ST: DonPachi

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Randorama
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ST: DonPachi

Post by Randorama »

DONPACHI

0.0 FACT FILES

DonPachi (whose translation is "Boss Bee" or an onomathopea for cannons' explosions) is the first Cave game. It was produced in 1995, about one year after Toaplan's bankruptcy and ported to Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation in 1996:both versions usually cost about 30-35$. Its team was in fact composed by mostly ex-Toaplan programmers, the most important of them being Tsuneki Ikeda. This guy was one of the minds behind Batsugun, Tatsujin and Tatsujin Oh (Truxton and Truxton II), which are to be considered the DP's ancestors, to some extent.The game is set in a fictional future in which an elite force, the "DonPachi battallion", has to fight their own comrades (!!!) in order to become the ultimate soldiers, thanks to the insane plots of their general.The game has five stages and, if you can complete it on one credit, it will grant you access to the loop, which features the same 5 stages, but with more aggressive enemies and suicide bullets. Of course, if you can clear them both, you will face the secret final boss!

0.1 AN EXERCISE IN PHILOLOGY

It is usually said that Don Pachi is an unofficial sequel of Batsugun. While this is not basically wrong, Not all elements from Batsugun translated to DonPachi: most of all, the scoring system is quite different (DonPachi is the first game with a true timer for chains) and the pace is a tad slower. Most of the scoring elements to be found in Batsugun were the source of inspiration for Battle Garegga, actually, since its main programmer (Shinobu Yagawa) worked at Toaplan, like Tsuneki Ikeda. Part of this argument has been covered in the : Batsugun's ST ,along other earlier inspirations and sources.

Now, let's make a practical comparison of elements to be found in Batsugun:

BATSUGUN (Special Version)

Three ship types : wide tapping , central laser, mixed. (#1)
Lots of bonuses to be taken for points. (#2)
Bombing in key spots for points. (#3)
Suiciding to get more points with the above trick. (#4)
Suicide bullets in the loops. (#5)
Secret bonuses and tricks for extra points.(#6)
All bosses and major enemies having pattern-based attacks focused on creating "bullet-mazes", the basic premise for "manic shmups".( #7)
Pretty simplied rank, mainly based on difficulty increase when reaching the next round/loop (#8).

Now, which elements were carried in DonPachi?

DONPACHI

Three ships: wide, central, mixed (they also expanded to other ships the idea behind type-C, of a "wider" attack when tapping and a more concentrated attack when holding down the attack button). (#1)
Suicide bullets in the loop (#5)
Secret Bonuses, the bees, to get extra points (#6)
All bosses and major enemies having pattern-based attacks focused on creating "bullet-mazes", the basic premise for "manic shmups".( #7)
Pretty complex rank, based on your bombs stock and survival, it gets nasty on the loop .(#8)

Let's see which elements did appear in Battle Garegga too:

BATTLE GAREGGA

Lots of bonuses to be taken for points (#2)
Bombing in key spots for points (#3)
Suiciding to get more points with the above trick (#4)
Secret bonuses and tricks for extra points (#5)
Pretty complex rank, based on survival time and other (many) aspects. (#7)

Now, we can say that neither of the two heirs have all elements of its "parent", but they take more or less a lot of inspiration from the Toaplan's last shmup. However, both managed to take the Toaplan's legagy, even if in different directions. Now, we'll focus on just on side of this legacy, obviously... DonPachi.One final trivia: if you complete the game, you will see a "censored" version of Toaplan's mascotte!

1.0 BASIC MECHANICS

DonPachi is a simple game to learn and a very hard game to master. Its peculiarity lies in the relatively complex and elastic score system: there are two main aspects for score (chaining and bombing) and two others very minor aspects (bees and various bonuses). The three ships are more or less balanced, even if type-b can be difficult to manage (even more than type-a) . Without much ado, however, let's analyze the

1.1 SHIPS

Maybe i should call them planes...?At any case, These are your RGB vehicles of doom! Their speed and attack vary a lot, their score potential not too much (well, except for type-c, but we'll cover it later).Let's start with

1.1.1 TYPE-A (Red ship for player 1)

This ship is more or less the direct heir of type-b from Batsugun.It has a full-frontal normal shot and a pretty powerful laser. It is the fastest ship and,what's more important, it doesn't slow down too much when using laser. It is suggested for advanced players and anyone who's comfortable with a full-frontal attack.It's probably the easiest ship to use in the loop, because of its normal shot, since it has low chances to destroy a random enemy and get unwanted suicide bullets:not only that, its high speed can be useful to completely side-step suicide bullets and other patterned attacks.

