Ever tried Arknights?
It’s a F2P tower defence game where one of the most notable features is the fact that the game’s auto-play mode is based on the game replicating the placement and timing of how you deployed the units previously. Which means that for you to be able to use auto-deploy on a map, you need to have successfully completed the map first.
The game can be a bit grindy and has a pretty steep difficulty curve, but the auto-deploy takes care of most of the grind, while just participating in game events will give you a decent supply of upgrade materials, and there are plenty of videos out there where people show off their strategies for using low rarity and/or low level units to complete even some of the highest difficulty contents if you need hints and ideas.
The game is also quite F2P friendly, where top tier high rarity units can be acquired at a decent rate using free in-game currency on the gacha, and the free recruitment system. Higher rarity units are also balanced out by having higher deployment costs, thus many maps are specifically designed to require the use of low rarity units, so you won’t see P2W power creep.
Similar to Azur Lane, the expectations is that “dolphins” will spend money mainly on monthly cards and costumes for popular units, and only “whales” will spend money on other stuff.
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