NOTE: This guide is incomplete and currently only covers the analysis on the units you can acquire; the formation section is incomplete and the walkthrough is incomplete.

Walthrough Progress: Due to sudden work and family issues, I can only find time to work on this guide during the weekends. Please be patient :)

However, I feel that it is still much more comprehensive than most of the guides out there for this game and as such have decided to post it before it is complete so that you can have a look at it while I work on the other parts of the guide.

Thank you for your understanding.

WARNING: This guide may include spoilers as it discusses the combat capabilities of ryders/units that you may not have encountered yet in the game. However, it is focused purely on the combat aspects of Sunrider and does not touch on the VN portion (which do not affect your battles anyway).

I'd first like to thank the Sekai Project for making this game. I've had so much fun strategizing about this game that by the end of it, I had enough content to create a guide.

I'd also like to thank these people who have contributed through feedback:

• Lordin1
  
• Skeltek

Since there's a lot of people struggling with some of the missions (just as I did when I started) and there isn't a complete walkthrough for this game, I decided to create this guide to help you. I guarantee that by the end of the guide, you'll become a pro at this game.

If you still don't know how to play the game after reading (or you're just too lazy to read because it is quite long, I totally understand)... well, you'd still be a pro anyway, since there will be step-by-step guide videos to follow on how to play each mission, what to upgrade, detailed elaboration on new enemy units etc.

This guide is designed to clear the game at Captain difficulty which is the difficulty that most of you will be playing at anyway. The same strategies may not be viable at higher difficulties (which rely a lot more on chance than strategy, require a lot more caution and also put more importance on missiles because of their combination of accuracy and power).

This guide is designed for version: VANILLA EDITION: Beta 7.2.

This walkthrough will achieve the following:

• You should not need to keep saving and reloading. This walkthrough makes the choices that minimises chances of critical failure and avoids high risk scenarios.
  If you ever wanted to try playing Sunrider's Captain difficulty on Ironman mode, this guide should serve that purpose.
  
  
• You won't need to sell any items that may be important to the plot. Wishall
  
  
• You will be able to destroy every single PACT ship in all missions, including both escort missions.
  
  
• You will clear the last mission in 1 turn without the use of rockets. The game will kowtow before you in awe of your tactical prowess

Even though I have done quite a bit of research on the game, you may have a better strategy / tip / something that I may have missed out or made a mistake on. Please comment if you have something to add or rectify! :)

This guide will cover the following:

If you already have an idea on how the game works (and you don't want to dig through the game mechanics section for extra nitty-gritty details), feel free to skip this section. Otherwise, it might contain some information you didn't know.

Timeline of how much money (and cmd. points) you can make off each mission, when upgrades become available, when you obtain units etc.

Analysis on the different types of weapons, discussing their strengths, weaknesses and uses.

Detailed analysis on each unit, discussing their specifications (and the small variations between them and other units), role in the fleet (what they do best), how you should upgrade them and finally how their abilities are best used (under the tactics section).

This is actually covered quite effectively in this guide by Scopedog under the "general tactics" section. I'll just re-iterate and add on some points.

If you're just here to steamroll the game and you can't care less for all that thinking work, just jump straight here. This is where the action is.

Excel spreadsheet for more number crunching and data. Also includes the raw text file I created while playing the game.

This section covers game mechanics in general. For specific mechanics regarding unit abilities (e.g. Bianca's Gravity ability or the Sunrider's Short Range Warp), refer to the unit analysis section for that unit.

The less obvious game mechanics are underlined for your convenience.

While this section covers the facts about the game's mechanics, it doesn't cover the tactics/observations derived from the understanding of these mechanics (e.g. some ships usually fire a rocket first before firing missiles).

Press F1 while in game to see the list of controls and short-cuts. The most useful one is CTRL, which allows you skip through text and battle scenes instead of spamming your left click.

The game is turn-based and you will always take the first turn, followed by the enemy AI.

Sometimes you can apply an effect on units on the battlefield. For example if you use the command Full Forward, you may see something like "Damage +25% for 5 turns" on your units. In this case, the effect expires after you press "End Turn" 5 times. Effects take place immediately upon using the ability.

The battlefield is 18 hex wide and 16 hex high. This map size is the same throughout all missions, including skirmish / simulation mode.

The lose condition is always the same: if the Sunrider's health reaches 0, you fail the mission. There are some missions which have additional lose conditions e.g. escort missions where the escort must not be destroyed, or the 2nd last mission where your ryders cannot be hit by the laser.

When you complete a mission successfully, you are rewarded with money for every ship you destroyed.

• Ships that surrender (i.e. were not destroyed) when you win will give you only half of what you would have gotten if you had destroyed them.
  
• Repair costs are deducted from your profits. You pay $1 for every 10 HP your units have lost at the end of the battle in total. If you managed to repair all your damage by the end of the fight, you don't have to pay a cent.
  
• You get command points depending on how many turns it took for you to win and how much money you earned. These points can be used for plot purposes (although you don't need more than command points 4000 throughout the whole VN for plot) or special Sunrider abilities called "Orders" which you can access at the top left hand corner of the screen.
  I read difficulty also plays a part on how much command points you get, but I've never tried that out.

Be aware that when you choose to upgrade, that decision is applied instantly; pressing the minus button will incur monetary penalties. It is recommended that you save before upgrading.

Each of your units have a set amount of Health Points (HP) represented by the red bar and Energy (EN) represented by the blue bar on the unit itself, or on their status popup (or whatever you call it) when you click that unit. This is an example of a "status popup" which appears at the bottom right corner of the screen:


Units use EN to perform actions like attacking, moving or special abilities like repairing. The amount of EN required is clearly indicated on the hex you want to travel to, or on the action you want to perform.

Units normally have 100 EN but you can upgrade your units to have more EN. Some ships are the exception to this rule (e.g. Alliance Battleships have 120 EN).

Your units' energy is reset back to full every turn unless they have been debuffed by the enemy (you don't have to worry about this until late-game).

We'll now explain how you deal damage and the types of weapons involved. Simply select a unit and hover over an attack action (e.g. KINETIC). A tooltip should appear if you enabled it in the settings explaining what the action does and the status popup should reveal the details about the attack. Here's an example:


In this example, performing this action would fire 20 rounds that deal 13 damage each for a total amount of 260 damage.

The damage dealt is slightly random; you can deal up to 5% more or less than the damage indicated.

The accuracy of any action you intend to perform is indicated as a percentage on the unit.


The simple idea is that the closer you are to the enemy, the higher your chance of hitting the target. If you are using an attack that fires more than 1 shot, each shot has its own chance to hit and miss; in other words, all shots must be successful in order to deal the full damage shown in the status popup. On the plus side, even if one of your shots miss, you still have a high chance to deal damage with such an attack.

It is important to note that while the weapons may look the same across all of your ships, there are usually small variations. For example, the Sunrider's pulse attack uses 40 EN while the Black Jack's pulse attack uses 50 EN. Refer to the unit details section for specifics on the variations.

NOTE: By "distance" in the formulas below, if you are directly next to the target, it's considered as 1. If there is 1 grid/hex of space between you and the enemy, it's considered as 2.

Kinetic Weapons
Characteristics:

• For every 1 hex of space, you gain/lose 15% accuracy with kinetic weapons.
  
• For every point of armor (AR), deduct 2 damage (instead of 1) per shot dealt by kinetic weapons. This damage reduction applies individually to each shot fired.
  
• Effective accuracy is: weapon accuracy + 50% - (distance * 15%) - enemy evasion + (buff or debuff).

Types of Kinetic Weapons:

• Kinetic
  Kinetic attacks are the single-shot variant of kinetic weapons. They are usually powerful and deal at least 400 damage (with the exception of Bianca who only deals 250 damage, and enemy PACT ships which may deal lesser).
  
• Assault
  Assault attacks are the multi-shot variant of kinetic weapons. In the Sunrider's case, it fires 20 rounds for 12 damage each. Assault is easily mitigated by armor.

Energy Weapons
Characteristics:

• For every 1 hex of space, you gain/lose 10% accuracy with energy weapons.
  
• For every % of shield defence (SD), deduct that % of damage dealt by energy weapons. This damage reduction applies individually to each shot fired.
  
• SD is applied before armor. For example, if you use pulse and 10 rounds of 25 dmg per round at an enemy with 25% SD and 10 AR, you'd deal: (25*(1-0.25))-10)*10 = 87.5 damage.
  
• Effective accuracy is: weapon accuracy + 40% - (distance * 10%) - enemy evasion + (buff or debuff).

Types of Energy Weapons:

• Laser
  Laser attacks are the single-shot variant of energy weapons.
  
• Pulse
  Pulse attacks are the multi-shot variant of energy weapons. Pulse works better than assault in most scenarios unless the target is protected by shields.

Missile Weapons
Characteristics:

• For every 1 hex of space, you gain/lose 5% accuracy with missile weapons.
  
• Effective accuracy is: weapon accuracy - (distance * 5%) - enemy evasion + (buff or debuff).
  
• Missile weapon accuracy may vary but cannot be upgraded. The Sunrider's missile accuracy is 130% and her rocket accuracy is 150%.
  
• Your accuracy may be further affected by flak. For an explanation on flak, refer here: http://sunrider.gamepedia.com/Direct_Combat#Flak

Types of Missile Weapons:

• Rocket
  Rocket attacks are the single-shot variant of missile weapons. Only the Sunrider and enemy PACT ships can fire rockets.
  
• Missile
  Missile attacks are the multi-shot variant of missile weapons.

Melee
Characteristics:

• Effective accuracy is: weapon accuracy + 50% - enemy evasion.

While the accuracy section of this article[sunrider.gamepedia.com]is outdated, it covers the defence basics relatively well and thus I'll leave its explanation to that article.
For purposes of this guide, we'll refer to the following terms for defenses using the acronyms the game uses:
Flak: FK
Shield: SD
Armor: AR
Evade: EV

To add on / bring out key points the article:
Flak
Flak is basically an extra percentage chance to destroy missiles coming your way; the article explains what flak is in further detail.