1.1.2 TYPE-B (Green ship for player 1)

Actually an helicopter, It vaguely resembles type-c from Batsugun. The main attack is a powerful full frontal stream, but moving forward will cause the pods to rotate and sweep the screen, until the can shoot an horizontal stream (90° of rotation to their respective sides).Moving backwards will quickly bring them back in their "full frontal" orientation.The main problem with this ship is the big difference in speed between normal shot and laser speed:while normal shot speed is fast as type-A, the laser speed is quite slower, as shown in the specific tables.The best score has been obtained with this ship, but it's surely the most difficult to use, especially for its sweeping turrets and its consistent slowdown while lasering.

.


1.1.3 TYPE-C (Blue ship for player 1)

This is the classical "Spread shot ship", resembling type-a from Batsugun. Its main attack is one frontal stream and two side streams (roughly at 30° on the sides) with an arc-like form, very good to sweep the screen for mass destruction.It also has the most powerful laser, and the slowdown is pretty negligible. It's the slowest speed, but still fast enough to properly dodge bullets: the ship for beginners, but for advanced players too, since its spread shot and its moderate speed make it the most difficult ship to use in the loop.

Once we've covered the ships, let's have a simple table to confront them for their skills:

TYPE-A TYPE-B TYPE-C

SPEED 1st 2nd 3rd
POWER 3rd 2nd 1st
LESS L-SLOWD. 1st 3rd 2st
EASE OF USE 2nd 3rd 1st
LASER BOMB 2nd 1st 2nd

As you can see, type-b results as the "worst" ship, with a tie between type-a and type-c. However, the best record has been obtained with type-b, a good reward for its slightly inferior abilities. But, more than anything, you should try all of them and find which one suits your style of play best: probably the first parameter to be taken in account!

At this point, let's talk about the

2.1 BASIC SHOT

The basic shot is basically divided in two types: normal shot (tapping) and laser (holding down). It is mapped to the first button, but you can use a third button to use the autofire for normal shot. The basic idea behind this feature is to have a "wider" attack that can be more useful to cover the screen, whereas holding down the button will grant a more powerful and focused attack.As i have already said in the 0.1 chapter, this difference stems from type-c in Batsugun and is applied to all ships. Let's start analyzing the

2.1.1 NORMAL SHOT

The normal shot can be used in two ways:

1)By simply tapping the first button, so you shoot a stream of bullets;
2)By triggering the auto-fire feature, so you map the auto-fire function to a third button, so you can hold down that button and also have a stream of bullets;

Its power is always inferior to laser, but the ship moves faster and has a different/wider range.The normal shot can be powered up 7 times, 4 for power, 3 for speed: When dying, it will always go back at the starting level.Its usage depends mainly on chaining, as most of the time it's better to use it when dealing with small enemies or pretty crowded sections.One important thing to take in consideration is how its power-ups work: the first power-up (and all odd-numbered ones, i.e. the third, fifth and seventh) will increase fire rate (and make the shots a bit darker), the second power-up (and all even-numbered ones, i.e. the second,fourth and sixth) will increase the effective power. Once you max out your power, every power-up icon is worth 10k points.One note on powering-up: when you take fire rate-increasing power-ups, a small P icon will be at the right corner of your bomb stock:it will disappear when you get a power-increasing power-up. In case you continue, you will get a MP icon, which automatically gives you the Maximum Power (hence MP). Now, let's talk about the other attack, the

