ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

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Shepardus
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Shepardus »

Anyone who's tried chaining Naval knows that this ship can be a real pain in the ass to chain from:
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Sometimes it seems that it just doesn't want to give you the chain extension.

After some investigation, I think the easiest way to get the chain off the green airship revolves around not destroying all of its parts. Each of the two wings on the airship can be destroyed individually for 1000 points (not counting the various guns on them), and the core can be destroyed for 500 with bomb, or 5000 with shot/aura. What's important is that the core can actually be destroyed twice, and the second time is what awards the chain extension.

If you destroy both wings and the core, the ship self-destructs right afterwards, so you'll most likely miss out on the second destruction bonus and the chain extension. If you leave one (or both) of the wings still alive, however, the ship will stay alive even after destroying the core the first time, so you can finish it off the second time yourself and get the chain extension.

Bearing this in mind, the safest way of getting the chain extension would be to throw the bomb so that it damages just the left side of the ship, while ignoring the right wing. It's still possible to get the right wing and the chain extension, but you need to make sure you've damaged the core enough before destroying the wings so you can finish it off before it self-destructs.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by ciox »

Good research, man, that rank stuff is totally out of leftfield.

Anyway, I've got some good news y'all, I'm pretty sure I found a route to chain through Railroad in its entirety and get two extends, leaving you with a mere 2 bombs less compared to the route where you just sit tight and gather bomb fragments, this gives you a point gain of at least 2 million over the normal safe route and my chain isn't fully optimized yet. IMO this makes Railroad feel a lot less like a "placeholder" stage and the game's design even more impressive.
The main secret is that the midboss has tiny chainable parts on its sides that you need to destroy with a very careful bomb because the midboss will not give full points if destroyed with bombs.
Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duwxwRCayjI
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by trap15 »

Some of that rank info isn't totally correct I think.
Here's what I've found, but it's not as thoroughly checked as Batrider. I'll have to come back and look at it again soon.

http://dodonpachi.daifukkat.su/strats/bakraid/system/
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Icarus »

Good stuff guys. Looks like I may have to completely redo the Bakraid ST soon with all the information myself and others have been finding recently.
ciox wrote:Anyway, I've got some good news y'all, I'm pretty sure I found a route to chain through Railroad in its entirety and get two extends, leaving you with a mere 2 bombs less compared to the route where you just sit tight and gather bomb fragments, this gives you a point gain of at least 2 million over the normal safe route and my chain isn't fully optimized yet. IMO this makes Railroad feel a lot less like a "placeholder" stage and the game's design even more impressive.
The main secret is that the midboss has tiny chainable parts on its sides that you need to destroy with a very careful bomb because the midboss will not give full points if destroyed with bombs.
Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duwxwRCayjI
I always felt that Railroad was doable, but difficult. I'll have to investigate this Railroad route a little further, along with trying to find a safe and consistent way to play the "pick up your extends" minigame at the beginning. :V
(Dat 30Hz autofire lol)

I'm taking a small break from shmupping at the moment, but have thought about ways to chain Barlog, and accidentally carried the x64 to the boss: http://www.twitch.tv/icarusfw/c/6589253
I also need to look at a consistent chaining method for Bahamut - following y.k's route at the moment, with limited success - although i don't feel that Bahamut is worth anywhere near as much as Leviathan or Cyclops.

For reference, my YT playlist with my chaining practices: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... xdQFfoBr8g
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by trap15 »

Also on that page is maps of the first 5 stages with all of their chain targets. Might be handy for planning routes ;)

Blue warning stripes for air targets, yellow for stationary ground, red for moving ground.

http://dodonpachi.daifukkat.su/strats/b ... st/map.png
http://dodonpachi.daifukkat.su/strats/b ... ad/map.png
http://dodonpachi.daifukkat.su/strats/b ... al/map.png
http://dodonpachi.daifukkat.su/strats/b ... rt/map.png
http://dodonpachi.daifukkat.su/strats/b ... de/map.png
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by ciox »