You can see the coverage of a unit's flak by hovering your mouse on it and looking out for the hexes outlined in red. Cruisers and bigger ships have a flak radius of 2 hex, while ryders have a flak radius of 1 hex. So long as your flak intercepts the missile's route, it will still have a chance to destroy the missile.

Shield
The radius of shields is generally easy to see; just hover your mouse over the unit and you can see where it covers. Shields can stack up to 100%, which nullifies any energy weapon attacks.

Armor
The amount of armor you have is directly proportionate to the % of health you have left. If you have 100 max armor and 1000 max health for example and your current health is 500, you'd have 50 armor.

Evade
Evade is pretty self-explanatory.

Whenever a unit moves directly next to a hostile unit, that hostile unit gets to attack that unit using its assault/kinetic weapon (not its melee weapon even if it has one) immediately after it moves. Both your units and enemy units can counter-attack. Multiple hostile units can counter-attack at the same time.

When you counter-attack, the kinetic weapon upgrades (and buffs like Full Forward) are taken into account, increasing the damage you deal. It's basically an extra assault attack on the enemy.

You can identify enemy units that can counter-attack by:

• Red pentagons appear when you select a unit to move next to that unit
  
• That unit has flak in its status popup

There are a few exceptions to this rule:

• Bianca has no flak but she can counter using her kinetic weapon.
  
• Using the short range warp order by the Sunrider does not trigger a counter-attack.
  
• If you flak off a unit using Liberty, that unit loses their ability to counter-attack.

The purpose of this guide is not really to describe the mechanics of the game; that has been done ad nauseam by the game and by other articles and guides.
For more information on game mechanics, please refer to the following articles:
http://sunrider.gamepedia.com/Direct_Combat
http://sunrider.gamepedia.com/Combat

In Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius, there's First Arrival (part 1) and Mask of Arcadius (part 2). The game doesn't tell you when you complete part 1; it just moves you to part 2 automatically.
For the curious, part 2 starts at the beach scene

You can complete a maximum of 19 missions in the game (including side-missions). Since there's no reason not to complete as many missions as possible to maximize your money for upgrades (unless you're doing a speedrun or something), I would recommend doing the side-missions as well.

This section may contain minor spoilers as they may use mission names used by the game itself, or names of the ship you'd be escorting / attacking since there's no defined name for the mission. Such names would be accompanied with an asterisk beside it.

The timeline assumes you complete side mission 2.5b (refer below) and destroy every single enemy in all missions (for maximum profit). It also assumes that you do not run away from any battle.

The exact estimated gain numbers are based on the walkthrough.


Money, Command Points and upgrades do not carry over to the next game, so feel free to go wild on the last few missions.

The most important thing to consider is which weapons to upgrade in a unit. This section covers the weapon types in further detail, discussing their strengths and weaknesses. Whether or not you should upgrade the weapon type is discussed in further detail in the unit analysis section (since you're upgrading the unit, not the weapon type).

Strengths
High accuracy
Energy weapons offer damage comparable to kinetic weapons over a much longer distance. Take the Sunrider for example. Her un-upgraded effective laser weapon accuracy starts at 150% while her effective kinetic weapon accuracy starts at 90%. Laser weaponry is simply much better in terms of accuracy.

Better multi-shot damage
Pulse is much better than assault. It more accurate, it is less affected by armor, it deals more damage and upgrades are a lot more effective on pulse than it is on assault. You need to upgrade kinetic damage twice to get an increase of 20 damage for assault, while you just need to upgrade once to get that same damage bonus (and then some) on pulse.

Easy and cheap to upgrade
Energy weapon upgrades are cheaper and also offer more per upgrade. If you invest in energy weapons, they catch up to kinetic weapons very quickly and offer a very impressive amount of firepower.

Weaknesses
Shields
The ultimate counter against energy weapons is shielding. Enemy shields can easily reach 50% and can hit 100% in the mid-late game, greatly reducing energy weapon damage. On top of that, many enemy units provide shields, further reducing energy weaponry effectiveness.

When & How to use
Energy weapons are most effective when you target unshielded enemies. There are a few ways to deal with shields:

• Destroy. The most straightforward way to get rid of shields is to destroy the source of it with kinetic weapons.
  
• Debuff. The Liberty and Union Frigates are very effective at getting rid of shields in the mid to late game. In the early-game, however, the Liberty is usually too busy repairing to debuff enemies, which means destroying enemies is your only option.
  
• Dislocate. From mid-game onwards, Bianca can gravity ryders out of shields, making them vulnerable to laser attacks.

Energy weapons are most ineffective in the mid-game when there are a lot of enemies with shields, but very little options to get rid of them.

Strengths
High damage
Kinetic weapons naturally deal a lot of damage from the start and deal even more through upgrades all in a single-shot. This allows them to plow through enemy armor, which is supposed to be their counter.

Ignores shields
Kinetic weapons ignore shields, allowing you to deal with enemies that your energy weapons can't.

Weaknesses
Inaccurate
These weapons are quite inaccurate even with upgrades, limiting their use to only big and slow targets. The exception to this is the Sunrider who can just teleport and kinetic the enemy's face and Seraphim whose kinetic weapon operates very differently from the others.

Poor upgrade scalability
Kinetic weapon upgrade costs generally increase very rapidly, making them poor investment choices in the long run. Again, Seraphim's weapon is an exception to this rule.

When & How to use
Kinetic weapons are best used in the early stages of a mission where the enemy's shields and flak defences are at their strongest. They are best used against the big and slow moving targets which are usually the units that project shields. Use kinetic weapons to create opportunities for your energy weapons to do their job.

Strengths
Ignores shields
Assault ignores shields.

Low energy cost
This makes assault the perfect weapon choice to finish off weak enemies, when their armor is negligible.

Weaknesses
Inaccurate
These weapons are quite inaccurate even with upgrades. In assault's case, the damage drop-off can be quite significant.

Poor upgraded damage
You'll usually need to upgrade a few times to see any difference in assault's damage, making it a horrible choice for investment. For this reason, refrain from upgrading Black Jack's and Phoenix's kinetic damage.

Armor
Even if you upgrade assault, it is completely nullified with the existence of armor; even 10 armor can nullify any assault attack.

When & How to use
Assault weapons is the least effective weapon in the game. It's main purpose is to be used against unarmored ryders or finishing off ships low on health.

Strengths
High accuracy and damage
Missile weapons are very reliable damage when there's no flak. On top of that, they are capable of wrecking enemy ships with their awesome damage and cheap upgrades.

Low energy cost
Missiles and rockets can deal an insane amount of damage for a measly amount of energy.

Weaknesses
Flak
Throughout the game, flak is a persistent issue: there's always a lot of flak protection on the enemy's side. As the game progresses, this gets even worse as even the ryders can have 30 FK.

Armor
Rockets are not that badly affected by armor, but missiles are quite badly affected by them. Trying to hit a cruiser at full health with a pack of missiles is about as effective as shooting a laser beam at it when it is shielded.

Limited Ammo
The greatest weakness of missile weapons is the ammo limit. You're usually limited to only a handful of missiles per mission. Couple this with the amount of enemies with flak defence, missiles are generally a poor investment choice for long battles.

When & How to use
Missiles are best used nearing the end of a battle where there is a lot less flak to interfere with your missiles; they are best used to clean up enemy units, as missiles are poor options against enemies with high armor considering their multi-shot nature.
They are best used with Liberty's flak off ability.

Strengths
High damage
Melee weapons deal very high amounts of damage (Black Jack deals 400 and Phoenix deals 500) for only 40 EN. You'd usually upgrade your units to at least 120 EN, which means you can deal over a thousand damage with ease using melee weapons.

Weaknesses
Not used in counter-attacks
Melee weapons are not used in counterattacks. This is a shame, because this would really make melee weapons a lot more powerful than they are now.

Ryders only
Melee weapons can only be used against ryders.

Range
The main weakness of melee is that you need to be directly next to an enemy to perform the attack. This severely limits its effectiveness as you have to move your units or gravity enemy ryders into melee range. As the game progresses, melee becomes less preferred for Black Jack because it takes a lot of energy to just move to the enemies / get the enemies moving as compared to shooting them with lasers. Phoenix is also quite limited in this aspect as she is tied to the fleet; if she gets too aggressive, she can be very vulnerable to enemy fire, which further restricts her usefulness.

When & How to use
Melee weapons are best used against ryders that get too close to your fleet. In the early-game, you're usually rushing the enemy in order to increase your accuracy since your weapons aren't properly upgraded Melee works very well in this scenario.
In the mid to late game, your weapons are properly upgraded and the enemies are especially deadly on the first turn as they will fire off all their rockets, missiles and debuffs if you don't eliminate them right away; the rush strategy is not as effective as shooting the enemy from your starting position. As a result, you will tend to have a bit of distance from the enemy ryders. Melee is thus a little less effective but Bianca makes it easier with her gravity ability.

In this section we will go into detail the specifications of each unit, what role they should fill in your strike force, how you should play each unit, how you should upgrade each unit and explanation for each argument.

If you want the exact numbers on upgrades, weapon damage and specs, refer to the excel spreadsheet further down in the guide.

Without further ado, let's start with the first ship that you will get:



HP: 1500, EN: 100
FK: 40, SD: 0, AR: 15, EV: -25
Pilot: Ava

Note: The Sunrider starts with no shields, but it can be acquired for $1500 and you start with 15% SD of range 0 that way.


Note: Upgrading Missile weapon damage, flak resistance and energy cost will upgrade your Rockets.
If you buy the nuclear warhead upgrade, the base damage will be improved to 1200 and each damage upgrade would give +120 instead of +80 damage.
However, upgrading missile capacity doesn't affect the amount of rockets you can carry.

The Sunrider has special abilities called "Orders" which you can access from the top left menu. These spend Command Points instead of EN and can only be cast once per turn (with the exception of Short Range Warp).


Notes:

• Buff is not applied on resurrected allies or allies that join the battle after you use the order.
  
