Armed Police Batrider

[Icarus]

7.37mil on Special Course without the ALL . That's some heavy milking! The Boss milking must be a large part of where I'm going wrong on Normal Course, not to mention Special .

Many thanks for the ship selection list. It will be most useful. Miyamoto's bomb has let me down too many times in the later stages, so I'll replace it with something from your list.

That's nowhere near the highest possible I can get on Special. In this run, I finished off Bashinet2 pretty quickly and had about 3.4mil-ish. On some runs where Bashinet2 refuses to open its arms (and thus keeps using the missile attack) I've finished off Bashinet2 with over 4mil. I have no idea what influences Bashinet2's patterns, if there is anything that can force particular patterns to appear at all.

I'm getting pretty consistent now. Bashi2, Tsumujimaru and Hayatemaru still give a few problems since their attacks are seemingly random and very fast, but everything else is pretty straightforward.

Also, I use Miyamoto in Special Course as the bomb is fast to fire and has wide cover, which is good for panic situations. ^_-

[jpj]

i haven't been playing this lately but thought i'd share some info. i've been trying to find out about how a 29mill advanced mode score is possible from a few japanese players, but not much is known & i don't think it was ever captured on video. however, apparently LAOS's 29 million run was .... *not* .... an ALL. apparently to score so highly you need to drive rank up through the roof (?) to the point where the game is (virtually) impossible to beat. i don't know how or where this would come in to play, but i'm not playing it, and thought it might give you guys a new angle to play from. hope somebody bloody figures it out! cheers.

[DEL]

jpj wrote;

LAOS's 29 million run was .... *not* .... an ALL. apparently to score so highly you need to drive rank up through the roof (?) to the point where the game is (virtually) impossible to beat. i don't know how or where this would come in to play, but i'm not playing it, and thought it might give you guys a new angle to play from. hope somebody bloody figures it out! cheers.

Most interesting. If this is the case, then I suppose its gotta be something to do with Boss milking...
Sending rank through the roof by a combo of:
1. Collecting everything
2. No suiciding
would prolong boss battles.
Laos took

"CARPET, MARIA, FLYING BARON"

Carpet is excellent for Boss milking, it simply racks up fast points by the options passing salvos through Boss armour. So avoiding the kill spots on the Bosses and shooting with Carpet's options is perhaps the main thing, although the Bosses time out - even on max rank.

Looking at Laos' CARPET-first choice, I assume that he went through the whole Advance course with Carpet and without dying, thereby getting the max rank coupled with the best point gain through Carpet's options.

This begins to make sense.

One thing I've noticed about rank on Batrider Korean B version, is that getting an extend during a Boss battle changes the Boss' patterns immediately and revives the Boss - make it survive longer. I suppose this cannot be noticed on the Japanese B version, as extends don't drop during Boss battles, but this does not matter, its purely an observation.
What does matter is that the above fact on the Korean B supports the mad rank theory stated by jpj.

[Plasmo]

keep in mind that black heart mkII boss milking ala garegga is STILL possible.This time you get even more points from one of these grenade attacks, around 400k on LOW rank that would be at least 700k on high rank.And im sure there are many characters with much better bombs to milk this atack than gain in garegga.for example car-pets bomb would be great for that as its screen covering and not too destructive.

[DEL]

Well it looks like a Batrider max-rank challenge is in order.

Switch the board on and play immediately for highest rank start. Collect everything, don't lose any lives. Choose a team starting with Carpet. Milk Bashinet and Blk Ht MkII to the max. Perhaps choose Carpet with weak options to avoid damaging the Bosses too much. Go as far as you can.

Other questions are:-
*Does max rank increase small enemy appearance?

*Does max rank increase the time span before time-out disappearance of Bosses?

*Armed Police Batrider has "Infinite Score Problem" listed against it in Gemant's Arcadia WR rankings - Does this only refer to Version A?
(The B version has Laos' 29mil Advance score).

[freddiebamboo]

Been busy with work recently, but all this talk is sparking my interest again.


SPECIAL COURSE

2,574,950 - freddiebamboo - Stage 9 (Glow Squid) - Wild Snail (A)

[LUNardei]

Gemant told me that, according to Arcadia number 27 (2002), the WR run was actually an ALL clear and was played with autofire (as usual). No other info at the moment

[Kaiser]

PLaying this game with autofire is pointless i wonder why the heck for WR laos used autofire, that logic just beats me

[LUNardei]

PLaying this game with autofire is pointless

Or maybe simply you (and me too) don't know how to use it

[DEL]

Special Course

Nothing Special so far

DEL - 5,552,020 - ST12 - Flying Baron (B)/Strawman (C)/Bornam (A)



I tried Advance and Special on highest rank start (as soon as board was switched on). More enemies come on certain Bosses, but the Bosses definitely have the same time span before disappearing - so no advantage in Boss milking time.