Icarus wrote: I always felt that Railroad was doable, but difficult. I'll have to investigate this Railroad route a little further, along with trying to find a safe and consistent way to play the "pick up your extends" minigame at the beginning. :V
(Dat 30Hz autofire lol)
True it's never been all that hard to chain it, but it was always a complete waste of resources before since you pretty much need this midboss trick to both chain the whole stage with only one suicide and snag the full 30000x64 from the midboss. It's a safe bet the 125m/132m guys know about this trick.
Btw I should clarify that you can get around 2 million extra compared to the safe route even when accounting for the 2 bombs you would have on the safe route to drop on Cyclops (two bombs on Cyclops gives you about 1.6mil, and the point gain for chaining Railroad like this should be in the 3.5/4mil range)
And yeah, the autofire "lazer" is funny and also really useful, but I don't think it's needed here, bombing the side part on the midboss provides you with plenty of chain time.
trap15 wrote:Also on that page is maps of the first 5 stages with all of their chain targets. Might be handy for planning routes ;)
Nice, reminds me of trying to chain into Seaside or other stages again..
I gave it another shot and this is as far as I can get on Cyclops->Seaside, it's much, much closer than before but still not quite it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9xIOh8mwqI

I actually had yet another theory for this but it's beyond insane, Cyclops triggers a chain if he times out and slides off-screen with a side-wagon attached, the side-wagon dies somehow and I think you might be able to use that to chain into another stage. You would wait at the start of the fight a lot, Axebeak style, then start chaining the wagons and hope Cyclops times out at the right time to help you chain into the next stage, pure insanity.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Shepardus »

ciox wrote:I actually had yet another theory for this but it's beyond insane, Cyclops triggers a chain if he times out and slides off-screen with a side-wagon attached, the side-wagon dies somehow and I think you might be able to use that to chain into another stage. You would wait at the start of the fight a lot, Axebeak style, then start chaining the wagons and hope Cyclops times out at the right time to help you chain into the next stage, pure insanity.
I just tried to do this in mostly the same fashion as you do in your video (and with some help from MAME cheats and frame-by-frame play), but committing suicide just as the collideable part of Cyclops is about to scroll off the screen and letting the sidecars generate a multiplier. While it does let me extend the chain nearly a second longer than you do in the video, it still doesn't seem to be long enough to get the chain extension since the parts of the large plane take too long to kill. Maybe if the dead zone didn't exist or if the chainable parts of the plane were located lower...

One thing I haven't tried yet: you can commit suicide on Cyclops a little later than what I've been trying by running into one of its lingering bullets after the collideable part of Cyclops itself has already scrolled off the screen, but you start running into the issue of getting to the right of the screen in time to get the aura kill on the house. What I haven't tried is the possibility of playing the game on the 2P side, so you spawn on the right and don't have to waste time crossing the screen. Not sure if this really helps, though, as either way there's a limit to how long you can delay killing the house before it scrolls off the screen. Maybe there's some combination of bombs/suicides that I haven't thought of, but I'm doubtful that the chain extension is possible.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by ciox »

Looks like it might be impossible to properly chain into Seaside then. since you have to bomb relatively soon after entering Seaside because of the house and any more time you could squeeze in during the Cyclops fight is soon wasted by the bomb activation.
Or who knows, maybe this method allows you to chain from Cyclops into Desert or Naval, I'll need a new round of save states to give that a shot.
Good idea on suiciding with Cyclops bullets as it's leaving, I forgot that when a boss times out there is no bullet cancel like on death.

It might seem like a longshot but I can't see how you could get 132 million without a chain extension from stage to stage somewhere, if not in the early stages then at least from Valley to Empire, since Empire has generous placement of chain targets and chaining out of Golem looks possible.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by trap15 »

Oh nice!
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Shepardus »

What determines whether medals appear around the first turret in Desert when you destroy it?
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by ciox »

Just sit in the center of it when it dies, this secret was inspired by Raiden Fighters iirc.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Shepardus »

Turns out I was actually wrong about it being impossible to chain from Cyclops into the large plane on Seaside. You can only do it, however, if you're using the B variant of your ship, as that increases the duration of your bomb! I always assumed it just increased the power of the bomb but never considered the duration...

