Girls & Panzer: Great Tankery Operation! (ガールズ＆パンツァー 戦車道大作戦!) is a mobile game for Android and Apple phones. It is a real-time tactical-based game that includes a gacha system. The official website is http://garupan-app.com/.
How to install
Android
The game is completely in Japanese and usually, you'd need access to your phone's Japanese shop to get it.There is also a Traditional Chinese Verson launched by 辣椒方舟(Ark).(Chinese name:少女與戰車 戰車道大作戰）You need a
For Android users, there is an easy way to bypass this:
- Download an apk-file of the game (get it here, for example) and transfer it to your phone.
- Install the game from that apk-file using ES File Explorer or a similar app.
After starting the game, it will download lots of files, which can take a while. This is normal. Before that, a message box might appear with a red and blue button. Click the blue button (the message box asks if you want to enter a transfer code, and the blue button means "no").
It can also be downloaded from Amazon Japan and Smart Pass.
AndApp
The game is also available to play on PC, to play it there you need to download and install a program called AndApp.
- Once installed the app, select the game from the list of games and click on download.
- Then after the game is done installing select either new game or transfer.
Remember, once an option has been chosen, it cannot be reversed, so be careful when choosing.
Acquiring New Members
(Go to gacha menu, see first picture on the right)
- Summon with tank points (TPs). Normal summons cost 30 TPs per member and can range from 3 to 5 stars and pulling 10 characters at once costs 300. If you click on the arrow on the right, there will be more options to buy them (from special events, or you can buy 10 on them to have a 4 Star member guaranteed at half the cost (150 TPs)). Some of these offers can only use TPs that have been bought through an in-game purchase. Note that these purchased points will be the first to be used up regardless of how many TPs you have earned in game, so be wise on spending these.
- Friendship summon with friendship points (200 friendship points per member, 1 to 2 stars, maybe even 3). Friendship points are collected by using a companion during battles or via map rewards.
- Once per day: Free friendship summon (see second image. The "0" indicates a free summon. The red, left button is always "yes", and the blue, right button is "no")
- Drops from regular maps and event maps
- Event map reward
- Special summon from events (for example, by collecting special tickets)
Acquiring New Tanks
Menu where you can build tanks from collected tank parts
Normal tank summon
From gacha menu, select the green button (see previous section). Each tank is worth 70 TPs. Usually, these tanks are quite good and consist of good quality tank parts (rank C or higher).
Build tanks from collected tank parts
See the pictures for where to do that. You get tank parts from event drops, event rewards or regular map drops. If you have all 3 parts for a tank (cannon, armor, engine), you can build it for a certain price. Note that most tank parts obtained as drops from regular maps are of low quality (usually rank E, the lowest rank). Still, for the beginning, this is the easiest way to get more tanks.
Tank Parts
Each tank is made of 3 main parts: Drivetrain, Hull, and Weapon. For the tank to be usable, each part must be present in your loadout; no incomplete tanks are permitted. Each part has it's own rank, going up from E to S, each affecting the power and overall rank of the tank (A tank with a RC gun, a RB Drivetrain, and an RA Hull will be considered a Rank B tank). Depending on the part, several statistics of the tank are affected:
Drivetrain
Affects both Mobility and Maneuverability, the key to light tanks. Certain Drivetrains also have a "Terrain Suitability" symbol, allowing certain tanks to fair better in certain conditions, such as desert and snow maps.
Hull
Affects Armour and overall Durability, making higher-ranked Hulls important for heavy tanks.
Weapon
Affects Firepower, Accuracy, and Loading, which, while important in all vehicles, takes priority in Tank Destroyers.
Team Composition
One of the five loadouts, fully equipped.
Stats of a B rank Jagdpanzer IV/70, as shown on the tank select screen.
