GD: STG of the Month (May/June 2012) - DonPachi!

[Giest118]

Here's a couple of nifty little things I've discovered:

* The Type A ship has the same property as the Laser types in DoDonPachi, where it won't be stopped by popcorn. I believe it's the only one with this property.
* You can bomb up to two times and still get the enormous NMNB bonus at the end of stages.
* The stage 2 boss can be made trivial by doing the following: Always laser. Be slightly on the right side when its rapid-laser barrage starts, then be on the left when it ends. The boss will not be able to touch you. Ever.

[Despatche]

...or just sit in front of it and speedkill in one cycle

[Giest118]

Either is equally valid and won't make the boss easier than it already is.


EDIT: I noticed another nifty thing. In the loop, every suicide bullet you allow to spawn gives you ten points. That's... a rather interesting mechanic.

[Nifty]

The formula given in the ST is a little off (it's only accurate in the case that all enemies in a chain have the same value), so I decided to sit down and figure out how the chaining works. The score given for any enemy killed in a chain, which I'll call the Get Point Value, is equal to its own score plus the cumulative total of all enemies killed in the chain up to that point. As an example, take the main section of the first large green ship on stage 2 that appears on the right, worth 3000 points, followed by eight small blue planes worth 330:

Code: Select all

Enemy Value          GPV          Total Got Points
3000                 3000         3000
330                  3330         6330
330                  3660         9990
330                  3990         13980
...
330                  5640         38880

This is why it's important to have enemies that are worth a lot near or at the start of the chain, but starting with a small enemy doesn't necessarily mean the chain is ruined. Take the stage 2 C-type video posted earlier, where the player destroys the turrets on the ship (worth only 200) before the main part, forming a 10-hit instead of a 9-hit:

Code: Select all

Enemy Value          GPV          Total Got Points
200                  200          200
3000                 3200         3400
330                  3530         6930
330                  3860         10790
...
330                  5840         40880

Adding the turrets in granted their base value multiplied by how long they were in the chain for, in this case 200*10.

Because most chains are designed to start out with a large enemy, a rough formula to figure out their worth is
(B*C)+(E*(C*(C-1)/2))
where B is the base value from the starting enemy, C is the chain length and E is the value of all the extra enemies. These might not all have exactly the same value, so it's important to use an accurate average (enemies near the start will have a higher weighting) because it can change the GP value by a lot. To give another example, the midboss in stage 4 that drops the missiles like DDP's stage 5 boss is worth 4500, and the popcorn that follow it are worth either 70 or 90, so carrying (say) a 70-hit chain off it will award (4500*70)+(80*(70*69/2)) = ~508200 points. The majority of these really juicy chains are in stages 4 and 5, no doubt.

[Randorama]

Thanks for the input DoubleThink, Can I add it to the ST when I will edit it, after this STG month?

[Nifty]

Most definitely It would've been much harder to get into this game if I hadn't had that as a place to start.