Most positions of the bomb will destroy the plane entirely, which leaves you without any way to extend the chain to the vehicles on the beach (though you can still get quite a few points from the popcorn), but if you position the bomb near the edge of the screen it'll destroy one side without destroying the other, so you can extend the chain longer that way. I haven't tested more than that yet, though.

Speaking of which, does anyone have MAME cheats to manually set the remaining lives? Other things it would be nice to have cheats for (besides rank, which I already have) are medal value and chain timer/value, but lifecount is the biggest thing I wish I were able to set. It would help a lot for testing routes without having to get the right number of lives legitimately.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by ciox »

Amazing, I always thought that was possible since EVERYTHING added up except the link into the big plane, it shouldn't be a problem to keep going since you can trigger at least two or three chains by killing the turrets on the plane and still have the plane alive.
Though honestly it's quite a game changer if B type has longer bombs and can perform chains that are impossible for C (another possible B only link would be in Valley from the helicopters to the red missile planes, though I think very high rank can also allow C to perform the link there), I would strongly doubt that C is what the top players use.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Icarus »

A stronger bomb probably helps at higher rank as well - in Seaside for example, the midsection with the bombers that fire destructible bullets have a ridiculously high resilience to damage at high rank, and is usually a chainbreak.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Shepardus »

ciox wrote:(another possible B only link would be in Valley from the helicopters to the red missile planes, though I think very high rank can also allow C to perform the link there)
I was thinking of this very same link when thinking about other applications of B-type. The chain targets seem to be separated by about the same time as the house and large plane are in Seaside. The time between the start of Cyclops' death animation and the large plane in Naval is also about the same, though linking that seems particularly far-fetched. The longer bomb would also make the timing for chaining Railroad easier. I really want to try using Flame Viper B and see what I can do, but it's going to require rerouting Axebeak and some other sections like Leviathan...

By the way, it should theoretically be possible to chain Desert into Seaside in the same fashion as chaining Cyclops into Seaside - in the 68.6 million video I posted last night you can see that I unintentionally carried a chain from Bahamut to the house in Seaside.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Radigo »

Shepardus wrote:You can only do it, however, if you're using the B variant of your ship, as that increases the duration of your bomb
Man that's huge. I play Bakraid for... a long time now. My goal is to achieve nice and consistent runs without selecting stages order. So I don't progress that much and I was focused on speed type (Start) ships just to be able to improvise or anticipate my positions, but I lacked some firepower. I think I'm gonna rethink the way I play from now.

Anyway, this bomb duration thing can be really handy to get some extra timing when the rank gets wild.

Really, thank you guys.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by ciox »

I sat down for a bit and counted frames for how long a half-bomb lasts for B and C types, I got 112 and 90 (possibly off by a few frames) which means B's bombs last about 25% longer. The hype is real.
Still have hopes for that Railroad chain, right now I can reach Cyclops with 16.7m and full life stock with no bombs, it's still not quite as profitable as it should be as it only gives you about 700k/800k more compared to the conventional route, hopefully next time I'll report back with a chain route that is decisively worth going for.
Shepardus wrote:I was thinking of this very same link when thinking about other applications of B-type. The chain targets seem to be separated by about the same time as the house and large plane are in Seaside. The time between the start of Cyclops' death animation and the large plane in Naval is also about the same, though linking that seems particularly far-fetched. The longer bomb would also make the timing for chaining Railroad easier. I really want to try using Flame Viper B and see what I can do, but it's going to require rerouting Axebeak and some other sections like Leviathan...

By the way, it should theoretically be possible to chain Desert into Seaside in the same fashion as chaining Cyclops into Seaside - in the 68.6 million video I posted last night you can see that I unintentionally carried a chain from Bahamut to the house in Seaside.
I actually managed to get that link with Flame Viper C very recently but only with extreme rank, you'll have about 3-4 chainable helis flying around instead of 1 at the end of the sequence and this allows you to suicide and keep the chain more than once.

