Is there a good indepth guide of the mechanics for this game somewhere?

[RedHealer]

The game front loads so many units and barely does anything to explain the core differences in a way that helps me to decide what units to counter what other units with.

Like, infantry don't like explosives. But then tanks seem to resist everything.
Is there a point to infantry? What is the point of an extremely high cost infantry unit?
Why would I spent 150 on an infantry unit with 2k hp when I could get something with better defenses/range/HP for basically the same price?

I'm trying to logic this out in a rock/paper/scissors style format rather than just picking whoever has the biggest numbers as that just kind of defeats the purpose of this style of game in my eyes.

[[SNP]Rancor]

It's a lot more indifivual of the process. Now some characters just have insane HP they are very easily the correct pick for the team. So that much is easy, but other characters need a bit more in depth look, for example, some characters will have a skill where they get to evade or block attacks, they are doing a lot more tanking than their health alone would lead you to believe.

On the other hand some characters excell in sitting in the back and dealing damage, but they die in a single hit, again it's difficult to know which ones are good just by looking at their stats

Then you have characters that buff the stats of other characters, characters that regen hp or revive, or maybe they self destruct when they are killed

Generally speaking in my experience infantry, specifically anime girls dominate the field way more often than big hulking robots. With some exceptions, and there are the ultimate units too which I hear are very good.

Characters that I've found work well regardless of stage for me so far are Mummy Warrior, Miharu, Jin, Vita, Odette, Shuzuka, Nova,

[RedHealer]

Originally posted by SNPRancor:

It's a lot more indifivual of the process. Now some characters just have insane HP they are very easily the correct pick for the team. So that much is easy, but other characters need a bit more in depth look, for example, some characters will have a skill where they get to evade or block attacks, they are doing a lot more tanking than their health alone would lead you to believe.

On the other hand some characters excell in sitting in the back and dealing damage, but they die in a single hit, again it's difficult to know which ones are good just by looking at their stats

Then you have characters that buff the stats of other characters, characters that regen hp or revive, or maybe they self destruct when they are killed

Generally speaking in my experience infantry, specifically anime girls dominate the field way more often than big hulking robots. With some exceptions, and there are the ultimate units too which I hear are very good.

Characters that I've found work well regardless of stage for me so far are Mummy Warrior, Miharu, Jin, Vita, Odette, Shuzuka, Nova,

As stated previously, I would like to view this in terms of "the right unit for the right situation" or rock/paper/scissors counter play to keep it simple.

I understand they each have their individual values and that much of their value cannot be judged by stats alone. Again, the issue is I am having trouble identifying these values in the middle of a free for all.

If this game had some sort of training mode to test things out or at least went through the trouble of explaining them a little better it wouldn't be such an issue.

I have taken to just running the first four chapters with different groups of units to try and identify strengths and weaknesses.

The cannon fodder units are clearly intended to be used for stall tactics so that you can hold off the enemy long enough to get your BP regen up to a nice speed. I would say in that respect the shield guys are probably the best picks for that role though obviously more than one unit should be used.

Things get messy one tier up from cannon fodder as it's kind of hard to judge the value of a lot of the mid cost units when paired against each other. As you said, some units have distinct advantages beyond just stats, I am just having trouble finding value in a fair number of them.

[[SNP]Rancor]

This thread is from 8 years ago, but hoepfully it should still be relevant :

https://www.reddit.com/r/MetalSlugAttack/comments/4hu9xo/general_tips_for_battling/

[William Shakesman]

I've been playing this since MSD and I've never once felt it deserved to be treated as a real game. It's an asset flip of Metal Slug assets into something that can be monetized, but the writing and new waifus had enough heart that it kept chugging along.

You're right: Most infantry sucks. The heroes are bad. Regular Soldier and Grenadier are as worthless in this game as they were in Metal Slug 1. But most of the alters or waifus tend to have better statlines, and high end decks are going to have probably about six anime girls on the front line per faction. Plus, story is a totally different beast to versus given how utterly stacked the story decks are against you. And ANYONE who takes versus seriously is utterly insane (Take it from me, I played a lot in MSA until the gacha powercreep became intolerable.) The key things to understand are:
-Evade triggers an animation during which the evader is immune to everything. Some evades do silly stuff like trigger special attack, or Awakened Red Goblin who triggers Full Heal on evade, which is absurd. This is why even a modest evade percentage makes units like Shizuka utterly vicious as 8-1 players can attest.
-Critical attacks cannot be evaded, except during the post-evade invulnerability frames
-Stunned units cannot evade or do anything really.

A lot of knowing the game is also seeing who actually wants to do useful attacks rather than sit there for three seconds before doing anything. It is very hard to gauge a unit's usefulness rather than deploying them in a deck and seeing if they can actually deal damage or die. Sadly there is no analysis mechanism outside of versus mode.

[Tiberius]

Evolve and unlock your unit's skill asap. Those two steps are essential to make your units powerful.

Use the filter function to find durable units (the one with tactical shield icon), then fully upgrade em. They should be able to hold the line.

[RedHealer]

Thank you all. I appreciate the insight.