• Buff does not stack / override Seraphim's Awaken buff. If you use this order and Seraphim's Awaken buff expires on the next turn, she will have no buff.

• Can be used even at full health, but will do nothing.
  
• After mission 7 (obtaining Seraphim), you will need to purchase repair drones ($400 ea.) to use this order. Doing so still prevents you from performing other orders.

• Does not damage friendly units in the line of fire.
  
• Follows a predefined line of fire which you cannot change. If you want to use it effectively, it's best to experiment with it first before moving into position to use it.

• Does not apply flak or shield bonus to units who do not have flak or shield.
  
• However, the bonus applies individually to units that do have flak or shield. For example, if the Sunrider has 20% SD and Liberty 40% SD, this order would give them 30% SD and 50% SD respectively for 5 turns, which translates to +20% SD if you stack them.

• Unlocked after Mission 8 ("Operation Wedding Crash").
  
• Does not trigger counter-attack if you teleport next to an enemy.
  
• Can be used repeatedly and allows you to perform other orders and actions after teleporting. However, performing any other order means you cannot use this for the rest of the turn.

Before we discuss what role the Sunrider can play, I'll explain what I mean by "role". The role of a ship is the purpose/focus of the ship during battle. For example, Liberty's role would be a repair/debuff support role, focusing primarily on repairing units in the early-game and subsequently more on stripping enemies' defences in the late-game. Offensive roles are defined by the type of weapons they use or the enemies they are built to destroy e.g. Phoenix would be a melee anti-ryder.

The Sunrider is the most versatile ship in your fleet from start to finish. It carries every weapon in the game (except for melee) and is capable of filling any offensive role in battle. Because of this, the Sunrider's role is not based on what it can do, but instead based on what her ryders cannot do and thus fill in the role that is most lacking in the fleet.

From my experience, that role is to focus on kinetic weapons and take out enemies with high health and low evasion AKA kinetic anti-cruiser role.

The Sunrider's low EV and tendency to deal high damage also makes it a choice target for enemy units, forcing it into the role of a tank.

The Sunrider's position in the group's formation should be somewhere in the middle: 1 hex behind the vanguards due to its small shield range, poor kinetic accuracy and high flak protection.

Early-game (Missions 1-5)
Early into the game you will get Black Jack (who will fill melee anti-Ryder role in the early game) and Liberty (who fills the repair/debuff support role). Because cruisers have shields and high armor, Black Jack is useless against them. Liberty is also too busy repairing everyone to strip the shields off your enemies. This leaves you only one option: the Sunrider's kinetic weapons. As a result, you are forced to invest in her kinetic weapons if you want to survive the escort mission (mission 5).

Mid-game (Missions 5-7)
At this stage you will acquire Phoenix (who can only fill the melee anti-Ryder & assault clean-up role), Bianca (who fills the gravity/aim down support role as her kinetic weapon is too inaccurate and weak) and Seraphim (who fills the role of taking out high health/priority targets). While Seraphim is a powerful unit that uses kinetic, she's only able to shoot 1 shot per round at this point in time and your fleet needs more kinetic than that. The shields get more and more numerous and Liberty is still forced to spend most of her energy repairing units rather than stripping enemy shields. Because you don't really have a good way to counter shields at this stage, you'll need the Sunrider's kinetic weapons to deal with the bigger ships.

Mid-game (Missions 8)
At this stage you will acquire Paladin (who can only fill the kinetic anti-cruiser role) and the Sunrider can now teleport using Short Range Warp. The short range warp makes the poor accuracy of her kinetic weapons a non-issue (which is one of the main advantages of laser over kinetic). Also, upgrading her kinetic weapon damage also improves her counter-attack abilities (which is good since you can now teleport into position and have Bianca gravity an enemy ryder into position for extra damage). While Paladin reduces the need of Sunrider filling in the role, at this stage the Sunrider's already quite invested in the kinetic anti-cruiser role and the Short Range Warp simply augments it even further.

Mid-game to Late-game (Missions 9-14)
At this stage you get to buy alliance cruisers (which is like the lousier version of the Sunrider) and more importantly, union frigates. Union frigates are very capable of stripping enemy shields, making energy weapons much more viable in the late-game than it was in the mid-game. This opens up the opportunity for the Sunrider to switch to a energy weapon based build.

To illustrate the power of such a build, the Sunrider can upgrade her energy weapons to deal 360 laser damage and 45x10 pulse damage for just $2,372 and she can fire 4 lasers / 7 pulses in a turn with Energy Cost Lv8 + EN Lv8 for $12,284, for a total investment of ~$14.6k. With enemy shields stripped by Liberty and union frigates, she can deal 1440 (1728 with Full Forward) laser damage or 3150 pulse damage (3780 with Full Forward). Combined with Short Range Warp to negate accuracy penalties, she can deciminate an entire fleet very quickly.

In comparison, the Sunrider gets kinetic x2 from Energy Lv5 + Kinetic Cost Lv4: $1420 + $700 = $2120. Upgrade her accuracy to Lv10 (effectively +21%) for $3,209, a 40% increase in damage for $6,129 and a level in energy for $767, totalling $12225. This allows her to fire kinetic 560x2 = 1120 (1344 with Full Forward) / turn or assault 1600 (1920 with FF) / turn.

However, I decided against such a build as the Sunrider's energy is usually used on kinetic weapons as the alliance cruisers are too inaccurate to be reliable and there are simply too many big ships for the Paladin to take out on her own. The Sunrider spends a lot more time with her kinetic weapons than her energy weapons, and thus it's a better investment to spend it on kinetic than energy weapons (if we even spend it on her). It is better to keep the Sunrider as a kinetic anti-cruiser as that allows you to take out enemy shields much faster for your laser units to become effective.

Now that I've explained the reasoning and logic behind building a kinetic-based Sunrider, I will discuss how to build her.

Upgrades
For the early-game, upgrades should be focused more on survivability and being able to use your kinetic attack twice per turn. Your funds are limited and you'll need the survivability to survive the waves of cruisers and missile frigates in mission 5; upgrading damage and accuracy is helpful but survivability and kinetic x2 has to come first. How exactly you should allocate your funds will be elaborated in the walkthrough.
There are a few ways to upgrade the Sunrider's survivability. Adding HP, Shielding and AR are all fine choices, but overdoing it is a bad idea (e.g. $1000 for another 5% SD). Upgrading flak is also a bad idea as $500 in the early game is ridiculously expensive for a 5% flak protection, but it's essential in the late-game.

For the mid-game and late-game, your focus should be on the offensive. The Sunrider has base 1500 HP, so if you don't go on crazy suicide missions with Short Range Warp and keep her together with the fleet at the end of every turn, she can usually survive anything even if you don't upgrade her HP. At this point you should have enough flak from all your units and shielding from the Sunrider, Liberty and Bianca, making defence relatively trivial.

HP: MAYBE
As mentioned above, the Sunrider doesn't need more HP. It's nice to have, but generally useless if you keep the Sunrider near her team. However! If you intend to use her to Short Range Warp + Vanguard Cannon, she will definitely benefit from having extra HP to allow her to survive the backlash.

EN: YES
Energy is always a must upgrade for every ship. The question is how much: that is answered in the walkthrough. The idea is that you should upgrade your energy and weapon energy cost together to min-max the amount of shots you can fire and that's where the excel spreadsheet comes in useful.

Evasion: NO
The Sunrider's EV is so low, an additional 5% isn't going to help, especially when the enemy can just move 1 hex closer and your $500 goes down the drain. Just spend that $500 on something else. Even a rocket is a better investment.

Kinetic: YES
Explained above.

Laser: YES
You must be wondering why yes. The answer is simple: at 120 EN, you simply need to put two levels into Energy Cost ($280) and you can shoot two lasers twice. This may sound useless, but lasers are very effective at dealing with enemies from afar e.g. missile frigates and for such a pittance of coin, I think it's well worth the money to invest a little in lasers.

Missile: MAYBE
I'm personally not a fan of missiles and rockets because of their limited ammo which make them poor investment choices in early and mid game. In the late-game, however, we have a lot of high health enemies. We can get 2 rockets for $300 apiece (total $600), the Quantum Torpedo License for $2000 and 5 levels of missile damage upgrades (total around $1200) for about $3.9k. This means 1800 (2160 Full Forward) damage per rocket, enough to OHKO an assault cruiser with only 30 EN.
That said, getting all that flak out of the way (especially in the late game) is not easy and will require some more investment in that part to buff up the rocket's flak resistance.

Shield: MAYBE
THE SHIELDING SECTION IS INVALID. PLEASE WAIT FOR UPDATE.
Buy a shield and upgrade the strength and range once. It's very useful as a lot of enemies will use lasers. We only upgrade the shield strength once for Sunrider, Liberty and Bianca as it ups their SD to 20, 40 and 40 respectively, adding up to 100%. Any more is kind of a waste of resources. We keep the Sunrider's range at 1 because $5000 is just ridiculously expensive; careful positioning of the vanguard units should keep them 100% protected against energy weapons.

Flak: YES
In the late-game, there are a ridiculous amount of enemies packing missiles and rockets, making flak very important. Upgrading once should be enough; $1000 for 5% flak is a borderline ridiculous.
Just like Shield upgrades, flak upgrade costs increase exponentially; as such, it's more cost effective to spread out your flak upgrades across Sunrider, Black Jack, Phoenix and Paladin, levelling them equally instead of focusing on the flak defence of a single unit.

Armor: MAYBE
Armor coupled with shields and flak make for a very tanky Sunrider, as it is pretty good at countering damage done by enemy lasers (when coupled with shields) and missiles from missile frigates.

Early-game
There isn't anything really specific to the Sunrider in the early-game apart from the fact that she should be focusing her fire on the bigger targets using her kinetic weapons. Use her orders liberally, especially Full Forward to destroy enemies faster and clear missions faster. The command points and reduced repair costs you get for finishing missions faster will more than make up for the loss. Don't go crazy in the early-game though; you'll need to conserve cmd. pts. for Mission 5, where you may need to use repair drone and full forward quite often to survive the waves of enemies.

