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Author Topic: Maxing Score  (Read 3570 times)

Joking_Phantom

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Maxing Score
« on: October 29, 2017, 02:18:07 PM »

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.
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Joshua

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2017, 04:48:28 AM »

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 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?

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

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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DDarkray

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2017, 08:29:53 AM »

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.
« Last Edit: October 30, 2017, 08:35:07 AM by DDarkray »
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kiedra

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #3 on: November 04, 2017, 09:23:46 AM »

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.
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Kyzrati

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #4 on: November 04, 2017, 06:45:10 PM »

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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kiedra

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #5 on: November 04, 2017, 09:41:40 PM »

By the time I reached -2, I knew it's gonna be a good run, so I really did wanna get out, but that stupid move of mine at the garrison made it significantly harder. On the other hand, this is where Cogmind really shines and is quite unique I guess, even though the situation is absolutely hopeless, there is no reason to give up, so I kept shooting. I even did crit kill ARCs before they opened, but that barely made a difference, because they just kept coming. My Cog was insanely tanky too, 50% shield (plus 2x backup), phase shifters, a full transporter load of medium cesium armor and lots of guns. It was the first time that I actually missed the hunters too, because they drop KE's, but all I got in those ARCs were grunts, melees and those imps, so rebuilding was kinda rough. My core was still fine (around 1000/1600) when I finally ran out of guns, but once you lose your crit (and penetration) potential, which those lasers just don't have, things go south quickly. I really shoulda made some screenshots, but I didn't, because I'm an idiot and even though the score was fairly high, it just feels sorta not right, because the main goal after all, is to get the heck out. Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun in that run :D
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Joking_Phantom

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #6 on: November 24, 2017, 06:27:05 AM »

All right, I've got more after a second run on easiest mode (Beta 3.1):

Floors 10-8:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floors 7-6:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floors 5-4
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floors 3-2:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Floor 1:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

These specific events should add up to around 68k in bonus points + 12k value destroyed from the Command Garrison. 4k for Alien Techs, 5000 for Prototype IDs, 4500 for Evolutions. At least 3000 on the Robots Destroyed Category, and whatever amount of value destroyed should add up to 120k+. Going to Access_0 should be another 20k points, when I find out how to do so...
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zxc

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #7 on: November 24, 2017, 07:50:58 AM »

That's some impressive knowledge you've accumulated in a short span of time. Most of it is on point. A full extended win is a long process and there are many things to optimise and even more things that can go wrong.

Maxing out bonus points is a good method for high scoring. The only real alternative is to farm as long as possible. To date, all the 80k+ runs have been accomplished with farming. The dream, of course, is the infinite farm, attainable through zero attrition.
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DDarkray

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #8 on: November 24, 2017, 08:46:54 AM »

The dream, of course, is the infinite farm, attainable through zero attrition.

Technically, this is possible, but no one will have the patience or sanity to do that.
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GJ

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #9 on: November 24, 2017, 02:51:47 PM »

To date, all the 80k+ runs have been accomplished with farming.
I'm not sure I would say I farmed in my 90k+ run in Beta 1. I had an extremely powerful offensive build so I did go out of my way to kill anything that could bother me, as any individual encounter was trivial and I only needed to ensure that multiple things don't go wrong at once. Value destroyed still ended up being only around 22k, as I wasn't waiting for stuff to spawn just so I could murder it. The run got most of its score by completing many of the high-value, static bonuses (i.e. not stuff like High Alert Combat Kills).

My 100k+ run in Beta 2 got close to 50k in value destroyed, that's mostly because the build was suuuper slow and had to fight through a ton of robots to get anywhere. But yeah, the vast majority of 80k+ runs we'll see are going to have some 5-digit amount of value destroyed in them.


High Alert Combat Kills seems like it can be a rather significant bonus, I had a run today where I was being a bit silly and got some massive heat on me, escaping that attention ended up being more difficult than I expected --- I had to deal with High Security five levels in a row, and I got a High Alert Combat Kills bonus of 53332 for it. This was a bit more of a farmy run given I wasn't fully prepared to deal with the high-sec, I suspected it would impair my ability to deal with the extended endgame (and it did), so it made more sense to just have fun fighting high-sec while making some progress through the level when reasonable. Making it out alive is pretty good, I suppose.
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Joking_Phantom

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #10 on: November 24, 2017, 03:56:20 PM »

Attached 2 score files, one with command garrison kill and one without. Note the jump in kills, Kill Streak, and Damage Inflicted (Explosive and Thermal). 140k Thermal Explosive damage to destroy 180 robots shoots your score up massively, and I think High Alert gets applied on the entire thing.

I only spent 1842 turns in High Security, which seems to be different from High Alert (8% of 36907 comes out to 2952 turns in High Alert). It seems possiblie to trigger High Security by causing enough destruction as opposed to special events. This is good for points, because the Arc Squads are easily dispatched with AOE weapons and Quantum capacitor energy cannons.

Some other stuff I forgot to mention

Floor 2:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: November 24, 2017, 04:11:35 PM by Joking_Phantom »
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Nerri

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #11 on: March 14, 2018, 02:38:56 AM »

Attached 2 score files, one with C4 Pre Workout and command garrison kill and one without. Note the jump in kills, Kill Streak, and Damage Inflicted (Explosive and Thermal). 140k Thermal Explosive damage to destroy 180 robots shoots your score up massively, and I think High Alert gets applied on the entire thing.

I only spent 1842 turns in High Security, which seems to be different from High Alert (8% of 36907 comes out to 2952 turns in High Alert). It seems possiblie to trigger High Security by causing enough destruction as opposed to special events. This is good for points, because the Arc Squads are easily dispatched with AOE weapons and Quantum capacitor energy cannons.

Some other stuff I forgot to mention

Floor 2:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is a pretty good score. Did anyone manage to beat it? If so, what was the strat to do it?
« Last Edit: November 25, 2021, 05:20:05 AM by Nerri »
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Kyzrati

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Re: Maxing Score
« Reply #12 on: March 14, 2018, 06:56:52 AM »

The current record holder is zxc with a 26-hour hacking-based score-farming run that earned 276,549 points, but that was back in Alpha 13 before I added High Security, and more importantly before Beta 1 when robot hacking was nerfed :P
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