2.1.2 LASER

One fundamental innovation in shmups, based on type-b of Batsugun and extended to all ships: the giant laser of doom (TM)! The laser works in this way: hold on the main fire shot and your ship will slow down, unite its pods in front of her and produce a giant laser which will deliver massive destruction to everything in its path. The power increase for laser is derived from its continuous nature, not an effective increase in power.Even with the fastest autofire rate, the amount of hits delivered to an enemy is lower than the uninterrupted stream of energy from the laser. Not only that (and the slowdown), but the laser actually has a very useful function: it produces an aura. Said aura basically surrounds your ship completely (except for your rear part) and lands damage to all enemies as a separate attack: i.e. if you laser an enemy and also are close enough to "hit" it with the aura, it's like you hit it with two laser streams!As you can guess, aura is very useful for enemies who try to side-step you when you're lasering: the average grunt-helicopter will immediately die, when hit by the aura (and it also counts for chains, of course). One final note: if you play with autofire, holding down autofire button will grant you a stream of normal bullets: if you also hold down the normal button, you will switch to laser, so the best configuration is holding down autofire (when needed) and holding down normal shot too, in key spots.

2.2 BOMB

Guess what?

2.2.1 BOMB TYPES AND THEIR EFFECT
Called "Bomber" in the basic manual, The bomb is, uh, the bomb. The interesting thing is that what you will shoot, in case of need, depends on your attack. The default bomb is a giant nuclear fungus that will cancel all bullets on screen, deal massive damage on the zone hit by the fungus (roughly the vertical side in size) and damage all other enemies on screen.
If you're using the laser and then you shoot a bomb, you will get a giant stream of energy, which can be pretty devastating! One note: the laser bomb is the only aspect in which the type-b helicopter has an advantage, but it's a consistent advantage. Its laser bomb, if used properly, is devastating, given its sheer power and vast dimensions (almost half of the horizontal side).

2.2.2 BOMB STORAGE

The bomb storage can actually increase, the amount and usage of bombs themselves being related to rank and score. These aspects will be covered in the advanced tecniques of the game, but let's analyze how the bomb storage works. If you bomb, it means that you may not be too good at dodging bullets: it's ok, as the game will realize it and give you room for more than three bombs, if you use them.Let's see how:

If you use 2 bombs, you will get a fourth slot for bombs in stock;
If you use 3 bombs, you will get a fifth slot for bombs in stock;
Your maximum amount of bombs in stock is 7.

How this mechanic actually works? Starting from 2 bombs used , you will get an 2 number of slots at your disposal. Once you get an extra slot, the counter resets and has arrive at 2+1=3 bombs used. Now, if you use 2 bombs, you will virtually (i.e. without getting any extra bombs) remain with one bomb: at four maximum bombs, you will virtually be at 1 bomb left after using 3 bombs.Do you recognize the pattern? Let's try with this simple algorythm:

Start with N=3 bombs and the bomb storage value as Ns;
Arrive at N-U=K=1 bombs (U=Used bombs);
Get the bomb storage value at Ns+1;
repeat until Ns=7

In short: if you bomb, the game will recognize your skill level and give you room for more bombs. Since you get extra bombs at the end of a stage (stage number= extra bombs number,i.e. clearing stage 2 will grant you 2 extra bombs), you can actually bomb and get an higher amount of bombs in stock, by doing so!This will also keep rank low, but that's an issue covered in the proper section.

Once we've covered the Basic aspects of the games, let's switch to the advanced aspects.

3.0 ADVANCED MECHANICS

I will divide this section in two parts: advanced mechanics and scoring mechanics. The latters depend mainly on the advanced mechanics, as you will see, hence the said order.

3.1 RANK

While Rank is not a stictly score-related mechanic, it does depend from a score-related aspect.In short: Rank depends from your survival time (minor component, though) and from your bomb bonus (major aspect). Rank is pretty simple: get to stage 4 without using bombs (or to the loop without dying) and the game will switch to "Hard". Get to the loop without bombing (or to 2-4 without dying) and the game will switch to "Very Hard". Die, and the difficulty will go one level back: on your last life, it will switch to "Easy"!That's all you really need to know about rank, other minor aspects will be touched in the other sections.