Yeah I saw the Bahamut chain, it's nice but there's a trick in that Bahamut is pure evil and will wait for your chain to fall before it makes its final form vulnerable, so basically you are forced to choose:
a) kill its final 4 chainable parts for 5000x64 each, then let your chain drop before being able to kill it
b) let your chain drop so it becomes killable, destroy the parts for low score but you're able to enter the next stage with chain at x8 (compared to Cyclops' x64)
Overall I think it's worth it if you can make it work like the Golem->Empire chain, which lets you bomb mass amounts of popcorn for 2000x64 where normally you could only get 2000x4.

Radigo wrote: Man that's huge. I play Bakraid for... a long time now. My goal is to achieve nice and consistent runs without selecting stages order. So I don't progress that much and I was focused on speed type (Start) ships just to be able to improvise or anticipate my positions, but I lacked some firepower. I think I'm gonna rethink the way I play from now.

Anyway, this bomb duration thing can be really handy to get some extra timing when the rank gets wild.

Really, thank you guys.
Hey, I remember seeing you getting some decent scores in Bakraid on the french shmups forum while searching for more info on the game. I think you were making a guide or something too, nice seeing you here.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by trap15 »

112!? holy shit that's MASSIVE! does the change show on the timer, or is this stupidly hidden too?
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Shepardus »

The chain timer works the same as with any other type, it's the bomb itself (and thus how long the timer will hover at 1) that's longer. A full bomb with type C lasts about 4 seconds, while a full bomb with type B lasts about 5 seconds (not exact numbers, but you get the idea).
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by trap15 »

oh, err, right. Was mixing up my timers :oops:
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Radigo »

ciox wrote:Hey, I remember seeing you getting some decent scores in Bakraid on the french shmups forum while searching for more info on the game. I think you were making a guide or something too, nice seeing you here.
Yup, that's me, I tried to spread to good Bakraid word among the french community but it never worked. Congrats for your scores and the awesome links I've seen in your replays (so bad Naval boss was not chained, it's worth 8 to 10M). Really impressive since achieving +60M is my ultimate goal. I'd like to fill a leaderboard of the regular version with 10 counterstops, but I played an unusual way :
- normal version (on PCB)
- normal mode
- Lightning Wolf Speed Type
- no stage select

I had the chance to speak with Icarus about the routes you found and it's a very cool story that's going on here. I'm thinking about seriously changing strategy, I already gave a few tries with Flame Viper and it's really enjoyable to get some firepower. Next step: B type. I'll keep lurking and get back on Bakraid as soon as I'm done with some time consuming projects (+ the Ibara Kuro I just got on this very forum...).
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by ciox »

Thanks man, good luck on getting 60M, I'm certain with Flame Viper and stage select you'll get there.

Got a small update on the tricky Valley chain, you can get it even at low rank with Flame Viper C if you throw the bombs at the last minute and suicide both before and after the last heli, however your fate is in Shinobu's hands as the last heli can randomly decide to leave early, because of this you'll still want high rank as that gives you 2-3 helis at the end and the odds at least one will stick around are pretty good.
On the other hand I'm wondering if it's worth going for the chain in the first place, the most you can get is a bit of 1000x64 from the red missile bombers where you would be slowly working your way up through x4 x8 etc with a chain drop, after that when the lucrative stuff is coming you would be at x64 even if your chain had dropped since there's so many red bombers -- might not be so great especially since getting a new x64 chain increases rank a lot so you don't want to spam those for low point gain if you can help it...
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Shepardus »

