Valkyria Chronicles

Your mission rank (the xp, money and weapons you get for completing the mission, with set bonuses for killing enemy commanders, tanks, and aces) is determined entirely by how fast you finish the mission. Capturing enemy camps that don't end the mission doesn't matter. Killing regular enemy soldiers doesn't matter. Having your soldiers knocked out (or even killed for real) doesn't matter.

Don't fully load up the battlefield with units from the get go. A good plan is to have a few scouts and some shocktroopers to start with and then capture a enemy camp so you can deploy your real force. If you do it the other way, you are going to be wasting CP on units that take forever to keep up.

Retreat/deploy can be used on the same unit in the same turn, which is a turn faster than having them return to the map after being killed and evacuated.

Also, don't assume that Orders are a waste of CP - some orders are actually extremely powerful, allowing your units to hulk out offensively / defensively.

Don't forget you can activate a unit multiple times a turn (the only penalty is a lowered movement range) and bank your command points from turn to turn.

Scouts are your best friend, they can cross huge sections of the battlefield but they are terribly weak at defense.

Always grab one more scout than you think you'll need. Don't need a scout? Grab one. Only need one to go grab a point? Grab a second.

Snipers are not as powerful as they seem, and headshots will miss a lot for you.

One sniper is really good, Marina, but even then, you need to level them up a bit before they're reliable killing machines.

You never really have to move your snipers (if you use them). The most you would have to do is retreat them at a base and deploy them at another base. Also, you may want to hide your sniper at the end of their turn, because they die easily and will be targeted if seen by the enemy!

Don't take that goddamn druggie engineer, the guy with "Moody" as one of his potentials. That little shit will, at random times, decide to do dick all when you select him. I hate that guy.

Your soldiers become elite at level 11. Elite units get a nice boost to their stats, a larger movement range and (for scouts, shocktroopers, and less importantly lancers) a new weapon. It's definitely better to focus on getting elite scouts and shocktroopers over leveling up all your classes equally.

Try to get your soldiers to level 11 as soon as possible, since you get elite status. Level up your scouts first so they get rifle grenades, then do your shocktroopers and then your snipers.

Once you hit elite status, a Shocktrooper with a decent weapon and a defensive order such as Caution, can circle behind an enemy tank and destroy it by shooting its radiator in half the turns that it would take a Lancer or your tank in a head-on assault.

Don't bother to level up engineers or snipers as much as Scouts and Shocktroopers, Scouts will be your main force in most missions once they get a few levels, with shocktroopers and lancers getting more and more situational use.

When you travel back to headquarters, stop at the cemetery FIRST. This is because the old man has orders available to you by random chance...if you go to the training field and level up first, you will be out of EXP and who knows when the old man will be offering the same particular order.

The main thing is to pay attention in the tutorials. It takes a little effort at first to understand the individual units and their functions, but once you build a rhythm for it it pays off. Especially watch the snipers and the engineers; a lot of the snipers die easily and the engineers are the most technical of the units

Captured enemy weapons are (for the most part) terrible. Accuracy and range - the ability to reliably headshot an enemy from outside their firing range - are the most important things to worry about on your weapons.

On that note, never research or use additional effect weapons - you want to kill each enemy in one attack.

Chapter 7 will test you, but its not that difficult. Make sure that you keep your units away from the upper right corner of the map (I think that's it)

Stay behind cover whenever you can, no matter where the enemies shoot you from, they won't be able to get headshots on you.

Know that if a unit gets shot at from their front, they have a chance to duck, which won't make them invincible, but will make it harder to hit.

Never attack an enemy crouching behind sandbags without destroying the sandbags first, unless you're using a flamethrower. Sandbags prevent all headshots, even if you're 5 inches away and on the same side. Always ruin their cover with a grenade, rocket or tank shell.

Lancers, with their anti-explosive armor, can trigger landmines and take barely any damage. If anyone else steps on a landmine, they can avoid triggering it by ending their turn there, allowing an engineer to run up and disable it.

Grenades do not bounce or roll; they land pretty much exactly where the guideline shows they'll land.

The Edelweiss' best feature is the ISARA smoke, and that is critical to remember when trying for the A-ranks..

Also, don't hinge your entire strategy on having a tank on the field. There's a lot the tank can accomplish, but you can't plow through the battles with it. Basically, don't trick yourself into thinking the game's Disgaea and the tank is Laharl.

The basics of dealing with particularly irritating enemies: Have your tank drive over their cover / blast them out of cover with mortar fire. Make sure they are facing the tank now. If they aren't Scouts / Shocktroopers (that is, guys that will get mowed down by the tank machine guns on the enemy turn) sneak a scout behind them and headshot. I've found this to be generally faster and more efficient than sending in Shocktroopers with flamethrowers (which you won't get for a while anyways)