Cogmind > Strategies

Maxing Score

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Joking_Phantom:
After lucking out on my 4th run and making it to the Surface exit only to be dismayed by not having a single weapon to break the access shell, I took a few hours of research and many attempts at the same seed, and I managed to make it out with a flight hacker build.

Now I'm interested in maxing out my score.

I ran a few regressions on the "Win Speed" score category and came up with a power formula of approximately Win Speed=50,000,000/(# of turns passed).

I've got a few questions for the more knowledgable:

1. Formulas for "High Alert Combat Kills, "Robots Destroyed," and "Value Destroyed"? Disabling random machines on the first level turned up 70 score over 3 machines, but on my winning run I ended up with 3750 destroyed, which is interesting. I do remember running Trojan(Detonate) a few times. What's valuable to blow up as I make my way to the surface? Does blowing up terrain count too, or only machines? I'm assuming the "High Alert Combat Kills" requires the security level to be at least 3 or something - if so Alert(Purge) should not be run if I want more score? I'm trying to balance out winning fast with max destruction, but destroying things usually slows you down - either building up firepower on yourself, or amassing a large army that is also slow. It's either I run as fast as possible to Armory to get the best datajacks, or I start amassing firepower at the first Factory floor and only proceed upwards when my core is in danger.

2. What's the maximum bonus event score I can get? I've determined that Zion, Data Miner are on (6/7) Lower Caves, Warlord and Zhirov are on (4/5) Upper caves. But unfortunately, Extension and Armory are on 3/4. I think Armory is the optimal choice, but that means it has to be on 3 or I skip Zhirov or Warlord. Being on 3 skips Testing, and I guess Extension -> Hub_04 can probably be ignored. 2 Quarantine and Section 7 looks mandatory to visit because of the massive amounts of points you can score here. Finally, going to Command is probably the way to go because blowing up Main.C would be a great number of points. If anyone could give me a clearer picture on what bonus score events are mutually exclusive and the probably large number of events I've missed, that would be great.

3. Core Reset - Any score events that require having used it? Ideally I'd like to save it until I reach the Command/Hub_0 Surface exit, but I know that certain dialogue options require it. The knowledge of alien artifacts and their position is a nice small bonus, but not really necessary, especially if I just play the same seed to know where stuff is. It seems that alien artifact score only requires using a unique artifact once too, which is nice on the inventory requirements.

Side note - I think I noticed Section 7 entrance didn't show up on Access(Branch) or Access(Main). Is this accurate, and are there other exits that don't actually show up on terminal hacks? I was feeling paranoid after not being able to find Armory on 3rd, only to notice it showed up on 4th in my world map. Kinda wish I could hover over those map icons for a map name.

Joshua:

--- Quote from: Joking_Phantom on October 29, 2017, 02:18:07 PM ---1. Formulas for "High Alert Combat Kills, "Robots Destroyed," and "Value Destroyed"? Disabling random machines on the first level turned up 70 score over 3 machines, but on my winning run I ended up with 3750 destroyed, which is interesting.

--- End quote ---

I believe Robots Destroyed is a flat number of points per Robot. I think Kyzrati stated Value Destroyed is a flat amount for all machines (is it 25 each?) plus the robot number for each robot (e.g. each G-34 Grunt destroyed is worth 34 value). I don't think terrain counts. I don't know whether robots destroyed by reprogrammed traps or by hacking count.


--- Quote ---2. What's the maximum bonus event score I can get?

--- End quote ---

I believe it's upwards of 30k points Spoiler (click to show/hide)if you destroy as many bosses as possible. I can't comment more since I haven't done it and major spoilers are involved.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
--- Quote ---3. Core Reset - Any score events that require having used it?

--- End quote ---

This is beyond my knowledge.


--- Quote ---Side note - I think I noticed Section 7 entrance didn't show up on Access(Branch) or Access(Main). Is this accurate, and are there other exits that don't actually show up on terminal hacks? I was feeling paranoid after not being able to find Armory on 3rd, only to notice it showed up on 4th in my world map. Kinda wish I could hover over those map icons for a map name.