I'm curious about this quote from the Battle Garegga ST talking about what rank affects:
Icarus wrote:Enemy Resilience:
Enemies take more shots to destroy. Note that this particular characteristic recedes much more slowly (if at all) compared to the others: basically, if the game’s rank increases by a large amount (thus intensifying all of the factors listed here) and then is decreased by a large amount, enemies’ aggression, fire rate, etc. will drop substantially, but their resilience will remain at or close to the high level they were at before the rank drop.
Is this accurate, and if it is, does it apply to Bakraid as well? Rank goes up and down very quickly in Bakraid compared to Garegga and Batrider, so combined with the need to destroy enemies quickly it'd be particularly relevant for Bakraid. If this is a thing I'm not very clear on how it works and how significant of an effect I should expect; I tried manipulating the rank a bit through MAME cheats and didn't notice what's described here.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Icarus »

Shepardus wrote:Is this accurate, and if it is, does it apply to Bakraid as well? Rank goes up and down very quickly in Bakraid compared to Garegga and Batrider, so combined with the need to destroy enemies quickly it'd be particularly relevant for Bakraid. If this is a thing I'm not very clear on how it works and how significant of an effect I should expect; I tried manipulating the rank a bit through MAME cheats and didn't notice what's described here.
It is. I've got to Seaside on practice states with ridiculous rank and noted that even at full power, the bombers at the midpoint are near impossible to kill.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by ciox »

I'm not sure but I thought the idea is you can't reduce the rank of already spawned entities, so you can't slow down bullets or reduce the HP of enemies already on the screen, for bullets though the effect is still immediate since bullets are spawned constantly while bosses can stay on screen for a long time.
I just think Yagawa does all the rank-related decisions in entity spawn functions and not in the per-frame functions since that would waste a lot of CPU.
edit: did a quick test and after setting hardest rank with a cheat enemy HP will slowly return to normal if you just die a lot, I creditfed a few times but that should be fine?


If there's anything weird to check out it's what's going on with all the damage caps on the player ship in all the Battle games, it seems that:
a) hitting something with 1 option does the same damage as hitting it with 6 options, this damage cap might be removed or reduced if you have special formation
b) hitting something with just one shot bullet does the same damage as hitting it with multiple shot bullets from the same burst, this means that against large enemies your shot's damage output is reduced a lot (confident about this) if your shot is powered up as you'll fire rare bursts instead of a constant thin stream but each burst damages a single enemy with only one bullet while the rest are ignored
c) hitting something with just shot or sideshot does the same damage as hitting it with both, or the increase in damage is a lot smaller than it should be (note that shot must not be "nerfed" by being powered up too much like I mentioned in b), since then it's doing damage too rarely to reach the damage cap and sideshot will help a lot)
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Shepardus »

Icarus wrote:
Shepardus wrote:Is this accurate, and if it is, does it apply to Bakraid as well? Rank goes up and down very quickly in Bakraid compared to Garegga and Batrider, so combined with the need to destroy enemies quickly it'd be particularly relevant for Bakraid. If this is a thing I'm not very clear on how it works and how significant of an effect I should expect; I tried manipulating the rank a bit through MAME cheats and didn't notice what's described here.
It is. I've got to Seaside on practice states with ridiculous rank and noted that even at full power, the bombers at the midpoint are near impossible to kill.
Yeah the health increase on the green planes is quite noticeable. It doesn't help that the destructible bullets really mess with Flame Viper's side shot autotargeting. I usually just bomb them regardless of my rank just to be safe, since they're not worth a huge amount either way. (Speaking of which, am I missing something or is stage 7 really lacking in valuable targets? The only targets I can remember that are worth over 5k are on the boss...)
ciox wrote:If there's anything weird to check out it's what's going on with all the damage caps on the player ship in all the Battle games, it seems that:
a) hitting something with 1 option does the same damage as hitting it with 6 options, this damage cap might be removed or reduced if you have special formation
b) hitting something with just one shot bullet does the same damage as hitting it with multiple shot bullets from the same burst, this means that against large enemies your shot's damage output is reduced a lot (confident about this) if your shot is powered up as you'll fire rare bursts instead of a constant thin stream but each burst damages a single enemy with only one bullet while the rest are ignored
c) hitting something with just shot or sideshot does the same damage as hitting it with both, or the increase in damage is a lot smaller than it should be (note that shot must not be "nerfed" by being powered up too much like I mentioned in b), since then it's doing damage too rarely to reach the damage cap and sideshot will help a lot)
That's very interesting and quite surprising, I'll have to check that out myself. On a possibly related note, you've probably already noticed this but I think the aura can only damage one target at a time, so large enemies can sometimes block you from aura-ing popcorn. Also, if you haven't noticed, in some of my videos when going for Axebeak's nose I toss a bomb to the top of the screen, overlapping with the nose, and aura it down. It never fails to give me the 50k for destroying it with aura despite there being a bomb overlapping the nose. I've always just taken it for granted even though I don't know why that is. Maybe the bomb can only damage one target at a time, or maybe a target can only be damaged by one damage source at a time, or maybe something else entirely.
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Icarus
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by Icarus »