Don't forget that she has laser weapons that she can leverage on if her kinetic weapons are too inaccurate. This can be effective at killing missile frigates or unshielded enemies at a distance together with Black Jack's lasers.

The Sunrider is a favourite target amongst enemy units, so keep her protected and repaired.

Mid-game
Her use remains the same.

Late-game
Later on you'll meet enemy supports who have evasion so high even Seraphim may not be able to hit them reliably; I usually just Short Range Warp to them, use Bianca to gravity them into the Sunrider's counter-attack radius and have the Sunrider clean them up with her assault weapon.
The Sunrider can also use the Short Range Warp to great effect to position herself for awesome vanguard cannon attacks or to simply land kinetic shots on dangerous targets (e.g. ironhogs) when she otherwise would not have been able to do so reliably.

The Sunrider is a favourite target amongst enemy units, so keep her protected and repaired; don't send her out on suicide missions using Short Range Warp + Vanguard Cannon unless you're sure she won't die in that turn.

Full Forward
I use this order all the time when I get enough command points. Higher damage and higher accuracy for every unit means killing the enemy faster, which translates to less enemies shooting you and higher reward in general.

All Guard
All Guard has its uses, but it's not something I would recommend using all the time. It can be used to survive dangerous scenarios (e.g. the first turn of late-game missions, where most enemies begin the battle by firing their missiles and rockets) or to purposely lure enemies closer (by making it so hard to hit your units through increasing their EV that enemies have to move closer to hit them).

Repair Drone
Repair Drone is ludicrously OP (and essential) in your first escort mission but after that, you don't really need it if you play properly and don't go suicidal with the Sunrider.

Vanguard Cannon
The vanguard cannon is a mid to late game weapon because of its high command point cost. It is unwieldy but used properly can deal an insane amount of damage in one turn. One example is the last mission: the vanguard cannon can be used to destroy 7 PACT Elites in one go, making the mission a cakewalk.

Short Range Warp
This the Sunrider's greatest ability; it is borderline cheating to be able to teleport anywhere on the battlefield and it has amazing synergy with Bianca's gravity, the Sunrider's kinetic weapons and Vanguard Cannon. Use it to take out dangerous enemies like ironhogs or PACT supports, to get into a better position e.g. for the vanguard cannon or for higher accuracy.

HP: 600, EN: 100
FK: 35, SD: 0, AR: 10, EV: 25
Pilot: Asaga


Notes:

• Black Jack's energy weapons are 10% lower in accuracy than the Sunrider's.
  
  
• Her pulse weapon deals 30 damage per shot (compared to the Sunrider's 25), but fires only 8 rounds instead of 10. It costs 50 EN instead of 40.
  
  
• Her assault weapon damage starts off as the highest at 14*20 = 280, 2 more per shot than the Sunrider, but is 5% less accurate.
  
  
• Her missiles deal 40 damage instead of the Sunrider's 50, but cost 20 EN instead of 30 EN.
  
  
• Black Jack has 10 AR, making her somewhat resistant against counter-attacks. This is useful in the early-game.
  
  
• Her upgrade costs are identical to the Sunrider's with the exception of armor.

Black Jack's kit is kind of unique in the sense that she can perform the role of Phoenix: a melee anti-ryder with assault to perform clean-up kills, and yet she also packs the power of lasers which have the potential for a lot of damage like an energy-build Sunrider.

I believe she is best suited to be a melee anti-ryder unit up until Mission 5 is over, and then switch over to have a focus on laser weaponry. She's the only unit I find whose role significantly changes over the course of the game.

Black Jack also offers a lot of flak protection, making her relatively effective as a vanguard at the front of the formation to deal with missiles.

Early-game (Missions 1-5)
Early into the game you will get Black Jack, Sunrider and Liberty (who fills the repair/debuff support role). Black Jack can't deal with big armored ships with shields i.e. cruisers which only the Sunrider can handle, so the next best thing that Black Jack can deal with is ryders using melee and cleaning up enemies with assault.
The reason why we choose to use melee instead of lasers / assault is because of the Sunrider's poor kinetic accuracy. In order to use her kinetic weapons properly, she has to close in the distance. Since the Sunrider is moving in for the kill, the Black Jack might as well follow suit, since melee used properly can kill a pirate grunt in a single strike costing 40 EN without upgrades. With any other method, you'd need more than 40 EN unless you some decent upgrades into energy weaponry which you are too poor to afford at that point.
On top of that, being up close and personal makes it easier for her to clean up enemies using assault, and also tempts pirate grunts into using assault instead of laser on her, allowing her to nullify their damage using her armor.

Mid-game (Missions 5-8)
At this stage you will acquire Phoenix (who can only fill the melee anti-Ryder & assault clean-up role) who can effectively take over Black Jack's current role, allowing her to transit over to doing her real job: shooting enemies up with powerful lasers. That said, you don't have enough money to invest in her just yet and there aren't a lot of options to take down shields, so she's still best used as a melee anti-ryder & assault clean-up unit.

Mid-game - Late-game (Missions 8-14)
As more money comes in and more anti-shield options become available, Black Jack's true potential can be realized. Upgrade her energy weaponry and she will become a laser-based Seraphim.
Why upgrade her, you may ask? The answer is simple. In the mid to end-game, ryders are dangerous but not life-threatening if you group your units together and stay within your shield and flak defences. What the fleet will need is firepower to deal with the big ships like assault cruisers and carriers. Black Jack can bring that extra firepower to the table, especially against assault cruisers who don't project their own shields. It's much better than spending that money on kinetic weapons and leaving her as a melee anti-ryder or assault cleaner.

There will be people who will ask why we should invest in the Black Jack (at all) and not just leave her as a melee anti-ryder / assault clean-up role. The answer is simple: energy weapons make a comeback in the end-game with the introduction of union frigates as it will be a lot easier to take out enemy shields. With enemy shields taken out of the equation, energy weapons are ultimately superior than kinetic weapons in many ways if upgraded properly, and the Black Jack can bring that to the table. If you upgrade her appropriately, she can become something like Seraphim; that's how powerful she is.

Ryders are also generally less life-threatening than assault cruisers and carriers, as they do not create more enemies (the assault cruisers, for example, can spawn PACT supports who can take down your defences). The rank and file ryders are not a priority target and in my opinion do not need 2 full time ryders (3, if you consider Bianca) of your own to take them out.

Upgrades
For the early-game and mid-game, a lot of your funds are allocated to other units, leaving Black Jack relatively neglected. Upgrading Black Jack's flak once is a pretty good idea.

For the mid-game and late-game, your focus should be on the offensive. Start pushing for Black Jack to get her laser x4 and improve her damage and accuracy.

To illustrate the power of such a build, Black Jack can upgrade her energy weapons to deal 360 laser damage and 45x10 pulse damage for just $2,372 and she can fire 4 lasers in a turn with Energy Cost Lv8 + EN Lv8 for $12,284, for a total investment of ~$14.6k. With enemy shields stripped by Liberty and union frigates, she can deal 1440 (1728 with Full Forward) per turn.

HP: MAYBE
Black Jack doesn't need more HP. In the walkthrough, however, Black Jack is used to pull a lot of aggro on Mission 5, which is why I upgraded her HP.

EN: YES
Energy is always a must upgrade for every ship. The question is how much: that is answered in the walkthrough. The idea is that you should upgrade your energy and weapon energy cost together to min-max the amount of shots you can fire and that's where the excel spreadsheet comes in useful.

Evasion: NO
25% is a good EV, but an additional 5% isn't going to help, especially when the enemy can just move 1 hex closer and your $500 goes down the drain. Just spend that $500 on something else.

Kinetic: NO
Spending money on assault is a big no, because assault is very limited in its use and you need to put two kinetic damage upgrades in to increase the damage by a measly 20.

Melee: NO
Black Jack's too slow to take full advantage of her melee upgrades, even if you upgrade her thrusters. I honestly cannot recommend upgrading her melee over her lasers.

Laser: YES
Laser weapons are very powerful. As Sunrider is too busy using kinetic weapons, this leaves us with Black Jack to exploit the power of laser weapons. Phoenix can handle the anti-ryder portion of the game; you need more firepower and Black Jack can deliver that.

Missile: NO
Missile is a poor investment for Black Jack because of its limited ammo.

Flak: YES
In the late-game, there are a ridiculous amount of enemies packing missiles and rockets, making flak very important. Upgrading once should be enough; $1000 for 5% flak is a borderline ridiculous.
Just like Shield upgrades, flak upgrade costs increase exponentially; as such, it's more cost effective to spread out your flak upgrades across Sunrider, Black Jack, Phoenix and Paladin, levelling them equally instead of focusing on the flak defence of a single unit.

Armor: NO
You don't really need more armor on the Black Jack and she generally attracts very little aggro in the late-game to ever need it. In the walkthrough, however, Black Jack is used to pull a lot of aggro on Mission 5, which is why I upgraded her AR.

Black Jack is not an especially fast unit but with her 10 AR, she can tank assault attacks like they are nothing, allowing her to nullify enemies who change to flak when fighting at close range. It's something like Phoenix's stealth, but effective when Black Jack's health is high.

In the early-game, she is best used with melee by rushing at enemies and then slashing 2 of them up in a turn.

In the mid-game where funds may run low, she can be a mix between melee anti-ryder, assault cleaner or laser.

In the late-game, she should have enough upgrades in energy weapons to stand a bit further back, allowing the alliance cruiser to take the front row for better accuracy (unless you want her in the front row for her flak protection which is actually really good). At this point, her focus is not so much on meleeing or assaulting enemies but more on relying on her allies (Liberty and Union Frigates) to bring down the enemy's shields before shooting that target down with high powered lasers.

HP: 475, EN: 100
FK: 0, SD: 35, AR: 8, EV: 20
Pilot: Chigara

Note: Her shield starts off with a range of 1.


Notes:

• Liberty's Aim Up doesn't stack with Full Forward, but if Full Forward has only 2 or less turns left, she can refresh the accuracy buff.
  
