Yes! DONT look anything up and play them yourself. He creator is currently developing FOUR entirely new projects with another famous mystery-novel game developer, creator of 999, so you have never been more invited to get into this train

Oh its not about HOW mixed the commands are, as long as you dont repeat the same command in a row you get this same fixed small boost to chain building. So Fire + Ice + phys has the same effect as a phys + fire + phys

Hoping that I answer your questions here, but:
1) The Chain Gauge and Chain Bonus are one and the same sort of. You will do as much damage as your currently filled Chain Gauge is displaying. HOWEVER when you start the stagger I believe you also gain an extra 100% or so on your chain gauge. Plus, the actual value in the chain doesnt deplete until the stagger state is over IIRC.
2) The Role bonuses for the party do stack! So 2x or 3x ravagers gets way more chain building on top of eachother than just one RAV.
The rest is where it gets more complex. You see, the AI will always build your ATB uses as "what will do the most damage in the long run" with each slot planned individually. This is great for automating, but it CAN be different from what you want when the fight involved multiple enemies and you having to change your Roles. For example, sometimes on auto you might see a commando use a physical attack, a spell, then another physical. That is because repeating commands builds just a tad bit less gauge then changing them up, so this would be better for gauge building, and therefore more damage, in the long run than just attack attack attack. The problem becomes time! As your character will have to switch up from their position to attack in melee to cast in range twice, so, often, you would do well to just stack up your fastest hits if you are going to kill your enemy sooner than they will stagger! Hope this helped and answered your questions

What a bummer! Seems like my comments never show up here! I think there was a problem with my email! I tried a new one. Hope it works! I've been stalking your blog a lot and have been ever since you did a Worm listen-through all those years ago! And I have been waiting a long time for this game! It was the 6th FF game i played, but the first that I beat, and just afterwards, completed! That has been a while ago now as I'm currently beating 12 on the PS4 and 9 on my phone. Since then I also finished X and X-2. And I hope that I can help you with somethings as this goes on! For example:
The stars only affect how good the materials you get are, so it is a self-accomplishment of sorts. Amd you should 100% sell all items supposed to be sold.