Sail scoring

	The values used in this article are for the purposes of demonstrating relative values only.
	The actual mechanical values behind the puzzle are undisclosed.

Basic points

Points in sailing are based on balls cleared. Clearing one ball is worth one point. Solid blocks are worth two points. Balls in a target (also called platform) are worth two points.

Consistently clearing 4's without any bonuses removes balls as fast as they come in, however does NOT give acceptable performance. Basic efficiency is based on each ball having a cost of 2 (each drop having a cost of 4), giving plain 4's an efficiency of 50%, while giving single target clears, without any bonus, a 100% efficiency.

[Wyriel] Cost is a confusing term -- one subtracts costs from points/rewards/currency. What is being done here is division, not subtraction. The point is to rescale points per ball so that a score like '1' means 'the same thing' in each puzzle. (1 == 100%). One might be able to rescale points so that 1 == Good on all puzzles, but it is easily the case that on such a scale an excellent in carpentry is 2 and an incredible is 2.5, whereas an excellent in sails might be 3 and an incredible might be 10.

Puzzling performance is based on percentiles, which is a nonlinear scale (division is a linear transformation) -- in particular, 1% == ultimate == incredible [lizthegrey confirms in forum threads on b-navving]. The incredible mark is, thus, the average performance of the bottommost ult -- if there are 1000 sailors, than the 10th best sailor determines exactly how many pts per ball one needs on average to get incredible. Similar calculations determine where the excellent, good, etc., cutoffs are. So what one really wants information about is what kinds of combos are presently needed on a given ocean to hit excellent/incredible/'inconceivable' [presumably no one reading this page is aiming for good or lower], where 'inconceivable' is the average performance of the very best sailors, i.e., the 99.9th percentile instead of the 99th percentile. Also referred to as 'high incredible'.

Combo factor

In sails, clearing a combo (2 sets -- two rows, or a row and a column at the same time) is believed to not give any bonus. Sails is strictly about the cascades.

[Wyriel] It is also believed to give a bonus, by me. A small, and thus difficult to notice, bonus. Try comparing the size of text on, say, a bingo + 2 extra simultaneous bingo clears to the size of text on a vanilla vegas.

Cascade factor

Cascades in sails are believed to be straight increasing multipliers. The third step in a cascade (triple) is worth 3 times the normal value.

While successive vegases display only "Vegas" it is believed, by those who regularly build them, that the multiplier is not capped at x6, even though the description is.

The main evidence for this is that the "vegas-ults" are normally top of the DR, but not top of the ultimate list -- early grapples and booches are devastating to a full screen multi-vegas, but not to platform heavy triples.

"Platform Bonus"

Clearing a platform as the first step in a cascade gives a small bonus. The exact amount of this is not known.

[Wyriel] It is unlikely that there is such a bonus, as the in-game hints strongly suggest that placing a normal clear in front of a platform is A Good Idea. I think this is an illusion based on looking at text sizes without running numbers.

The efficiency of a single platform is 2 pts/ball. A platform, platform is 3 pts/ball, and a platform,platform,platform is 4 pts/ball. Successive platforms add 1 pt/ball to the efficiency. The first platform, however, adds 2 pt/ball. This is the basis of the illusion.

For single clears, P is twice as good as N -- the text size difference will be large. Doubles, on the other hand, have a greater range of possibilities -- NN, NP, PN, and PP. The PP is twice as good as the NN, but not twice as good as the more commonly played NP. On the single step of a PP the current points per ball is 1 -- 8 balls, 8 points earned so far. On the single step of an NP the current points per ball is 1/2 -- 8 balls, 4 points earned so far. So on the single step the first combo is twice as good. But on the double step the points per ball of the PP is 3, and for the NP it is 2.5 -- a much smaller relative difference, and so the font sizes on the double step will be closer than the font sizes on the single step. For a triple, PPP vs. NPP, the 'Triple' of each has an even smaller difference in font size: 4 pts/ball vs. 3 2/3 pts/ball. Still the single steps of PPP vs. NPP differ by a factor of 2.

It is this phenomenon that would lead to thinking that initial platforms acquire some additional small bonus (due to the text size differences), but in fact such size differences are easily explained without a bonus. While it is the case that P^k is always at least a little better than NP^(k-1), it is still a Good Idea to start combos with normal clears -- because the choice is not between P^k and NP^(k-1) but between P^k and NP^k. That is, one cannot create platforms, but one can create normal clears at the beginning. NP^k is always better than P^k, and in general, N^lP^k is better than N^jP^k for every l>j.

Sample effective scores

A pair of fixed spots used with the first piece to create a 4 in a row is worth 2 points for the piece played, and 4 points for the two fixed pieces, giving 6 points for a cost of 4. This is 150% efficiency, and sparkly. It goes without saying that this is not maintainable, but is more of an initial luck factor. Moreover one loses the sparkly very fast, as it is only 6 points -- the very next move reduces the efficiency to below 100%. A different/better use for these is to setup a cheaper trigger for a cascade; perhaps pulling of a triple using 5 drops instead of 6, for example.

Scoring a simple double into a platform will score 4 for the single, and 8*2 for 4 pieces in a platform, for 20 points earned, and a cost (assuming no waste) of 16 points (8 balls). This is 125% efficiency, but will be hard to maintain.