  
• Liberty can repair and aim up enemies. However, she cannot debuff her allies.

Liberty is, without a doubt, the repair / debuff support of the fleet. She can strip enemy defences or disable dangerous targets but her main purpose is repairing and shielding allies.

Her role is so obvious that I believe I shouldn't need to explain or justify her role in this section; missions 1 and 2 should be enough proof that you should be using Liberty to repair the team for 300 or 500 HP, not spend her energy firing 2 lasers that deal 100 damage each per turn.

Liberty's position in the fleet formation should be somewhere in the back / middle, covering all units with her shield while trying to minimize aggro due to distance. She generally doesn't get any aggro since she doesn't do a lot of direct harm towards enemies, but keep her in the back until the enemies have established that she is harmless because they like to pick on her at the start of battle.

Summary and Direction
If you intend to upgrade Liberty, first buy the repair booster which buffs her repair to 500 HP and reduces EN costs to 70. From there, you have a few options:

110 EN is the smallest investment, but allows you to move twice after repairing, making her much more mobile and more able to cover your units when rushing. It also allows you to flak off after repairing. This is useful in the early game.

120 EN allows you to disable 2 shields in one turn, or flak off 3 targets simultaneously. This is quite effective in the end-game when you want to shut shields off / flak defences off really quickly.

130 EN allows you to repair and disable a shield in one turn.

140 EN allows you to repair twice in a turn, but is in my opinion too expensive.

HP: NO
Liberty doesn't get a lot of aggro (if any). She doesn't need more HP.

EN: YES
Energy is always a must upgrade for every ship and this is especially the case for support units.

Evasion: NO
Liberty won't even be considered as a target most of the time.

Laser: NO
There are better weapons to upgrade than a laser that costs 50 EN and deals only 100 damage. Besides, the Liberty should be using her energy on debuffing enemies and repairs, not dealing meagre damage.

Shield: YES
Upgrade her shield power and range once for the best results. We only upgrade the shield strength once for Sunrider, Liberty and Bianca as it ups their SD to 20, 40 and 40 respectively, adding up to 100%. Any more is kind of a waste of resources.

Armor: NO
The Liberty is so nice that few enemies would actually attack it.

Liberty is a very easy character to use. Keep her behind your offensive units to keep the aggro off her and keep her together with your units so that she can shield them.

The basic tactic is to use her to debuff enemies on the first turn. On the rest of the turns, check if your units need repairing. If they do, repair; otherwise, debuff.

Don't forget that flak off disables counter-attacks, which is helpful for units like phoenix.

Occasionally, you may want to use the disable ability to keep dangerous/troublesome enemies out of the fight. These units include:

• Carriers and assault cruisers that can create more units
  
• Ryudian ryders that have a lot of health and melee your ryders
  
• PACT support that can shut down your defences

Personally, I find her Aim Up to be relatively useful in the really early-game where you're trying to save command points for the big escort mission (Mission 5) but afterwards there's no reason to do so; just use Full Forward and everyone gets the buff, allowing Liberty to do her job.

HP: 300, EN: 100
FK: 20, SD: 0, AR: 0, EV: 50
Pilot: Icari


Notes:

• Her assault weapon deals the same damage as the Sunrider's but is 5% less accurate.
  
• Her melee weapon deals 100 more damage than Black Jack's, but it is 10% less accurate and is split into 2 strikes of 250 damage each.
  
• It is more expensive to upgrade her HP compared to other units.
  
• However, it is cheaper to upgrade her EN compared to other units.
  
• Curiously enough, Black Jack's melee upgrades is cheaper than the Phoenix's.

Phoenix's kit forces her into the melee anti-ryder and assault clean-up role. She also plays the role of a tank due to her high aggro.

She carries some flak defence. Since she's a melee based unit (and a ryder that can provide flak defence), she should definitely be in the front of the formation as a vanguard, protected by shields and flak of your other units.

As mentioned above, she gets a lot of aggro because of her kill count: she OHKOs a lot of ryders, tends to get the killing shot on large ships with assault (since that's the 2nd other thing she can do best, so she does it to save the energy of other units) and is at the forefront of the fleet, making her the perfect target for enemy aggro (along with the Sunrider). This forces her into the role of an EV tank.

Upgrades
The first thing you need to do is amp her HP up to at least 500 to bolster her survivability and allow her to take full advantage of the Liberty's repairs.

Because her EN upgrades are pretty cheap, you want to upgrade it to at least 120.

Her assault weapon doesn't need upgrading, and her melee weapon is powerful enough to OHKO any target effectively without upgrades until late-game, where it just needs a little bit of upgrading.

You may want to consider improving her armor to protect her against flak.

HP: YES
Phoenix needs health very badly. Don't go beyond 600 HP, though, her HP upgrades are considerably expensive.

EN: YES
Energy is always a must upgrade for every ship. The question is how much: that is answered in the walkthrough. The idea is that you should upgrade your energy and weapon energy cost together to min-max the amount of shots you can fire and that's where the excel spreadsheet comes in useful.

Evasion: MAYBE
50% is a good EV, and an additional 5% may be pretty useful. Don't go beyond 1 level's worth of upgrade, however. She is better served with either flak or armor upgrades.

Kinetic: NO
Spending money on assault is a big no, because assault is very limited in its use and you need to put two kinetic damage upgrades in to increase the damage by a measly 20.

Melee: YES
Phoenix doesn't need a lot of points into melee, but she'll need it at some point in time to OHKO PACT Elites. Just drop a level or 2 into both her melee damage and accuracy and she'll be fine with Full Forward.

Flak: YES
In the late-game, there are a ridiculous amount of enemies packing missiles and rockets, making flak very important. Upgrading once should be enough; $1000 for 5% flak is a borderline ridiculous.
Just like Shield upgrades, flak upgrade costs increase exponentially; as such, it's more cost effective to spread out your flak upgrades across Sunrider, Black Jack, Phoenix and Paladin, levelling them equally instead of focusing on the flak defence of a single unit.

Armor: MAYBE
Armor is quite useful on the Phoenix because of how often she comes into close contact with enemy units, making her a flak magnet. When you consider the fact that she's often times in 100% shielding, flak and missiles are usually the only thing that can really hurt her.

Despite her EV, she's actually a really easy target to destroy once she's outside of allies' shield and flak protection. Because of her low health and high threat (she will be killing a lot of ryders after all), she is often times the target of your enemies. As such, always keep her in front of the fleet, but always under the protection of all your shields and as much flak as possible. Don't ever send her into suicide missions; it's usually not worth it.

This kind of limits Phoenix as she has to keep close to the fleet, ultimately limiting her melee range as she has to fly to her enemy, melee, then fly back (unless the fleet moves to her position).

She is best supported by units like Liberty and Bianca. Liberty can flak off enemies, allowing Phoenix to get in close without needing to use stealth to mitigate damage. Bianca can gravity units towards her, saving her energy and letting her whittle down enemies with her own counter-attack.

HP: 400, EN: 100
FK: 0, SD: 35, AR: 4, EV: 20
Pilot: Claude


Notes:

• Bianca doesn't have flak but she can counter-attack with her single-shot kinetic weapon.
  
• Bianca's Atk Up doesn't stack with Full Forward, but if Full Forward has only 2 or less turns left, she can refresh the damage buff.
  
• Bianca's Restore doesn't remove buffs.
  
• Bianca can Atk Up enemies.

Bianca's role is debuff/gravity support. She is also a shield-bearer and she should be placed 2 hex from the front lines as a back line support unit.

Bianca's role can be confusing. Her abilities can appear lacklustre and useless, which may give people the impression that her main purpose is to be a kinetic anti-cruiser. To a certain extent, some of her abilities are sort of useless:

• Restore is completely useless until the late-game and if you take out the PACT Support with the Sunrider's short range warp, you won't ever need to use it.
  
• Atk Up is made redundant with the Sunrider's Full Forward.
  
• Aim Dwn is actually pretty useful especially against missile units like battleships (because it's very hard to improve missile accuracy, even if they move it's only a 5% increase) but come late game, you're pretty much going full offensive all the time you don't really use this as much as gravity.
  
• Gravity is something you will take awhile to appreciate. At face value, this ability is completely useless; why spend 60 EN to move something when I can just move my unit closer for 10 EN (Phoenix) or something? (This ability's usage is explained further below under "Bianca (Upgrades & Tactics)")

But Bianca is not a kinetic anti-cruiser unit. Her kinetic weapon is downright awful; it starts off with awful stats and upgrading it takes the same amount of money as the Sunrider's. Even if you do decide to upgrade her, it takes a lot of money for a pittance of damage and accuracy improvement. Not only that, her poor accuracy forces her to be in the front-lines, where it's not really the best place to be a shield-bearer / support unit.
She also takes 30 EN to move, limiting her ability to rush enemies.

To illustrate, you can get her to shoot kinetic x3 per turn for $7,862 (Kinetic Cost -25% and 135 EN), but you need to spend $2,074 to even upgrade her kinetic accuracy up to Sunrider's base accuracy and $3,888 to push her kinetic damage up to 337. This translates to spending $13,824 for 1011 (1213 Full Forward) damage that can only hit a cruiser at 56% (71% Full Forward) accuracy 5 hex away.

Sounds good, until you realize you can take that money and spend it on other units like the Paladin, who would do at least x1.5 more damage and is more accurate using that same amount of money. Or maybe the Black Jack, whose energy weapons are so efficient to upgrade, or Seraphim, whose kinetic sniper rifle is also very efficient to upgrade, or the Sunrider's missile systems if you don't feel like upgrading her kinetic weapons or even Phoenix to increase her survivability.

What I'm trying to say is, you're better off upgrading other units instead of Bianca's kinetic weapon. She's not suited to rush enemies and shoot people. Shooting enemies if you have nothing else to do is fine, just not full-time kinetic guns blasting.