There are five different compositions of five tanks each available to you. Each tank has a letter rank, ranging from S to E, along with a "cost" value, which dictates the total strength of a loadout (certain missions require a smaller cost, lower than 55 for example). A tanks health is measured by it's Durability, represented with a red bar both in menus and in-game. Each tank has six main stats:
- Firepower
- Accuracy
- Armour
- Mobility
- Loading
- Maneuverability
(The IV/70 in the image has no Terrain Suitability).
IV/70 fully crewed with 4 members.
With a tank selected and the slot filled, you can then allocate crew members to each tank. Tanks only need 3 essential crewman to operate (Commander, Gunner, and Driver) but it is recommended you fill all crew slots fully to gain all of the stat increases.
The various sorting options for team composition.
Each composition can also be automatically sorted by each of the 6 main stats, with the option to apply a complete sort, only sort the crew, or only sort the tanks.
Where to battle
The battle maps are sorted from right to left in terms of order and difficulty, i.e. the easiest and first maps are always on the right.
Every battle costs a certain amount of "ammunition points" (see picture). Regular maps cost 5 to 10 ammo points, while event maps may cost up to 30 ammo points. The number of maximum ammo points is limited by your level.
Places where you can battle are:
Regular maps
First you select an area (usually, the schools) and then a stage. There are 4 missions to clear for most stages. The mission requirements are usually:
- Clear the stage (reward: 1 tank point)
- Clear the stage without getting one of your tanks destroyed (the friend tank doesn't count) (reward: 1000 gold)
- Clear the stage without getting the friend tank destroyed (reward: 200 friendship points)
- Some special condition like "clear the map with 1 tank" or "with 3 tanks" or "with a specific tank/character"(reward: 3 tank points or so). Usually, if you see a number which is written in the mission objective (orange part of the next screenshot), it's the number of tank allowed for clearing the objective, if you see something written between brackets, it's the name of the character/tank that you had to use in your team to clear the objectve (in both case, the friend tank doesn't count)
- On the regular maps, you can often drop E (or D in later maps) rank tank parts of the school whose maps you are playing, i.e. if you play a St. Gloriana map, you can drop Matilda parts.
Event maps
Mostly, same rules as regular maps, but can be much more difficult. The maps are often ranked by difficulty (from A to E), where E is pretty easy, even for beginners, and A is pretty difficult. You can get unique tank part drops from events, and also unique event rewards upon completing event maps. Some events require you collecting special tickets (40 - 200 of them), which you can then use to special summon a 4 star character from the gacha menu (for example, the morals committee in maid uniforms). The first 3 mission requirements for an event map are usually the same as for regular maps, but the 4th (and sometimes 5th) requirement is often some special one (such as clearing the mission with only 3 tanks, excluding friendlies).
Also note that certain event maps often are only available on specific days and at specific hours (besides being available for only a month). This image shows an overview over the time periods for the current events (status: 08.06.2016).
Competition Maps
Once you have reached level 30, you will be able to access these maps. Unlike the other maps, these do not require any ammunition, but they will not allow you to repair your tanks after any battle. However, you may allow up to 30 tanks to participate throughout the campaign and giving allowing you to switch out severely damaged tanks for fresh new ones. Also, you will earn points for winning the battle as well as fulfilling the conditions for it. These points show your ranking on the leaderboard and you will be given a food item reward depending on where you stand. The time these items and your points is given out at the end of each day and the maps reset back down to map 1. The points you have gained can be spent on items in a separate shop located where you would usually increase your dormitories, warehouses, and buy orbs. Upon reaching that screen, hit the blue button to enter this shop. Here you can buy characters, Boko bears, tanks, and high quality tank parts.
Practice matches
In these matches, your tanks don't get destroyed, but you don't gain anything either.
When you enter this menu, the right side is almost always closed with a message saying ("Coming Soon..."). In fact, there championship in this part sometimes. For this one, you have three levels ("5", "10", "15"). The number indicate the price for your stamina. "5" is easier (maybe), but you will earn more points if you use "15".