--- End quote ---

I believe there is at least one other that's not in the terminal database, possibly more. However there seem to be other ways to get the locations.

DDarkray:
I haven't fully investigated on this, but here's what I have observed:

Points for "Robots Destroyed" is always: 5 * (# of robots destroyed), regardless of what kind of robots they are. So if you destroyed 100 robots in total, you'll gain 500 points.

I haven't investigated the points gained for "Value Destroyed" in regard to destroyed machines. But what I know is that the points gained for destroying robots is based on the number of the robots' name. So if you destroy a g-34 grunt, you'll gain 34 points. If you destroy a w-16 watcher, you'll gain 16 points. If you destroy k-01 serf, you'll gain......1 point.

Destroying terrains such as walls and earth do not give any point.

High alert combat kills, I haven't investigated at all.

kiedra:
Sorry I didn't read all of what you've posted, because of some potential spoilers I wanted to avoid, but I've been thinking a bit about maxing out the score lately, so my thoughts on it hopefully help out. I can't say much about speedrunning, but your formula for the bonus points seems about right - to reach 100k you'd have to get it done in 500 turns, which is hard, but doable I guess. You'd have to get really lucky on the floor layout though, and finding the right things along the way (like flight units, scanners, other prop for armor etc). While there is still some other bonus points to be found, they are relatively small. In one of my recent runs (105k), most of the score was earned through killing robots (value points) and the bonus for high alert combat kills.
 
What basically happened in that run - I kept the alert level under control most of the time (ranging between 1-4 I'd guess), I did however make a huge mistake in -2/testing when taking out a garrison. It got pretty messy really quickly, big fight with several groups joining, me getting scanned by a researcher, in the end that was probably too much for MAIN.C and it triggered high security. I managed to get out hoping I could find a quick terminal in Access and hopefully let things calm down, but when spawning next to a behemoth AND a garrison nearby, getting back conrol of the alert level was near impossible. At this point all hell broke loose, I have never seen so many enemies before. My build allowed for one-shotting (if lucky on crits) a full ARC-squad, but with the sheer amount of enemies coming in, there was nearly not enough time to pick up some matter. I even started killing scavs for tractor beams instead of the usual matter, but with entire rooms full of items I'd have to move 20 tiles just to pick it up. I still tried exploring, although moving 3 tiles and fighting another 10 enemies does not really count for that - the main issue was, this put me out of position most of the time, which led to way more attrition than neccessary. What I'm trying to say is, in a 1-wide hallway, preferably as long as possible, I could have survived much much longer, which is basically my suggestion as of now if you just wanna go for score.
 
Theoretically you can do this on any floor, but -1 is probably the best, because you have the highest amount of slots, which allows for more guns and more importantly lots of useful utilities (armor, shields, cyclers, crit), not to mention that enemies will be of the highest level, which grants a higher score getting rid of them. I'd say try to get to Access with maximum possible Alert level control to minimize attrition and allow for lots of spare parts found along the way, accumulate a large inventory of important spare parts like shields and crit guns, explore the map to find a good place to do the fighting and then piss off MAIN.C and trigger high alert. I would guess I've killed around 200 bots in -1, being prepared and not having to leave a favorable position, you can easily add another zero to that number. What I don't know is whether things may even get worse from here, meaning more difficult enemies (immune to crit like those prototypes) or launcher dudes blowing up the hallway. We could ask Kyzrati, but I'm sure he'd say we should find out on our own :D. Feel free to look at the scoresheet either way, maybe you find some numbers that help you out.

Kyzrati:
Thanks for the info, I was wondering how you'd farmed that, and what went wrong on -1, if anything :P. There was speculation as to whether you were trying to win, or just didn't quite make it--now we know! You certainly racked up a lot of points for all the high-sec kills.

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