Bianca's true role is debuff/gravity support and is also a shield-bearer. She should be in the backlines, in a position where she can provide shield cover for as many units as possible. This make her cheap to upgrade (120 EN, gravitino generator and a few shield upgrades is enough) and yet allows her to be a very effective support.

Upgrades
As explained above, money shouldn't be allocated to her kinetic weapons. Simply upgrade her to 120 EN and boost both her shield strength and range once and she's good to go.

HP: NO
Bianca is like Liberty: she is a very unlikely target and thus doesn't need protection.

EN: YES
Energy is always a must upgrade for every ship.

Evasion: NO
Bianca is like Liberty: she is a very unlikely target and thus doesn't need protection.

Kinetic: NO
Explained above.

Shields: YES
Upgrade her shield power and range once for the best results. We only upgrade the shield strength once for Sunrider, Liberty and Bianca as it ups their SD to 20, 40 and 40 respectively, adding up to 100%. Any more is kind of a waste of resources.

Armor: NO
Bianca is like Liberty: she is a very unlikely target and thus doesn't need protection.

Others
Get Gravitino Generator.

120 EN is the best because if she wants to perform even more actions per turn, she'd have to upgrade it to 150 EN (for aim down x5) or 160 EN (for gravity x4), both of which requiring a ludicrous amount of money. 120 EN is the most cost-effective and practical choice.

Bianca should be in a position where she can shield her allies effectively. Depending on what you need, her use should revolve around 2 abilities:

Aim Dwn
Aim Dwn is a powerful debuff tool used to force enemies closer (they will move closer if they find it hard to hit you) or to make it harder for missile units to hit you. Combine this with All Guard and it should be really hard to damage your units.

Gravity
Gravity is Bianca's greatest asset. She can use it for a few purposes:

• Dragging enemy ryders into your units' counter-attack range. This is very effective when used with phoenix and the Sunrider. Phoenix can save her energy and the counter-attack would reduce PACT Elites' health to melee OHKO range, while the Sunrider can use it to deal with PACT Supports by counter-attack + assault to OHKO.
  
  
• Gravity can be used to drag ryders into a Vanguard Cannon (thanks Lordin1!)
  
  
• Moving your ryders forward for higher accuracy. I often do this with Paladin to give her that extra accuracy boost.
  
  
• Dragging enemy ryders out of shield protection. Your other units can use lasers to blow this ryder up.
  
  
• Dragging enemy ryders closer so that your other units can have an easier time assaulting / shooting them.

That doesn't mean Bianca can't pitch in for some extra damage; after all, if she lands her kinetic shots she can deal 250 damage per shot. I only recommend doing so if there is really nothing better to do, and Bianca's already in a good position.

HP: 375, EN: 100
FK: 0, SD: 0, AR: 4, EV: 20
Pilot: Solas


Notes:

• Full Forward / other buffs do not extend the duration or replace her Awaken buff.
  
  
• However, when Awaken expires, she loses her damage and accuracy buffs even if you buffed her with Full Forward the previous turn.
  
  
• Her kinetic weapon upgrades are cheaper than the Sunrider's in every way.
  
  
• Her kinetic weapon upgrades increase damage and accuracy 7.5% instead of 5% per upgrade level.

Seraphim has 2 abilities: one that deals damage and another one that helps her deal even more damage. Combine that with the fact that she's packing this big sniper rifle and we can safely assume that her role is that of a kinetic anti-cruiser.

The awesome thing about Seraphim is that she's so accurate, she can even hit enemies with high EV quite reliably if you put some points into her accuracy, which also allows her to be a kinetic anti-ryder (specifically PACT Support or Ryudian Ryders).

She can be reliably used to take out key targets that your other units can't touch and when she's done doing that, she can switch to dealing massive damage.

She should be kept in the back, shielded by allies and flak protection. In such a position, it's unlikely that she'll get aggro even though she deals a lot of damage.

Summary and Direction
Getting Seraphim to shoot kinetic x2 is like getting her to shoot it x4 after she "Awakens", making it a top priority. The cost is $10,989 (EN Lv9 (135) + Kinetic Cost Lv 7 (-30%) = 6864 + 4125), but it's worth it.

Pump her kinetic damage up and improve her kinetic accuracy. You can't go wrong with those cheap upgrade costs of hers. The kinetic accuracy will come in handy against PACT supports or when she's fighting without Awaken (which you'll be doing more often than you think).

HP: YES
Seraphim's health is too low; at least up it to 475 so that she can use Awaken without having to worry about dying.

EN: YES
Energy is always a must upgrade for every ship. The question is how much: that is answered in the walkthrough. The idea is that you should upgrade your energy and weapon energy cost together to min-max the amount of shots you can fire and that's where the excel spreadsheet comes in useful.

Kinetic: YES
I should have put "NO" just to check if you're paying attention :p
Not upgrading Seraphim's kinetic weapons is a crime.

Evasion: NO
Seraphim won't even be considered as a target most of the time.

Armor: NO
Seraphim won't even be considered as a target most of the time.

Knowing when to use Awaken relies on meta-gaming as you have to accurately predict when the next wave of enemies arrive.

However, her basic strategy is to Awaken and then barrage her enemies in the next turn.

If there are important enemies at the start of the mission (especially in the late-game missions), you may want to hold off her Awaken to take out the PACT support first.

Try to maximize her damage; refrain from overkilling enemies or delaying Awaken just to take shots at ryders that Phoenix or the other units can manage.

You should use her to take out important enemies. These units include:

• Carriers and assault cruisers that can create more units
  
• Ryudian ryders that have a lot of health and melee your ryders
  
• PACT support that can shut down your defences

HP: 900, EN: 100
FK: 18, SD: 0, AR: 15, EV: 10
Pilot: Kryska


Notes:

• Unlike other units, she starts with 2 missiles instead of 1. However, her missiles are 10% less accurate.
  
  
• Her assault weapon fires only 10 rounds.
  
  
• Her kinetic weapon uses 10 less EN than the Sunrider's but has the same stats.

Paladin's role is very obvious: kinetic anti-cruiser. Her kinetic weapon takes the best from Bianca's and Sunrider's kinetic weapons, allowing her to fire 3 rounds with just $7k+ investment.

Paladin is the slowest unit in your fleet (even slower than the Sunrider!) and her kinetic weapons can always use an accuracy boost, which means she is best placed in the front-lines even though her flak defences are poorer than Black Jack's and Phoenix.

She can take some punishment with her 900 HP and 15 AR, making her somewhat tanky if she needs to take damage.

Summary and Direction
Getting Paladin to shoot twice should be the first thing you do the moment you get her. Proceed to spec her like how you did with Sunrider before pushing her for kinetic x3.

HP: NO
Paladin is pretty tanky. She doesn't need HP.

EN: YES
Energy is always a must upgrade for every ship. The question is how much: that is answered in the walkthrough. The idea is that you should upgrade your energy and weapon energy cost together to min-max the amount of shots you can fire and that's where the excel spreadsheet comes in useful.

Kinetic: YES
I should have put "NO" just to check if you're paying attention :p
Not upgrading Paladin's kinetic weapons is a crime.

Evasion: NO
The Paladin's EV is kind of low, an additional 5% isn't going to help, especially when the enemy can just move 1 hex closer and your $500 goes down the drain. Just spend that $500 on something else. Even a rocket is a better investment.

Missile: NOT REALLY
I personally wouldn't recommend missile upgrades for Paladin (since any of such upgrades should be spent on the Sunrider instead for her rockets), but it's still viable especially since she starts off with 2 missiles. Missiles are honestly not my kind of investment since they are multi-shot attacks and because there is always a lot of flak defence on the enemy side.

Flak: YES
In the late-game, there are a ridiculous amount of enemies packing missiles and rockets, making flak very important. Upgrading once should be enough; $1000 for 5% flak is a borderline ridiculous.
Just like Shield upgrades, flak upgrade costs increase exponentially; as such, it's more cost effective to spread out your flak upgrades across Sunrider, Black Jack, Phoenix and Paladin, levelling them equally instead of focusing on the flak defence of a single unit.

Armor: NO
Paladin has enough armor.

By the time you get Paladin, you should have had quite a few missions with the Sunrider, making Paladin a pretty straightforward character to use. Get within range, then shoot down big bulky targets with her kinetic weapons. Prioritize the important enemies like assault cruisers, carriers and battleships, unless there's another enemy closer to her that she can more reliably destroy.

Paladin's assault weapon is horrible due to its poor rate of fire (a problem that plagues Alliance ships), so don't use her for clean-up duty.

You can use Bianca to gravity her closer to her targets, so that the Paladin doesn't need to waste energy moving before shooting.

Finally, we'll cover the last 2 ships which you can acquire through money. These units can be bought after mission 9, although you get a taste of how Alliance Cruisers work in mission 9 itself.

My personal opinion is to get these ships as soon as you have the money to. These ships are worth more than they cost by far.


Cost: $2,000 (can have up to 2 Alliance Cruisers)
HP: 1200, EN: 100
FK: 30, SD: 0, AR: 12, EV: 0


Notes:

• Assault fires only 15 rounds instead of 20.
  
  
• Accuracy is actually better than a Sunrider without upgrades for all weapons, but damage is the same as a Sunrider without upgrades.
  
  
• You can buy up to 2 of these.
  
  
• If an Alliance Cruiser gets destroyed, you have to buy them again.

The Alliance Cruiser should be used like an extra Sunrider as a kinetic anti-cruiser. It's poor accuracy will sometimes force you to use its lasers.

She also provides 30 FK with range 2, which is fantastic in bolstering the flak defences of your fleet. 30 FK for $2000 is no joke.

Because of her flak defences, you want to keep your cruisers in the middle of the fleet, 1 hex behind the frontline.

These guys are actually pretty tanky, so don't worry about them taking damage.

Cost: $750 (can have up to 4 Union Frigates)
HP: 475, EN: 100
FK: 0, SD: 0, AR: 4, EV: 5


Notes:

Shd Jam works differently depending on the duration of the shield generation debuff applied on the target:

• If the enemy doesn't have the debuff, you will get "Shield_generation -15% for 1 turn", which means -15 SD for that turn only.
  
