User:Wyriel
Sailing thoughts.
Puzzle scoring is about averages. Not summation. Do a bunch of low value moves to clear up space -- tank your average.
That having been said, one should still find suitably fast ways to clear up enough room to get high scores -- just be aware that such moves should be considered 'painful'.
The puzzles are about thinking on ones feet. Doing something repeatable, mechanical, scientific, etc., goes less rewarded. Being creative and imaginative, adapting to the board at end, without having to sit for a minute thinking about it == mad bonus.
In particular, platform-platform-platform in sailing is better than a C^15 -- a V^10!. Not in the sense of scoring more points -- but in being more efficient.
There are 1) raw points == combos 2) raw points averaged in some fashion == indicator 3) raw points averaged in some fashion and subsequently summed == DR 4) standing: some calculation on 3). Perhaps something as simple as continuing the summation for the entire puzzling session (but this allows one to sidestep the consistency thing (maybe)).
Theories about idle: 1) Spending longer than 10 seconds counts as making a move even though you didn't. [and then one has to play the move one is on] 2) Constant idle penalty, perhaps even as nasty as constant penalty straight to the efficiency, or even nastier and straight penalty to the performance level. Probably more like a -20 raw points thing.
Theories about averaging: 1) Can't be over time -- playing faster would be a huge win, and it isn't. 2) Can't be over just moves -- Nemo: "All puzzles are played better faster"
Unless it is meant in the very very weak sense of the first league.
3) Perhaps moves made plus a constant? So if you go faster, the constant has less effect?
Suppose, for example, one must make a move every ten seconds or one counts as idle. If it was just a straight up penalty, but one had a *huge* combo, taking like 60 moves to build, then one's first component of counting that score would be N/60, then N/(60-1*x) - 1*idle, then N/(60-2x) - 2*idle, and so forth, where x is the number of moves played during the increment where the indicator is updating. If N and x are large and the idle penalty is small, then one might do much much better than one 'deserves'.
If instead, one incurs an idle penalty, and a move, then not moving at all will increase at most up to ~N/m by stalling, where m is the number of increments in a scoring frame (1 move per increment). This could still give a benefit, but not as insane as N/1 for 2 or 3 increments in a row (or worse, a divide by 0 error if all of one's moves fall off the scoring frame). Also, pausing seems to help with the idle penalty thing, but I would imagine a paused medium combo goes flat far before 3 minutes, but is still much better than just sitting there playing pieces as slowly. So I do think there are two components to idleness -- only one of which can be canceled by pausing.
Another way to help combat gaming stalling would be to record moves not when they are made, but rather when they are used to make a clear. I don't think this is how it is done, but it's not precisely easy to test, since the assumption is that the increments are 10 seconds, and playing decently fast is maybe 3 moves in that time frame. So if your moves aren't recorded until you make a break, but 1 move at a minimum is laid down, then over time one is dividing by something that is growing at a rate of 1 or 3, until one makes a break. If one is dead set on testing it, that is enough to notice for sure, but just causal sailing one could be easily misled to believe either way. But again, this does not appear to be the case, by analogy with bilge for example. This does suggest that it might be possible to game the standing mechanic by exploiting the scoring frame to build insanely huge combos and get them divided by smaller numbers -- suppose one can play 40 moves a scoring frame and build an 80 move combo. If it were divided by 80 and counted in one frame, it would be m * N / 80, but if the first 40 moves are forgotten, then the one-frame score is m * N / 40 -- twice as large. But if one just keeps repeating this then one is alternating 0 scoring frames with m * N / 40 scoring frames, for the same effect as just constantly doing (m * N / 2) / 40, i.e., building smaller combos that fit within a single frame [which is much better for the ship]. But, value goes up faster than number of moves (or we would always be stuck at efficiency 1): twice as many moves earns more than twice as many points if it is all in one combo. I bring this up because of krewata on hunter; check youtube. Interesting to wonder if that style might make a #1 position unapproachable, but at the same time, the sailing would be terrible.