3.2 LOOP AND SUICIDE BULLETS

The game has a loop, which is accessible by just completing (regardless of the amount of credits used) the first round. Like all good ol' loops, you basically play all the first five stages again but, this time, the enemies will release nasty suicide bullets, which are influenced by rank: better, if the difficulty level is higher than "Normal", the suicide bullets will be faster (but not as fast as the normal bullets) and more chaotic in their trajectory: at "Easy", to make an example, they almost go in straight lines, like the second round of Batsugun. Suicide bullets are actually meant to be damaging debris from explosion (aimed debris?Wtf?), so as long as you will have an explosion animation on screen, it will release them.However, if you're at point-blank distance, the bullets won't be released: point-blank being basically the equivalent of your ship being at least on the explosion's border.Speaking of point-blank:

3.2 POINT BLANK

No, Namco's not involved, but...in short, if you're near an enemy (i.e. if you can touch it with your aura when lasering), you're in point-blank range. Point-blank involves smaller enemies to stop shooting at you (if you dont' already fry them with the aura), while bigger ones usually don't care: better, most of them can only stop using some (but not all) attacks, so you may want to avoid any point-blank temptative on them. This tecnique is very useful in the loop, as risky as it can be: it implies that you need to risk a bullet on the nose by staying close to enemies, to avoid having 100 suicide bullets coming from the explosion.

3.3 SCREEN SIZE AND BULLET CANCELLING

Yes, DonPachi is like old-skool games, and you have 10% of the screen (per side) not showing unless you go on one side.This is very useful to cancel bullets, since many enemies won't shoot unless they're on screen.Which ones?Sadly, only the "carriers" (big ones).There are a few cases, on stage 4 and more on stage 5, where you get snipers from the bottom part of the screen or from sides, shooting at you even if they're not visible.One flaw (the only one) of the game is that, near the last boss, you get some planes that will actually shoot without even coming on-screen, unless you're in the point-blank range!Now that you know it, though, it's easy to avoid random bullets from below, no?

3.4 AURA

As i said, Aura is the energy surrounding the ship when you use the laser: it damages all enemies coming in contact with it,dealing the equivalent of the laser in damage.This means that you can take down big enemies very quickly, if you know how to point-blank them. Not only that, but it does provide a good protection against all small enemies, since it destroys them quickly (upon contact, basically). Aura is also the key to simplify some sections: in some points, for instance the second boss, you can easily sit down and laser the boss, the thrown discs will not damage you, as they will be destroyed by aura itself. Last but not least, Aura is a good method to clear the screen of enemies if moving on the extra portions of the screen, since it will deal damage to enemies that won't shoot to you (bullet cancelling) and won't even start (point-blank).

Said that, let's talk about score and how to get points.

4.0 SCORING MECHANICS

DonPachi has two main sources of score: the bomb bonus and chains.Two minor aspects are bees-collecting and stars, end-of-stage bonus items and random destruction.To give you an idea, in a virtual perfect play (1-LC), with all the best chains, you'd get about 80M: about 40M come from chaining, 30M from the bomb bonus, the rest from the other factors. The scoring mechanism that you will probably try to learn is chaining, though, as the bomb bonus also influences rank,as i said.

4.1 CHAINING

Chaining in DonPachi is simple: destroy something and keep destroying stuff with an interval equal to 0.5 seconds or less, regardless of the basic attack you use. What does matters is the first enemy you start the chain with: the bigger the enemy (and thus its value), the higher the multiplier.Let's proceed with order, though.The amount of points you do with a chain is the sum of the N enemies destroyed, multiplied by the first enemy's value .This means that, if you destroy 50 enemies starting from an enemy worth 100 points, you get:

N(N+1)/2*100*K

points, with N=50 and K=100 it's:

50(51)/2*100=127,5k points

Now, you have to add an additional multiplier, based on first enemy's value: for instance, if you start with an enemy worth 800 points, you will get:

N(N+1)/2*100*K

points, with N=50 and K=800 it's:

N(+1)/2*800= 1,02M

Not bad!

you also have two other types of chain: the debris-based chain and the scenery-based chain. The debris-based chain is actually the typical chain you get with the smaller planes on stage 4 and on the debris before the secret final boss (hence the name). It's not the sum of hit you get, but just the number of hits multiplied by 100, or:

100N*K

With K being the basic value of the first enemy: this means that you can at least increase the overall value by starting with a carrier and continuing with small planes. Last but not least, you can start chains with scenery elements, which are worth 0 points, and they're worth:

(N-1)N/2*K

With K=100.Scenery is always worth 0 points, at any case, but it can be useful to continue the chain.

