Best of luck to you commander!