But so far no one can build combos like that that use more than one platform, so its a non-issue -- people using platforms are doing so within a single scoring frame before they run out of space (more or less). And platforms are where it is at. The krewata combo is an insanely huge raw score, but shur's combos -- in particular the 13x combo on like 6 platforms -- beat the pants off of it on efficiency.
Theories about factors: 1) Extra balls in a break (bilge style combos) -- I think these are beneficial, not just in a tactical sense, but in a raw scoring sense. Being able to get to 40s and 20s on viridian with my old style of sailing (only normal clears!) doesn't make any sense unless simultaneous clears are giving a boost. I think it is small and hard to notice without a multiplier like x5,6,7,8, being applied. Even then unclear ;). 2) Obstacle blocks. These are worth a bunch. Clearing these out with a bunch of lame doubles/triples (or even singles) does not tank ones score nearly as fast as normal clears do. Singly clearing them takes 2 moves at least (one of a double color), i.e., just as many as a normal clear does -- the extra 1 block is not helpful for making the break happen. Generally what happens is that one of the balls that was dropped just becomes a new 'free' block on the board, replacing the old one. It follows that if one is dividing by the same denominator but not getting the same effect, then the numerator is larger. 3) Booching boards. Maybe hurts score? 4) Abandoning boards. Doesn't appear to hurt...at league points or other breaks it can cause ones indicator to reset, which sortof appears to be a penalty of a sort, but since how standing is computed off of performance isn't really known for first league phenonema, this is unclear even at LP resets. 5) No partial credit (like in carp).
A note: Playing 50 moves to build some huge variation on a vegas, and then clearing a single, looks like a really really bad single. I'm not sure how the indicator responds to this exactly -- if it drops suddenly, that lends credence to the theory that move recording is delayed to the time of breaks (but one still always gets some amount of constant move/time to encourage faster play and anti-pausing). Anyways, if one then follows that with a single move to clear the built vegas, in isolation, it looks like an unbelievably awesome combo. After both of these, the result is about the same as if one had switched the order of the two breaks. If one does both within 10 seconds, I think the result is exactly the same. In particular, the averaging is over all of one's activities in the past 3 minutes or so, so that one can't game the system into thinking your building unbelievable combos by also giving it crap combos (with certain formulas, the combination of the two could work out to better than the non-gamed situation). One can fool oneself, though, by paying too much attention to the indicator.
A further note: Adding normal clears to the ends of combos is not as good an idea as just clearing the platforms and setting up a new combo with a normal clear at the beginning. The ideal combo is like N^kP^l, with N being normal clears to bump up multipliers, and P are platform clears to cash in. Throwing N's afterwards does earn points, and can raise efficiency for that one combo in isolation (but not always!), but it would be better to stick it at the beginning of the next combo (or at the beginning of this one), in general. (NP)^k is an easy combo structure to build, and pretty good. But if one could build 1.6 NP^(k+1)s in the same amount of time (1.6 chosen arbitrarily) that is almost certainly better -- the (NP)^k or P^kN^l combo forms should be seen as an effective way to stall while waiting for the pieces you actually want (to flesh out the platform part of the combo) [instead of just throwing the pieces to the sides, they get thrown into the combo. This is good -- but not great.]
In fact something like NNP^k is probably the thing to shoot for, or at the top of the board, maybe something like NPNP^k (because its hard to fit a double in at the top). This is mostly because that kind of build makes it easier to stow away the pieces you need in whatever order you get them in.
The question comes down to whether or not the number of platforms in one's current combo is below, at, or above the normal amount of platforms one has in one's combos. If below, better to get it over and done with. If at, then it doesn't matter if one clears it now, or tack on normal clears all over the place. If above, then cramming normal clears everywhere one can is going to be very good -- because these do raise efficiency, and if one's base efficiency from platforms is higher than one's normal average, then one is in a sweet spot where every move you make towards the current combo is just strictly good. But if the base efficiency from platforms is low, attempting to increase it to one's normal efficiency with normal clears is not as effective as just sucking it up and getting a fresh batch of platforms to build a better base combo.