As i said, as long as enemies are destroyed with a basic attack (normal shot, laser, aura) they do count for the chain.Bombing will always reset the chain, regardless of the conditions.Once we know this, let's pass to

4.2 BOMB BONUS

The bomb bonus is simple: if you don't use bombs, the game will reward you at the end of a stage. This bonus follows this progression:

1st stage...............................100k
2nd stage..............................200k
3rd stage...............................400k
4th stage...............................800k
5th stage...............................2M
Every stage of the loop......5M

Die or bomb, and sorry, no bonus.In case you are on your remaining lives, or your bomb stock has increased, you get these bonuses instead:

3 bombs in stock.................100k
4 bombs in stock.................60k
5 bombs in stock.................40k
6 bombs in stock.................20k
7 bombs in stock.................0

Now, let's make a few comparisons: in a virtual flawless play, you'd roughly get about 40M from chaining and 28,5M from not bombing:not only that, 25M out of 28,5M (~87%) comes from the loop-based bonuses.Not bombing increases difficulty and at an higher speed than mere survival,bombing increases your chances of survival and the bomb stock (and thus your chances of survival, again). So, it's pretty obvious: unless you're going for the top spot, it's easier to just bomb without minding too much that bonus.
4.3 BEE BONUS

It is pretty simple (and small, about 2,65M on 75M total: roughly 3%): you will have hidden bees in key spots, hovering on them will make them flash, laser them to make them collectable. They can be added to chain (+1 hit), but their main point is giving you something to look for. Their value increase is this:

1st-4th bee 5th-8th 9th-12th 13th
100 1k 10k 100k
200 2k 20k
400 4k 40k
800 8k 80k

Finally, ShaperMC's guides for the first two stages:

Level 1 Bee Capture Guide
Level 2 Bee Capture Guide

4.4 STARS

Stars are the final aspect of the scoring mechanisms: they're worth 300 points if taken outside a chain, but they will act as enemies if revealed in in a chain (and will also give you the said 300 points when taken). Their value goes to the bonus capacity value, which will multiply the stars (and other secret items) by 1k.

4.5 RANDOM STUFF (AND THE 1P)

Ok, what's left? Let's recap a bit: you can chain, you can get a bonus for not using bombs, you have bees and stars,the number of items you get in a stage is multiplied by 1k at the end of a stage...ah, you get one extra ship at 2M points, there's another ship at the fourth stage too. Once you get past the first aerial section and start flying on the flying fortress, don't shoot bombs and destroy all turrets.At some point you will get a giant turret shooting two streams of spread shot, destroy it and it will release a 1p icon. This trick doesn't work at the loop, sorry!Ah, final note: the last boss is worth 1M

5.0 CONCLUSIONS

DonPachi marked the turning point, along other shmups, in shmups history: it has a lot of interesting features and scoring opportunities, even if the main focus is on chaining. The best approach to the game is finding the ship that suits better your style and figure out how to chain well, since there's some room for improvisation: as long as you start a chain with a high-value enemy, it's fine. You can also play it for sheer survival and still have a nice experience: The game is challenging, even without going for score.

FUTURE UPDATES:

I will post a few lines (and screens, i think) on stages approaches in the near future, but the main core of the guide is complete. I hope you will appreciate it and find it useful.
Last edited by Randorama on Sun Sep 11, 2005 12:32 pm, edited 6 times in total.
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Bydobasher
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Post by Bydobasher »

[EDIT]

Content deleted now that Rando has reincorporated the information into his ST.

[/EDIT]

Also, forum-member Style-O pointed out that DP does allow you to access the second loop after continuing.
Last edited by Bydobasher on Thu Jan 27, 2005 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Randorama
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Post by Randorama »

Ah, thanks, i didn't even notice that the saved form was incomplete :?

By chance, do you have the other STs, though?We're having an hard time trying to get them back :?
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Post by Style-0 »

Rando , have you been checking about possible version divergence?
Randorama
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Post by Randorama »

:?

No, i suppose you mean differences between the international and japanese versions, perhaps? Or the differences between the two ports?
Need to investigate then :wink:
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Post by Style-0 »

Randorama wrote:No, i suppose you mean differences between the international and japanese versions, perhaps? Or the differences between the two ports?
Need to investigate then
I talked about it a couple of weeks ago in the old forum (RIP).
The first boss in the korean version seem to lack the central mashinegunshoot (not to confuse with the desperation attack), and watching the M.A.R.P-replay by violet , I noticed a hitcounter showing the highest hitcombo like the on used in DDP , it just made me think of possible differences between the regions.