If only half of the balls that land can be used in a platform, then even with a double, each ball will score 4 (2 for being in a platform, 2 for being doubled), with a cost of 4. This looks like 100% efficiency, but the trigger for the double will NOT score that much. A typical set up will be 2 pairs, with one waste, to set up the platform, and four more pairs to set up the trigger and double. This is 6 drops (12 balls, 24 total cost), scoring 20 points. While this gives an efficiency of less than 100%, this is usually enough for yellow sails (note that this will vary from ocean to ocean). It can be done in 4 drops, but one has to get just the right drops. On the other hand, one can setup two of these at once using 4 drops each, and the final efficiency will be the same. Using 4 drops would get 125% efficiency.

Cascading a platform to a platform for a double, with the same setup (2 pairs plus one waste per platform, a 5th pair to trigger) will score 8 plus 16 = 24 points, plus a small platform bonus for the first platform (probably 4 points), or 28 points for a cost of 5 drops (20 points), or 140%. Or 120% if there is no platform bonus. It can be done in 4 drops if one is lucky or builds multiple combos at once. With no platform bonus that has an efficiency of 150%. One can also reuse the 'waste' pieces from prior combos as free moves in order to eventually end up with a series of, effectively, perfect double platform combos.

A plain triple onto a platform, with no platform cascades, will generate 4 + 8 + 24, at a cost of 2 drops to set up the platform, and 6 drops to set up the single and double trigger. This is 8 drops, or a cost of 32, and a score of 36, for an efficiency of 112.5%. Note that this is not as good as the two platform double. Again, it can be done in 6 drops through luck or planning, especially in the long-term. Done this way one gets 36/24 or 150% efficiency, and is as good as the perfect platform double.

The "ultimate triple" is a plain single onto a platform followed by a platform. This is 4 + 16 + 24 = 44 points. If one can do this in the absolute minimum drops, in the long-term, then that is 6 drops or a cost of 24, which works out to about 188% efficiency.

Finally, a V^4, or a quad-vegas, should be worth 4 + 8 + 16 + ... + 36 = 180 pts. If done perfectly, which is unlikely, that is 18 drops or a cost of 72. If one were to do 22 drops instead, at a cost of 88, the efficiency works out to just over 200%. Throwing a platform into the combo anywhere boosts efficiency nicely, especially ending on one. If one does not play super fast, this is a sufficient number of points to be sparkly all by itself (even against 30 drops it has an efficiency of 150%), meaning that one would have a full 3 minutes of sparkly sails before it would be necessary to break another combo.

Notice that it is very important to make scores by cascading from platform to platform, reducing waste (luck or multiple combo builds), and recycling waste. Or build insanely large without booching or getting interrupted.

Long-term scoring

Sailing does not generate a score on most moves. High end sailors will generate a large scoring move occasionally, with lots of zero scores inbetween. As long as the total of the scores in the scoring frame (the last three minutes) is sufficient, the indicator will stay sparkly.

General comments

Although regarding each ball as a cost of 2 makes the numbers all come out as integers, this is the only case where efficiencies around 100% are sufficient or nearly sufficient to keep a sparkly indicator. Most likely, a better view is to regard each drop as a cost of 3 or 3.5, as then the efficiency percentage for a sparkly indicator is more inline with the percentages needed in other puzzles.

Also, the proposed system can be shown to be off; at the most it should be used as a rule of thumb. For example, a combo with a single obstacle block on the first and second steps, cleared in 3 drops (2 double color drops and then the right mixed color) went high blue on Viridian and did not flatline until a total of 13 drops were played. In the proposed system that combo should have been worth 2+3+2*(2+3)=15 points and a cost of 12 for a little over 100% efficiency. But it takes only 8 drops to have a cost of 32, resulting in less than 50% efficiency -- the nominal value for simple single clears (which do not budge the indicator). At 8 drops that combo was still showing value. Clearing a platform with one's first two moves is sparkly, and continues to have value for about 9 drops; clearing 2 same-colored obstacles on ones first move is sparkly, and continues to have value for about 5 drops. In the proposed system those combos should expire faster; the latter combo is supposed to be worth 6 points, which would drop to 50% in 3 drops.

Of further interest is that single clearing 4 in a row never generates a message as far as I can tell. But single clearing 5 in a row shows text ('Great'). Single clearing 6, 7, or 8 in a row generates 'Excellent'. Single, but simultaneously, clearing two 6 in a rows generates two instances of 'Excellent' -- simultaneously singly clearing a 6 in a row and a 5 in a row generates one instance of 'Great' and one instance of 'Excellent'. Singly clearing a platform shows 'Target Bonus', which I believe does not mean any bonus above and beyond the normal extra multiplier for platforms, but rather the client is just generating text for any single clear that is better than the simplest possible clear.

Important disclaimer: All point values used within these pages reflect relative values and weights as determined by players. No developer has commented on the current accuracy of any of these. Any forum post from developers that gave point scoring information is from pre-release days (pre-Midnight), and potentially has been changed. In particular, sailing (at least) has been known to have had major changes to scoring at least once. Use at your own risk. Past performance is no guarantee of future potential. Scoring may be changed in any update. Star levels do change the challenges that you face, and may change the scoring; the same play at different star levels may score differently. While this is known to be true in bilge, it potentially may be true in any puzzle.