  
• If the enemy has the buff, but it has a duration of 1 turn (e.g. Shield_generation -15% for 1 turn") Shd Jam adds -15% to the value and ups the duration to 2 turns, changing it to "Shield_generation -30% for 2 turns".
  
  
• If the enemy has the buff, but it has a duration of 2 turns (e.g. Shield_generation -30% for 2 turns") Shd Jam adds -15% to the value and resets the duration to 1 turn, changing it to "Shield_generation -45% for 1 turn".

Union Frigates are fantastic at stripping enemy shields, extending the duration of shield debuffs and providing extra laser firepower.

I would say their role is more of a shield debuff support than anything else, but considering you can have the collective power of 4 union frigates for just $750x4 = $3000, that's still effectively 175x4 = 700 (840 Full Forward) laser damage per turn making them pretty powerful in their own right.

Their main purpose is still to strip enemy shields using Shd Jam, allowing Black Jack and the Alliance Cruisers (if their kinetic weapons are too inaccurate) to get in some shots.

Because of their low health and laser accuracy, they are better off in the back lines with Seraphim so as to reduce the aggro they get and to let the kinetic units get better accuracy. These ships cost $750 apiece, so make sure they don't get destroyed out there; always keep them safe within shields and behind flak defence.

Much of their tactics revolve around the use of Shd Jam. You can use them to extend the duration of Liberty's shield debuff and debuff enemy shields for laser attacks before following up with a laser barrage of their own.

To be filled in

This is actually covered quite effectively in this guide by Scopedog under the "general tactics" section. I'll just re-iterate and add on some points.

These are tactics mentioned in the guide above:

Keep your units together

Originally posted by Scopedog:

Sunrider, for better or worse encourages you to bunch your units – this allows you to make use of overlapping shields and flak, severely diminishing enemy laser and missile fire. If you’re going to move, do so as a group. Lone units will usually die in incredibly short order, though the Phoenix with a bit of luck can survive at distance.

Use orders
I usually start every mission with Full Forward, or in the later missions, Short Range Warping to take out key targets before engaging Full Forward. Orders allow you to finish battles quicker and with less pain, which translates to more money and command points. The plot only needs about 4000 command points max, so don't worry about running out of command points.
The exception to this rule is before mission 5, the first escort mission. Use orders conservatively to conserve command points for repair drones.

Aggro

Originally posted by Scopedog:

Enemy aggro (or targeting priority) is based on two things mainly – vulnerability and kills. You should put some thought into who deals the killing blow to a target – enemies are significantly more likely to target units that have more kills that round. Equally, if you move someone outside of a flak/shield bubble the enemy will usually capitalise on that vulnerability.

I find that distance also plays a huge role in aggro. Units that are closer to the enemy generally get more attention than units that are even just a little bit further away.

While the above guide recommends moving units out of protection's range to bait enemies into targeting, I do not recommend that. You should be able to manage aggro through killing and formation. There's no need to increase the risk of mission failure or loss of money.

There are other tactics involving the combination of 2 units (e.g. Bianca gravity into Phoenix who melees the ryder). For such tactics, please refer to the unit you are interested in e.g. Bianca and refer to their tactics section.

You cannot choose your starting formation in the early-game and mid-game, so you don't have to follow the earlier formations exactly; just something similar will do.

Early-game: Sunrider, Black Jack & Liberty

The early-game formation is quite simple; just keep your units in Liberty's shields and it is preferable to keep Liberty behind her allies.

Video URL

Mission 1 is very straightforward but how well you do is very much determined by your luck. Expect repair costs to be between $17-$32.

Other notes:
You have a 0.9^10*0.5*100 = 17.4% chance of OHKO the missile frigate with the missiles. In such a scenario, you can laser the other missile frigate. On the next turn, laser + assault; you'll be able to finish this mission in two turns that way.


Missile Frigate:
400 HP
0 FK, 0 SD, 10 AR, 0 EV
Fires 10 missiles of 50 damage each. After firing for 5 turns, it will run out of missiles and will harmlessly close in on your units.

Video URL

Mission 2 is even more reliant on luck than mission 1. The same route can cost you $47-$136 repair costs and it all depends on how lucky you are. For the sake of the guide, we'll assume you were pretty unlucky (and got hit by Havoc's rocket).

The basic idea is to take out the grunts quickly even if you have to use your missiles, then the pirate destroyers and finally Havoc as she closes in to melee your units. There are many ways to complete this mission because of how easy it is to miss your shots, so you may want to look at the enemy characteristics below and the methods to kill them.

Other Notes:
If you don't mind saving / reloading, you should try to avoid the first rocket that Havoc fires. It's extremely painful if it lands, as you can see in the video.

Black Jack will join the battle as an ally on Turn 2 at X: 6 Y: 3.
If the Sunrider is currently at that position, Black Jack will spawn at X: 6 Y: 3 instead.

Pirate Grunt:
275 HP
15 FK, 0 SD, 0 AR, 12 EV

• Fires laser of 120 damage per turn and then moves 1 hex closer to target. It will never move into counter-attack range, but it will keep moving.
  
• If its target has 100% shielding, it will simply close in on the target harmlessly.
  
• It has flak, but it never uses it to assault.

How to kill:
a. Lucky missile OHKO.
b. Laser + pulse or Laser + assault or Laser + missile or Pulse + missile.

Pirate Destroyer:
500 HP
0 FK, 0 SD, 10 AR, -10 EV

• Somewhat inaccurate lasers.
  
• Move closer to target by 1 hex and then fires laser of 150 damage per turn; stops at a certain distance. For the Sunrider's case, this is at 5 hex length. If it's targeting Black Jack, it will move into 3 hex range. This range is not affected by All Guard.

How to kill:
a. Sunrider laser, Black Jack laser & missile.
b. Sunrider laser, Black Jack pulse x2, Sunrider assault.

Havoc:
1000 HP
20 FK, 0 SD, 14 AR, 8 EV

• If you're too far, it will move 1 hex before firing its rocket in the first turn. Otherwise, it will fire the rocket and a missile barrage. This rocket deals 300 damage.
  
• Each missile barrage she fires is around 30x8 missiles = 240 damage.
  
• After she fires 2 missile barrages, she will move towards your units. Depending on your units' health, she may move without assaulting, or she may assault. Her assault damage can deal 280 damage.
  
• So long as your ryders keep a distance of at least 2 hex, she is harmless. She will always try to move into 1 hex range before moving in to melee.
  
• It can melee once per turn. It is a chainsaw attack that deals 300 damage in 10 hits, but most of this damage is negated by armor.

How to kill:
If she's one hex away and at full health
Sunrider laser. Black Jack move in, melee x2 and Sunrider finish up with assault. This method should only be used if Black Jack is at full health.

If she's within range and injured enough to shoot down
Sunrider kinetic. Black Jack pulse x2 and Sunrider finish up with assault. This method is preferred to minimize damage.

If you don't have enough energy to kill her in 1 turn, delay it by moving Black Jack at least 2 hex from her.

Level up the Sunrider's Kinetic Accuracy 3 times to MK 4.

• Increasing the Sunrider's accuracy by 10% makes her a lot more reliable. In the next mission, she'll be able to land shots at 80% accuracy instead of 70%.

Video URL

Notes:

• We use Full Forward in this mission to increase accuracy and guarantee kills. If you're okay with saving / reloading, you can save the 750 CP.

PACT Mook:
300 HP
10 FK, 0 SD, 0 AR, 25 EV

• Fires laser of base 150 damage.
  
• Will move closer to the target every turn before firing lasers. Its AI is similar to the pirate grunt; keep moving closer until it's 1 space away.
  
• doesn't use kinetic to attack.

PACT Cruiser:
900 HP
30 FK, 25 SD, 30 AR, -25 EV

• Fires laser of base 200 damage.
  
• Will move closer to the target every turn before firing lasers until a certain range. For the Sunrider, that range is 5 spaces away. For ryders, that range is 2 spaces away.
  
• Will switch to kinetic weapons if you're close enough and if you are shielded. These deal base 350 damage in 1 shot.
  
• Targeting the Sunrider: Expect cruisers to use kinetic weapons at 3 spaces and closer. If you're 4-5 spaces away, the cruiser will stay still and fire laser weapons. If you're more than 5 spaces away, the cruiser will move 1 space closer and fire lasers.
  
  This changes if your shields are too strong; if you have 70 SD on the Sunrider for example, cruisers will switch to kinetic weapons when they are 4 spaces away and will move closer and closer even if they are 5 spaces away. They will switch to kinetic weapons when they are 4 spaces away in these case.
  
• Targeting the ryders: Expect cruisers to use kinetic weapons at 2 spaces and closer. If you're 3 spaces away, the cruiser will stay still and fire laser weapons. If you're 4 and more spaces away, the cruiser will move 1 space closer and fire laser weapons.
  
• Provides shielding of 1 hex range and flak protection of 2 hex range.

PACT Outpost:
900 HP
0 FK, 25 SD, 20 AR, -40 EV

• Cannot move
  
• Fires laser of base 150 damage.
  
• Provides shielding of 2 hex range.
  
• Even though it has no flak, it will use kinetic weapons (2 hits) which deals around 280 base damage in total if you're 3 spaces and nearer.

Level up the Sunrider's EN to 110.
Acquire the Portable Repair Booster upgrade.

• Increasing the Sunrider's EN to 110 allows her to move and then follow up with 2 pulse attacks. This is pretty useful as you'll see in the next mission and also contributes to getting her to shooting kinetic twice.
  
• The repair upgrade allows Liberty to make substantially better repairs. This translates to better survivability and lower repair costs.

Video URL

Notes:

• New enemies appear on turn 5. 2 destroyers appear, 1 top 1 bottom. 4 grunts and 2 bombers appear on the most right.

Pirate Base:
1200 HP
30 FK, 25 SD, 50 AR, -50 EV

• It has a shielding range of 2 spaces.
  
• Fires a missile barrage of 15 missiles of around 20 damage per missile for a total of 300 damage. Mostly mitigated by armor.
  