Testing the differenent roms (in Mame32v74b) just confirmed the first boss differences. The violet replay (using a different mame-realese..but with the same rom) has this too but with the addition of the hitcounter . . but his counter is not showing up when using mame32v74b (a newer release, but not the newest) , neither can I find something like it in the saturn port. :?
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zlk
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Post by zlk »

The large display hit counter is selected by the player. You need to move the joystick to the upper-left and hit fire and start while playing. This makes the hit count bigger. It will also display your max hit count in the combo score area when you aren't killing enemies. I am not sure if it has any other effects though. You can turn it off by moving diagonally down to the right while you hit fire and start.
Last edited by zlk on Thu Jan 27, 2005 6:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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TVG
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Post by TVG »

very cool stuff.

hoping to see the same for DDPDOJ one day :p
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Post by Style-0 »

zlk wrote: The large display hit counter is selected by the player. You need to move the joystick to the upper-left and hit fire and start while playing. This makes the hit count bigger. It will also display your max hit count in the combo score area when you aren't killing enemies. I am not sure if it has any other efftects though. You can turn it off by moving diagonally down to the right while you hit fire and start.
welcome back zlk and and that's some nice information you bring with you!
Have to test this as soon as possible :D
Nice stuff for the Donpa-ST indeed.
Randorama
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Post by Randorama »

Speaking of which, what about a guide to the best chains?So we can make a join forces to cover the most rewarding sources of score :wink:
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Post by Style-0 »

Randorama wrote:Speaking of which, what about a guide to the best chains?So we can make a join forces to cover the most rewarding sources of score
That's a nice idea, any suggesions on how, it's a pain in the "#s describing chaining with text .. and it's the problem with hosting-space, If you want to use screens or videos.

Lately i haven't been able to reach this forum from home ??? only succeding with the help of an anonymiser web proxy, but it's really slow and only in text mode...irritating :x
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Post by ReKleSS »

Little addendum regarding ship B (I find A too narrow and C too slow): The laser speed seems slow, but in actual fact it's exactly the same as ship C. It just seems slow because there's a larger difference between normal speed and laser speed. Secondly, the movement of the turrets depends on your vertical movement. Moving forwards makes them lock at 45 degrees; moving backwards doubles their rotation speed.

-ReK
Randorama
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Post by Randorama »

Thanks for the info, i've edited the type-b entry :wink:
Chomsky, Buckminster Fuller, Yunus and Glass would have played Battle Garegga, for sure.
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Aguraki
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by Aguraki »

I'm not sure how the bomb bonus works and if OP is right here.
I did have the bomb bonus with 2 bombs in stock on 3 on stage 3(400K).
same with stage 2,bomb and you get the 200K anyway.

So you can bomb at least once(twice?) or something but def not what is stated in OP.

I've been thinking to this for a while,rereading OP tons of times and trying to be sure I wasn't crazy ahah.

Please someone ends my thoughts-)
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Mero
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by Mero »

Yes you can use 2 bombs and still get the bomb bonus, but no more than 2
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Fu
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by Fu »

Is there a video with a higher score than 20 millions on the internet ? Can't find any
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RNGmaster
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by RNGmaster »

Reminder that you only get a bomb bonus if you are still at 3 bomb slots (I think).
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

The bomb bonus appears to be highest at 3 slots, and goes down by large amounts. You still get a bomb bonus at 4 and 5 slots but it's significantly less (at 6 slots it's only 20000 bonus). There's no bomb slot bonus at 7 slots from what I recall.
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by RNGmaster »

Ah, thanks, so it's slots not number of bombs in stock. I was so pumped to get the 5m bonus at the end of 2-1, too...
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by guigui »

Damned, even after reading that paragraph about bomb storage extension four times carefully, I still dont get how it works.

Anyone care to explain to me again :
- How do I increase my bomb storage capacity ?
- When does my bomb storage capacity increase ? When I die as in DDP ?
- What is the effect of clearing a stage on bomb refill ?