Shepardus wrote:Yeah the health increase on the green planes is quite noticeable. It doesn't help that the destructible bullets really mess with Flame Viper's side shot autotargeting. I usually just bomb them regardless of my rank just to be safe, since they're not worth a huge amount either way. (Speaking of which, am I missing something or is stage 7 really lacking in valuable targets? The only targets I can remember that are worth over 5k are on the boss...)
They're not worth a lot, but they're worth more being Shot down than they are using a Bomb to kill them. :3
Also, stage 7 is generally devoid of scoring targets anyway, and most of the time you don't want to bomb them for full value, but it makes linking them together harder.
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ciox
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by ciox »

Stage 7 is a bit of trap in that you should not waste too many bombs there when stage 8 is coming up, but its scoring is worth trying if you destroy everything correctly, off the top of my head, starting after the missile bombers:
- green hover planes x2, destroy with shot for 5000x64
- big domes x3, bomb for 5000x64
- buildings x2, bomb for 5000x64
- tanks x2, shot for 2000x64
- wall turret x6, shot for 5000x64
- wall core x1, bomb for 5000x64

That gives you 4,736,000 which is enough to regain the two extends you might use on this chain, so 5mil and a rank decrease.
My suspicion of what you're really supposed to do here: ignore chains in the first half and pick up bomb frags, start chaining at the missile bombers, destroy the wall core early so you can use the wall turrets to chain into the boss, chain boss (it may be possible to get 30000x64 here) and enter stage 8 with x64 multiplier.
Shepardus wrote: That's very interesting and quite surprising, I'll have to check that out myself. On a possibly related note, you've probably already noticed this but I think the aura can only damage one target at a time, so large enemies can sometimes block you from aura-ing popcorn. Also, if you haven't noticed, in some of my videos when going for Axebeak's nose I toss a bomb to the top of the screen, overlapping with the nose, and aura it down. It never fails to give me the 50k for destroying it with aura despite there being a bomb overlapping the nose. I've always just taken it for granted even though I don't know why that is. Maybe the bomb can only damage one target at a time, or maybe a target can only be damaged by one damage source at a time, or maybe something else entirely.
Aura is definitely weird, because it's often very good at hitting things compared to shot like Leviathan's 50000x64 targets, I think its algorithm is "if hitting something invulnerable ignore it and keep looking, if hitting something vulnerable damage it and stop doing anything for this frame".

For Axebeak's nose it seems the "invulnerability at the top of the screen" property is responsible, to be vulnerable to bombs enemies need to be even lower on the screen than they have to be for shot/aura to damage them. For instance the topmost turret on Cyclops's side wagons is invulnerable to bombs and it seems like the same deal as it's very high up on the screen.
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Re: ST: Battle Bakraid (15.09.10 - rank modifiers added)

Post by trap15 »

Inspired by ProjectAKo's poking over in the Garegga thread (http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 3#p1130443), I took a look at Bakraid's life formula. It's essentially the same, except it's 0x200/512 instead of 0x300/768, and the rank value is not multiplied. This is the same as Batrider.
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