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Auto Deploy is a feature in Arknights.

Overview[]

Auto Deploy allows the player to run an operation autonomously by letting the game automatically deploy units and for the operation to resolve itself this way. Auto Deploy is available after TR-6 is cleared for the first time.

Before Auto Deploy can be used, the player must clear the corresponding operation with 3 stars without using a Support Unit. Once this is done, the player will have the option to save the settings of that run for Auto Deploy; if it is done for the first time, then a message will say that the Auto Deploy feature is available for that operation.

To run an operation in Auto Deploy, the player need to enable the option from the operation's selection menu. Enabling the option, however, will prevent the player from running the operation's Practice Mode and Challenge Mode (if available).

The Auto Deploy function records the player's action which includes unit deployment/retreat and skill usage, and the game will follow the recorded actions during the operation, in order to replicate the operation's outcome. This is very helpful for farming various materials, as sometimes they may not be dropped upon clearing the operation, and frees up the player's time to do other activities outside the game.

The player can also take over an Auto Deployed operation, allowing them to play the game as usual. If the operation is cleared with 3 stars after taking over from Auto Deploy, the player can have the new gameplay record overwrite the old one.

Errors[]

Auto Deploy error

This is what would happened if the Auto Deploy messes up

Auto Deploy, however, is not perfect: sometimes an error may occur, which could compromise the operation. If there is a mistiming during Auto Deploy (e.g. a skill fails to activate), the player will be warned of it. Should the player manage to lose a Life Point in the Auto Deploy, it will result in an error; if the operation was completed anyway, the player can either forfeit to refund most of the Sanity Sanity spent or proceed.

The following are the possible causes of an Auto Deploy error:

  1. The unit's DP cost is higher than on the recorded gameplay, usually if an Operator is promoted.
  2. If a unit's ATK is different than on the recorded gameplay, the following may occur.
    • Charger Vanguards fail to generate the required DP to deploy units or use skills since they cannot defeat the enemy fast enough.
    • Operators with offensive/defensive SP recovery for their skills fail to generate the required SP to use them since the enemy they attacked or which attacks them are killed earlier or later. This is often fatal to Duelist Defenders since their trait stops them from generating SP while not blocking an enemy.
    • An allied unit is defeated by enemies capable of attacking them, which usually happens if the Static Roadblock in their path is destroyed earlier. This can also cause enemies to move through them earlier than intended.
    • Certain waves on some operations will only start once certain enemies are defeated; if such enemy is prematurely defeated, the wave will come earlier and disrupts the flow.
    • Enemies with on-death effects (e.g. Infused Originium Slug, Winterwisp Blood Shaman) are not defeated at the right moment.
  3. If the values for stat buffs are different than on the recorded gameplay, the following may occur.
    • Due to Surtr's Twilight increasing her maximum HP by 5000 while active, if her level is higher than on the recorded gameplay, the HP loss rate will also be increased, which can compromise the timing of her being KO'd or retreated.
  4. If an Operator that was supposed to be KO'd so that another Operator can be deployed survives, the latter will not be deployed until the former is KO'd or retreated. Later updates adressed this issue by automatically retreating such Operator if they survived at the time they were KO'd in Auto Deploy.
  5. The SP cost of a skill is higher than on the recorded gameplay, which happens if the Operator's skills are upgraded. This also extends to the force level of shift skills and the skill's duration, if its SP cost are not increased as it is upgraded.
  6. A static device is not activated at the right moment, usually if it fails to generate enough SP in case of L-44 Gramophones or the player do not have enough DP for Stun Generators and Imprisonment Devices.
  7. The special priority of units are different than in the recorded gameplay (e.g. Adnachiel whose talent Shortcoming Breakthrough makes him attack ranged enemies over the others when he is raised to Elite 1 Level 55).
  8. Angelina's Distinguished Visitor and Platinum's Shimmering Dew SD05 outfits are known to give their projectiles a slightly higher speed (1 frame higher than without them), which can be an issue if the enemies have their speed modified.

It is a common misconception that auto-deploy failures are caused by random number generation (RNG), which calculates all aspects of random elements in video games. This is not true, or rather, is not the full story. Put simply, Arknights uses a RNG seed, which is a string of numbers that, when given to a random number generator, will always result in the same output; this is called a "deterministic," or non-random, output. As long as this seed is stored, the random aspects will be recorded, such that they are no longer random the next time, and are based on the first iteration of the dice roll; there is no randomness in auto-deploys.

  • What can occur, however, is an RNG seed offset. Arknights runs at a framerate of 30FPS, meaning the image on screen is updated thirty times per second. At the same time, the logic of the game is base on an identical tick rate of 30 (clock) ticks per second. If the game, for whichever reason, such as a frame drop, is not able to calculate the game state during a tick, this will offset the timing of things, and may possibly result in a call to the RNG seed being made at a different place, and giving a different result. The most likely culprit of auto failures, therefore, is "frame dropping" – the deliberate loss of frames by a program in order to keep ahead with its current state. This can cause problems with RNG, but also with non-random components of gameplay. It is, however, more likely to compound with RNG to catastrophic results.
    • The most likely cases of frame drops besides running the game on weak hardware, is this hardware being shared by a background process, which can happen on phones. On emulators, the most common culprit is hiding the emulator window, playing a video, or putting another window at the foreground, as this will either take up the emulator's memory, or cause it to throttle its own usage.
    • Annihilation is also extremely likely to cause frame drops as the most intense waves tend to display the most on-screen enemies in Arknights. Every operator, enemy, and skill visual effect appearing on screen has to be "drawn" by the renderer, which means the most hectic the fight, the more likely frame drops are to happen.
  • The RNG seed is not determined upon first manually clearing an operation and recording the auto deploy, but upon the first run of the operation using the auto-deploy function. That means that it is entirely possible to succeed at an operation with good RNG first, and fail the auto-deploy, as it uses a different RNG seed. However, from the second auto-deploy onward, the RNG seed will always remain the same unless the auto deploy is changed.
  • Updates to the game can cause the RNG seed to be flushed and started anew, which means a game update can break RNG seeds and auto deploy records.
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