Thanks for the guide.
Bravo jolie Ln, tu as trouvé : l'armée de l'air c'est là où on peut te tenir par la main.
Erppo
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by Erppo »

You get more bomb slots when you bomb. You get a refill of x bombs after stage x (and x after stage 2-x).
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guigui
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by guigui »

Erppo wrote:You get more bomb slots when you bomb
That's nice. Do I have to get a 1 bomb left to increase my bomb storage capacity ?

Erppo wrote: . You get a refill of x bombs after stage x (and x after stage 2-x).
Hum, if I use my 3 bombs in stage 1 and clear stage 1, I have a max stock of 4 bombs, ok. But I get a refill of 4 bombs before stage 2, normal ?
Bravo jolie Ln, tu as trouvé : l'armée de l'air c'est là où on peut te tenir par la main.
Erppo
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by Erppo »

guigui wrote:
Erppo wrote:You get more bomb slots when you bomb
That's nice. Do I have to get a 1 bomb left to increase my bomb storage capacity ?
No.
guigui wrote:
Erppo wrote: . You get a refill of x bombs after stage x (and x after stage 2-x).
Hum, if I use my 3 bombs in stage 1 and clear stage 1, I have a max stock of 4 bombs, ok. But I get a refill of 4 bombs before stage 2, normal ?
It sounds like you're playing the US version. I think that one gives full bomb refills, as if the game didn't give you enough bombs already.
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guigui
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by guigui »

You're right ! I'm playing Euro version actually. Euroshmupping Cave's shumps is shmup by the way.
Bravo jolie Ln, tu as trouvé : l'armée de l'air c'est là où on peut te tenir par la main.
Paperclip
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by Paperclip »

I really love this game but it seems that love is not widely shared for some reason. I try to find info/strategies/videos/etc. but every time I google stuff for Donpachi all I get is a slew of entries for DoDonPachi, and it's really frustrating.

Can someone explain why this game is so unpopular and where I might be able to find more assistance with it? For instance, I'm trying to find a good guide to golden bee locations but have thus far come up empty. Also, some superplays would be nice.

Anyways, any help would be greatly appreciated!
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Shepardus
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by Shepardus »

The game was recently counterstopped and the video posted on YouTube, if you're looking for a superplay you can't get better than that. There are a lot of really insane chains in it and I assume it has all the bee locations, though I didn't actually check that.
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NTSC-J: You know STGs are in trouble when you have threads on how to introduce them to a wider audience and get more people playing followed by threads on how to get its hardcore fan base to play them, too.
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zlk
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by zlk »

Paperclip, you could watch my replay on youtube for ideas on how to clear the game in the simplest fashion. I do really mess up parts of 2-4 though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR8LpLEo3cY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAjB6SSXV10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPSKCxN9rG8
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Shepardus
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by Shepardus »

I'm not sure I understand what the chaining formulas on this ST are saying, but they don't sound right to me. It should just be the same system in DoDonPachi, where each time you get a hit the point values of all previous enemies in the chain are added to your GP counter, right?
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Erppo
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by Erppo »

Shepardus wrote:I'm not sure I understand what the chaining formulas on this ST are saying, but they don't sound right to me. It should just be the same system in DoDonPachi, where each time you get a hit the point values of all previous enemies in the chain are added to your GP counter, right?
Hmm, yeah. Those look made up.

In fact I just did a super quick test and it seems to be the same as in all the sequels (I assume you meant score instead of GP counter there). The formulas in the guide would mean that adding a single low value popcorn into the beginning of a chain starting with a high value target would make the whole chain worth way less score (like only a fraction of the shorter chain score), which is obviously false.
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Randorama
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Re: ST: DonPachi

Post by Randorama »

Erppo wrote:
Hmm, yeah. Those look made up.

In fact I just did a super quick test and it seems to be the same as in all the sequels (I assume you meant score instead of GP counter there). The formulas in the guide would mean that adding a single low value popcorn into the beginning of a chain starting with a high value target would make the whole chain worth way less score (like only a fraction of the shorter chain score), which is obviously false.

I had a look again at the formulae, and it looks like I never corrected them in the first place. Can someone give me a corrected version of the formulae to edit them in? No smart aleck comments needed, thank you.
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