Originally Posted by nick1024

You don't need all slice girl.
My suggestion is to make an automatic team based on power. Then substitute weaker non-slice girls (starting at squad 8) for most powered slice ones not included (just order by power and filter by slice to choice them). Repeat until whale become red.

I put my regular squads in the first 4 slots (these are not necessarily my highest TP girls, since I assemble my squads on synergies, like a squad based on ability-trigger, another squad with counter-girls, etc.), the squad best at dealing with small pests in the first slot.

In the fifth slot, I put some girls that make things easier for ALL squads and the whale ship, like:
-Increasing the light gauge at the start (Cattleya, Mei Plumblossom, Convallaria, there's some more with passives like these)
-Spawning Solar Shrine nodes (Strawberry Candle)
-Spawning Chocolate Healing Nodes (Chocolate Cosmos, Lantana)

If your first 4 squads do their work, then this fifth squad should never actually get in combat, so no need to really worry about them being leveled

Last squads are my "colour fillers", here I put the most powerful girls I still have available of the boss's "weak colour". So that's 15 units of the appropriate color to make the ship Slice, Hit, Pierce or Magic. 16 units of the appropriate colour are required for that, but there's usually 4-6 units of the appropriate colour in the first 5 squads, and often one or two more in the helper squad as well.

As a result, I only ever have to update the last 3 squads to match the boss type, the first five squads never change.

Just so you are aware, on Whaleship missions only your 1st squad should ever see combat. If you cannot get 5 girls together who can beat all of the small pest mobs without dying then you are probably not ready for the ship TBH. Easiest way is have your strongest girls of the right colour in squad 1 and then Total power the rest of the ship swapping a few for the right type of ship. I have yet to see a whale mission that my 1st squad cannot beat and live through. Especially with all the extra heals you should be getting from at least 1 +heal node girl on the ship (there are so many of these girls now anyone strong enough to try the mission should have one).

My suggestion to make a whaleship squad is:
1- make 2 squads with your bests girls AND good synergy. Try to use as much girls with the same type as the ship. If you can't (like not good enough girls form that type), use others types. you just want the best teams possible to deal with small pests.
2- Sort your girls from higher TP to lower TP. Then, use the filter to get only girls with the needed type. And then, add the bests girls until you reach 16 of them. You need 16girls o onetype to get the shipof the same type.
3- Remove the filter and add girls until your ship is full.

That's how I do.