Whatever your choice, you will have to fight the team from another player (like in the practice match if you click on the left side when you enter the menu), team which is controlled by the IA. Win or loss, you will earn some points, and with these ones, you will obtain rewards like Super-Boko (150XP) or new character or....
Your tanks are automatically fixed after the fight, so you can fight like crazy (well, when you meet an S Tanks team, just pray)
Competiton Events
These events offers the best rewards for a limited time. Here, you are up against an AI-controled player and winning a battle gives you participation points (PPs). These points not only display your ranking, but also gives you rewards everytime you fill the participation bar shown at the end of each match and be seen in the event screen. Also in the event screen there are 2 other bars: the bar that is filled with the number "100" is your motivation points (MPs) and the second bar allows you to adjust how much MP you will use. By default, the minimum MP used is 10 and the maximum is 30. Increasing the amount of MP used up will increase the multiplier of the amount of PPs you will earn, but in exchange you will be matched up with a stronger, if not, impossible team to defeat and losing rewards the least amount of PPs. However, this can also be a double edge sword as you could be placed up against an opponent (we are taking about B+ to S-ranks) who is fielding only 3 tanks, but still defeats you. Once you have depleted all your MPs, you have to wait 50 minutes (1 MP = 5 minutes) if you want to participate again or you can use MP recovery items - Cakes, Cookies and Pancakes. Like the Practice Matches, your tanks do not need to undergo repairs (so you can be reckless using the AI if you know you cannot win.)
How to battle
Battle preparation screen
When you've selected a map to battle, you will first see this screen on the right. For most battles, you can choose a companion to help you in the battle. This gives you 10 friendship points, and 30 friendship points if you choose a person from your friend list (after a battle, you get a message asking if you want to send a friend request to the person you chose as a companion).
As you see, there's a win/lose condition and a mission objective. Winning a map will give you experience points, gold and the right you keep your drops, while clearing the mission objective will additionally give you the mission reward. Losing a map means you will get no experience points, no gold and neither the drops you gained so far. But you can choose to continue to battle after a defeat for the price of 10 tank points. This will heal all your tanks to full health, while keeping the enemy health unchanged. Especially if you got some silver container drops, this option might be worth it.
Left of the "mission reward" button sometimes another button appears stating specific conditions for a map. Usually they state that you can't use a certain character for a map, for example Darjeeling for some St. Gloriana maps (usually maps 5 and 10 from the regular maps).
The terrain type does add certain positive and negative effects to your tanks. For example, certain tanks are well-suited for snow, while others are not. If you click and hold an empty tile in the battle map, the effects will be shown.
Actual battle
The map is a hexagonal grid that allows your tanks to reposition itself to fire from 1 of the 6 directions. Although tank destroyers (TDs) such as the StuG III or Jagdtiger can only fire from the front and require constant repositioning, they make up for this for their long firing range. Taking advantage of this causes the AI to carelessly charge toward you if one of your TDs has 1 of their tanks within its firing zone. At the beginning of each battle, all the tanks are in fixed starting positions and you cannot or swap them around (sadly).
At the left of the map, there is the list of your tanks, showed with a of the leader of the tank, and the name of the tank is written under it.
At the right, you have the same list, but for your ennemies. Most of the time, it's a girl with the same face.
At the bottom, you have a rectangle thing, with two circles : the left circle is for special skill, the right one for launching action. At the bottom of the rectangle, you have three options : Menu, Auto, and an arrow.
The menu obviously contains options to adjust the sounds and quit the game. Auto is the Auto-mode (I STRONGLY advised you to not use it except if you are sure of your victory because the AI sucks and just CHARGE) - click on it to launch it and to stop it you have to click on it at the end of a turn (be careful, it can be fast) -, the arrow is to speed up the game (0.5x, 1x or 3x).