• After 5 missile barrages, it runs out of missiles. If you are too far away for its kinetic weapons to work, it will not attack.
  
• At 4 spaces away and closer, it will fire kinetic weapons. It will fire 5 kinetic shots which deal base 100 damage each, for up to 500 damage in total. Fortunately, these weapons are quite inaccurate; you are still quite safe at 3 spaces away.

Pirate Bomber:
350 HP
20 FK, 0 SD, 8 AR, 10 EV

• Fires a rocket of around 380 damage on the first turn. If it's close enough, it will fire a missile barrage on the same turn, firing 6 missiles each dealing around 30 damage each (totalling 180 damage).
  
• After it fires its missiles, it will close in to use assault. If its target's health is low enough, it will assault for 13 damage per shot, which can be from 50 - 100 damage in total, mostly mitigated by armor. If the target has too much armor, it will just move around it harmlessly.

Level Sunrider's Kinetic Energy Cost to MK 4 (59 EN for Kinetic).
Level Sunrider's EN to 120 (MK 5).
If you have surplus money, look at the post mission 4 R&D for ideas on upgrading.

• These upgrades will allow the Sunrider to shoot twice and kill a cruiser in 2 shots without Black Jack's assistance when Full Forward is active.

Video URL

Notes:

• Unknown Hostile appears on turn 2 from the right.

Unknown Hostile:
700 HP
20 FK, 0 SD, 4 AR, 30 EV

• Moves 2 spaces closer and then fires a single laser which deals around 180 damage (or vice versa). It will not move directly next to you.
  
• Counterattack flak deals 10 damage x 15 shots = 150 damage in total.

Level Liberty's Shield Power to MK 2
Level Black Jack's HP to MK 3
Level Black Jack's Laser Damage to MK 3
Level Sunrider's Kinetic Accuracy to MK 6

• Upgrade Liberty's shield to improve her shield's effectiveness. This will come in useful against the cruisers in the next mission.
  
• We don't buy Sunrider's shield because it costs 1.5k just to shield herself and another 1k to shield at a range of 1 hex; it's a lot more cost effective and practical just to spend 0.5k on Liberty's shield and allocate the other money to other areas.
  
• Upgrade Black Jack's survivability by buffing her HP. She's going to be getting a lot of aggro and we need her alive. Because we don't have a lot of money, we're going to go with some cheap HP. We're not buffing armor because it provides negligible bonuses against the enemies we are facing.
  
• Upgrade the Sunrider's accuracy. This allows her to land shots when you need her to, which is vital in the next mission.
  
• Upgrading Black Jack's laser damage so that we can make her missile + pulse more reliable against missile frigates.
  
• We don't upgrade the Sunrider's kinetic damage because that would make her OHKO cruisers. We want Black Jack to deal the last hit so as to transfer aggro to her.

Mission 5 is honestly not very strict so you can go with a few combinations of upgrades and still pull it off (like getting the Sunrider's shield, buffing her HP and then pushing her kinetic damage to MK 2 - this would have her pull aggro instead. You can keep her alive through Liberty and Repair Drones). Personally, I preferred this set because of its reliability in terms of the Sunrider's kinetic accuracy and the speed at which you can complete the mission.

Video URL

Notes/Explanation:

• The video for this mission is 10 minutes long and the battle lasts 21 turns because this is a guide to wipe out all waves of this escort mission (and you are supposed to be wiping out an entire fleet with just 3 guys, so...). If you want to cut it short, you can go ahead and eliminate the missile frigate at 3:25 before the other cruisers arrive, thereby ending the mission.
  
• In the first turn you may notice that Black Jack's not shielded by Liberty, even though Liberty could have shielded her. This is to bait the cruisers at the far right to target Black Jack and move forward towards her, ensuring you have a better chance at hitting them later on at turn 4. Otherwise, there is a chance the top most cruiser will go down-left, which ultimately makes them harder to hit by 15% later on.
  
• Keep the escort ship as far back as possible, preferably in the top left. Otherwise, enemies may target it and you will incur repair costs.
  
• At 0:34 I made a minor mistake. After the Sunrider eliminates a Mook with x2 assault, you should use pulse instead of assaulting for more damage. Both methods work reliably, but pulse is the safer option.
  
• At 2:43 we laser the cruiser instead of anything else because Black Jack will have to spend all her EN in the next turn meleeing the bomber and Phoenix. The laser will help the Sunrider eliminate the cruiser without needing Black Jack to finish it off.
  
• At 3:10 take note, aggro will always be on Black Jack, which is why we repair Sunrider instead of Black Jack at that time.
  
• The position of enemy units in the last wave may differ. The idea is to destroy cruisers with the Sunrider, finish them with Black Jack's assault and laser the missile frigate with the least shielding.
  
• Don't forget that missile frigates run out of ammo after 5 turns, which is why they will start running towards you harmlessly near the end of the mission.
  
• If you happen to miss one of the 87% accuracy shots, it's not the end of the world. You'll just end a turn later and maybe use an extra repair drone or something. It's still very survivable.

Phoenix:
Since she's a one-time enemy, I'll refrain from filling her stats here (since I don't think anybody will need it) but her strategy is to charge in and melee your ryders, and she also has high EV. So long as you take her out quickly when she arrives on the battlefield, she's no threat.

At this point, there's a lot of ways you can upgrade (because you have so much money). I cannot claim these upgrades are the best choice. If you have a better alternative, please comment and share :)

Phoenix
HP +2 -> MK 3 (500 HP)
EN +4 -> MK 5 (120 EN)

Phoenix's HP upgrade is a must: she needs HP to stay alive. Anything lower than 500 makes it easy for Phoenix to die.Phoenix's EN upgrade is also a must. Her EN upgrades are the cheapest amongst your fleet and it makes her a lot more mobile.

Sunrider
Kinetic Dmg +2 -> MK 3
Missile Dmg +1 -> MK 2
Missile Storage +1 -> MK 2

The kinetic dmg upgrade will ensure she 2HKOs cruisers.The missile upgrades will help her OHKO the destroyers on the first turn which will ensure Phoenix's survival even if she happens to get hit by rockets by the bomber/Havoc in the next mission.Missiles are also pretty effective in the mission that follows immediately after.

Liberty
Shield Range +1 -> MK 2

You'll need this upgrade sooner or later to support a large fleet. Getting it now allows much more flexibility in your formations.

Black Jack
EN +4 -> MK 5 (120 EN)
Energy Weapon Dmg +1 -> MK 4
Energy Weapon EN Cost +2 -> MK 3
Energy Weapon Accuracy +1 -> MK 2

These upgrades allow black jack to fire 2 lasers per turn and other little tricks like laser + assault x2. With her laser damage upgrades already in place, she can take out 2 grunts per turn with a laser each. The accuracy's in there to boost her 85% hit rate to 90% (you'll see what I mean in the next mission).

Video URL

Notes/Explanation:

• At the start Black Jack fires her assault before using Full Forward. This is to prevent the possibility she OHKOs the grunt and gets aggro (instead of the Sunrider).
  
• On the last turn, Havoc may be positioned differently. The idea is the same: get Black Jack and Phoenix into a position where Bianca can gravity Havoc into them, then melee her down.

PACT Bomber
400 HP
0 FK, 0 SD, 10 AR, 5 EV

• Fires a rocket that deals base 300 damage on their first turn.
  
• If she didn't need to move, she'll fire again on the same turn.
  
• After firing her rocket, she'll fire missiles (8 missiles which deal around 30 damage each).
  
• After she fires 2 missile bursts, she switches to laser weaponry (base damage around 135) and will act like a Pirate Grunt (move closer, laser or vice versa).

Bianca
EN +4 -> MK 5

Improving her EN to 120 gives her a lot of flexibility to kinetic, aim down, move and gravity.

Video URL

Notes/Explanation:

• On the third turn we're looking at 82% chance for the Sunrider's kinetic accuracy. If by chance he misses, follow up with Black Jack's lasers + Bianca's kinetic + Phoenix's assault to clean up the 3rd cruiser.
  
• On replaying this mission, you can save the 2nd Full Forward that was spent on Black Jack. The sequence would be:
  Black Jack: laser x2 unshielded cruiser,
  Bianca 1right 1down-right, kinetic cruiser,
  Liberty laser x2 unshielded cruiser
  Sunrider 3right missile cruiser [down]
  On the next turn you can bring Phoenix & Black Jack to safety, Bianca can aim dwn the cruisers and atk up Black Jack and continue to take out the two cruisers.

Ryuvian Ryder
375 HP
0 FK, 0 SD, 4 AR, 20 EV

• Deals kinetic damage of around 300 base damage in 1 shot.
  
• Will move if its target is too hard to hit; it will not attack after moving.

Ryuvian Cruiser
1200 HP
0 FK, 50 SD, 30 AR, -20 EV

• Fires missile (5 missiles each dealing around 60 damage)
  
• Runs out of missiles after 2 shots. It then switches to kinetic shot.
  
• Can fire kinetic shot (deal 350 damage in 1 shot). It likes to move closer by 2 hexes before firing its kinetic attack. If you are still too far to hit after moving closer, it will move even closer and not fire that turn.

TBC

As I played the game, I created a very rough but comprehensive spreadsheet detailing upgrades, how much they would cost, how much benefits they would bring etc for each unit in order to min-max my upgrades. If you want to study Sunrider in further depth, you can download it here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw0jpoGXsnSCR1E5MUhtWEY5NUU/view?usp=sharing

It may appear relatively incomplete because some upgrades are very similar to others: for example, the cost to upgrade the Sunrider's laser weapons is identical to Black Jack. Phoenix's section is also relatively underdeveloped since I never really used her that much.

The original text-based (and relatively unrefined) guide that I created as I played the game can be downloaded here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw0jpoGXsnSCVlk5WWI1T2x5d00/view?usp=sharing

Please note that the text file's strategies are not optimized and may differ from the final walkthrough.

Thanks for reading. Comment below if you have anything to add :)