The actual combat itself is played out in this order : you micromanage actions for your tanks and launch the turn. Your tanks and enemies tanks will move in the same time. You cannot intervene after the turn begins until the end of it. So yeah, sometimes, your tanks will be stucked to each other if you give them wrong moves to do. But they will fire at their own will and you cannot really give an order to specify which tank they should aim at if they or an enemy tank enters their firing zone. This sucks a little bit, but well, it's just a phone game.
To give orders to a tank, you can:
- click on the tank
- click on the picture leader of your tank (on the left on the screen)
The result will be the same, a menu which 4 options will appear near the picture of your tank leader. You have, up to down :
- Aggressive: The AI searches and attacks the closest enemy (i.e. CHARGE)
- Passive: The AI moves out of an enemy's attack range and avoids combat
- Tank commander does 1 of the 2 stated above
- Manual command and control (RECOMMENDED)
In manual mode, blue/pink/purple hexagons will appear. From your actual position, blue indicates where the tank can move, purple where it can shoot while on the move, and pink displays where it can only shoot. By clicking on a blue hexagon, a yellow trail will appear between your departure and arrival point. 6 arrows will appear on the arrival case. By clicking on an arrow, you can choose where will be the front of your tank. Until you didn't click on the "GO" button, you can change the position of your tanks as you wish. No time limit.
But remember:
- Be careful how your tanks will move. If it passes on another arrival tank position, the yellow hexagonal from the trail will become red. But if the other tank is moving to this position and your tank is faster, it can pass before the other tank arrive at this place
- Be careful to be sure that any tank will ram in another one, both from the front, on their way. Because they will stuck in each other, unable to move.
- There is a time limit on your movement and shooting, so keep in mind that your tank can encounter problems before arriving in its designated position (by ramming into/allowing friendly tanks the right-of-way.) So it could happen that 1 or more of your tanks will not reach the location or will not have enough time to turn towards the ordered position even if it did arrive at the ordered location.
Special
There is a gauge on the top of the rectangle on the bottom of the map. It's empty at the beginning, and every time you shoot and hit an enemy tank, the gauge will fill with a blue/purple colour. When full, the left circle button will activate and you can click on it. The next turn your special will be unleashed on the map (don't dream, it's a boost of stat. But a powerful one). The special is from the leader of your first tank. Each character has their own special which can boost allied tank or decrease enemy tanks stats.
And of course, if your command tank is destroyed, you cannot use your special skill anymore.
Flag Tank
Sometimes you will have a flag tank battle. Killing the enemy flag tank means victory, but losing your flag tank ends in defeat. You can choose your flag tank in the menu where you are building your team (tank and character). Look for the little grey/blue flag on the top of the picture of your tank when you enter the menu. If it's blue, it means it will be your flag tank. Click on a grey flag, it will become blue and it will be your new flag tank (the other one then becomes grey). It can be interesting to not have the first tank as a flag tank sometimes (specially against Saunders, where a character target your first and downgrade its stats each turn). The enemy flag tank has a red flag.
Terrain
Each hexagonal space of has different attributes applied to it. These are important, as improper positioning can leave your vehicle at a disadvantage. To check what type of terrain is present, hold down your finger on a space and a message will appear, mentioning the type of terrain and the stats affected. For example, Rivers and Deep snow fields cause a debuff in all stats save for Loading, while Snow drifts act as a position to hull-down, giving an increase to armour.
Increasing your pool of tanks/characters
If your deck is full, you can cannot add any more tanks/characters, the game will ask you if you want to expand it by default.
You can do it before it happens by clicking on the menu just to the right of Gaptcha menu (it looks like the tank point (sorry, no picture, cannot sign in)). There is three parts on the screen, one green is on the right, the yellow is on the left, and the pink is a the top of the green.
The pink part increases the max number of character you can have (5 more places for 10 tank points)
The green part is about your tanks. The one at the top, lets you to have one more tank in your garage for 7 tank points, the one in the middle lets you to have 3 more tank parts for 3 tank points and the one at the bottom lets you to have one place to fix your tank for 50 tank points.
The top button on the yellow part allows you fill totally your stamina (ammunition points) for 10 tank points. The bottom button allows you to buy tank points with real money (120 Yen = 1 USD more or less depending on the exchange rate).
Checking your friend lists
If you want to check you friend list, you need to click on the menu on the further right, which looks like a letter, and click on the first blue bubble. You will have three menus :
- You can see your friend list inside the menu to the left. The two interactions you can have with them is to delete them by tapping on their profile once or view the crew manning the tank by holding down on their profile for a few seconds.
- You can add friends with the menu in the middle if you have their login/code/something
- In the menu in the right, you can either accept or decline friend requests from other players. Note that doing either will for some reason cause the game to freeze and you'll be required to re-open the app.
In the menu which you are building your team, at the top left, you can see the same symbol than the one for friends (two pinks hands who are shaking). If the symbol is not activate, if it's pink/green is activated. If activated, it means it will be the first tank of this team that will be shared with others people.
How to increase the power/skill/level max/stats of a Character ?
(Check the screen which is in the "How to get a Tank" part)
The menu at the top let you see all your characters. You can click on one of them and you can check their stats. After clicking on one character, you will have two yellow buttons under the stats table. If your character is not 3+ stars, the left button is closed. These are shortcuts to power up the skill and the max level of your character.
Skill power up
The left button is to power-up the skill of your character. If you come from the previous menu (the one from the previous screenshot), it is strongly advised to click on the green button to the left top and change the checkbox to the right. It will show you the character which are only 3+ stars, the only ones who can use skill.
Skill change for each character & clothes. They have a bunch a different effects. To power-up it, you need to use other characters :
- Random characters different on the one you are powering up : 1 star, 10xp / 2 stars, 15 xp/ 3stars
- Boko gives you 50 xp
- Same character gives : 1 star, 100 xp/2 stars,150 xp/3 stars
- Super Boko 150 XP
Max level power up
You will have characters who will have exactly the same cards and you can fuse them together. If you do that, the level max of the character that you will use as base, will go five levels up. For example, a 3 Stars character who has a max level at 30, will have a new max level at 35. Really useful. Choose first the character you want to use as a base (by the right yellow button on your character or by passing by the third menu of the previous screenshot). The one who will be fused come after. Except if you don't want to use this character and use it as a cannon fodder for 4+ stars characters.
Bonus
There is a data about the number of times you obtain the same character (just the character, the clothes/posture doesn't count). After a number of times you have the same character, you will have a level up.
Stats increase (since 1.1.0)
Some characters can have an increase of stats or their skills can become powerful since the 1.1.0. Not all the characters can have that, it's really specific characters. For this, go to the menu to power up the skill and click on the right menu. You can choose the character you want to boost here (remember to use the filter to find it). To power up a character, you need to use specific Boko. They are different different than normal Boko because they have a kanji at the top on their picture, kanjis which are the same than the ones for characters/tanks stats. The kanji will indicate which stats it will boost.
When you click on the character you want to boost, a diagram will appear. You can click on the hexagon inside the diagram to choose which stats you want to boost for the character. You will need a certain amount of Boko to open the hexagon. There is some ways in the diagram, they are stats-related and you are not free to do what you want. You can only open a hexagon near the starting point or near a hexagon already opened. And the way doesn't cross between stats. For example, if you opened a +2 stats for firepower, you can open the +4 for firepower. But you cannot open a +4 for agility, you will have to return at the beginning and open a +2 agility.
The game is on heavy maintenance since the release, things will be added after some tests.
Gallery
Opening Screens
.PNG "GTO Anko (Naval).PNG (1.09 MB)")
.PNG "GTO - Idols (4th Anniversary).PNG (2.87 MB)")
.PNG "GTO - Idols II (4th Anniversary).PNG (4.8 MB)")
Translated Menus