[EIHoppe]

Firstly, I don't quite remember sucking this much (I could've SWORN I had at least a 3.5 mil score using Carpet, but...must've forgot to take a screen or something. It was a while ago) ...but this is the only score that I have noted anywhere (my MAME is being crabby and not saving hi-scores and I don't feel like mucking about with it now)

NORMAL COURSE
1,836,110 - EIHoppe - Stage 2 - Car-Pet (A)

Expect a new score when I get bored with trying to crack some of the systems apart on this and feel like putting forth a few more normal runs. (see below)

Secondly...

I tried Advance and Special on highest rank start (as soon as board was switched on). More enemies come on certain Bosses, but the Bosses definitely have the same time span before disappearing - so no advantage in Boss milking time.

I did some research using the cheat mode in MAME to set the rank to max and can confirm this...there is no time advantage to high/max rank. However, this can have benefits in the form of less worry when milking, say, for medals on Bazzcok or Boredom. (perhaps...though I didn't personally notice that large of a health increase for the bosses...) Both bosses also literally spew the mini-fighters at max rank, giving more opportunity for medals.

As for increasing small enemy appearance, having a higher rank has a profound effect on popcorn enemies (especially during the levels). I've noted large ~15-20 enemy ROWS (15-20 per row, not 15-20 rows. =P) that fly out in formation, usually two or three of these said rows at a time. Next time I note it, I'll save a screenshot to show what I mean.

The only problem with all this as far as scoring goes, of course, is the ridiculous amount of firepower the bosses obtain, and the extra health that most, if not all non-boss enemies get, forcing a lot of firepower to be used to subdue a single enemy.

I'll look into this more if I can. Maybe I'll be able to find the health/time variables for the bosses/enemies if possible and see if there's any effect on rank at all.

~EI

[Icarus]

I did some research using the cheat mode in MAME to set the rank to max and can confirm this...there is no time advantage to high/max rank. However, this can have benefits in the form of less worry when milking, say, for medals on Bazzcok or Boredom. (perhaps...though I didn't personally notice that large of a health increase for the bosses...) Both bosses also literally spew the mini-fighters at max rank, giving more opportunity for medals.

Are you sure? I've played the game at both minimum and maximum rank and have noticed no difference in the rate the drones are generated.

As for increasing small enemy appearance, having a higher rank has a profound effect on popcorn enemies (especially during the levels). I've noted large ~15-20 enemy ROWS (15-20 per row, not 15-20 rows. =P) that fly out in formation, usually two or three of these said rows at a time. Next time I note it, I'll save a screenshot to show what I mean.

Wouldn't mind seeing that, actually. I can't imagine there being many places that this occurs, however.

The only problem with all this as far as scoring goes, of course, is the ridiculous amount of firepower the bosses obtain, and the extra health that most, if not all non-boss enemies get, forcing a lot of firepower to be used to subdue a single enemy.

It would tie into the maximum rank play, by maxing out Shot and Option power to compensate for the increased enemy resilience (which again adds to the rank counter).

[EIHoppe]

Are you sure? I've played the game at both minimum and maximum rank and have noticed no difference in the rate the drones are generated.

I just double-checked it now. Between a decent rank when I was playing without much regard for rank control, and setting it to max on a seperate playthrough, there was almost a doubled drone output (this was tested on Boredom). He went from a volley of four (x2 drones x2 generators for a total of 16) to a volley of eight (x2 drones x2 generators for a total of 32). This definitely has milking potential.

Wouldn't mind seeing that, actually. I can't imagine there being many places that this occurs, however.

The spot I noticed it the most was in Airport, where there are those natural rows of enemies. But even in other parts of the game, there is a noticable increase in enemies between standard rank and max. I forgot to snag screenshots, I'll hopefully remember next time. >_>;

It would tie into the maximum rank play, by maxing out Shot and Option power to compensate for the increased enemy resilience (which again adds to the rank counter).

The major issue in this is that, especially on the part of the popcorn enemies, there is a SEVERE increase in health, to the point where a piercing weapon (such as Car-pet's) is REQUIRED to be able to hit more than one enemy and not have all your shots tied up. Without piercing, each enemy takes (subjectively, of course) maybe 2 or 3 times the firepower to beat. That is enough where it's difficult to keep up (especially on the part of larger enemies--in fact, on max rank, even WITH Carpet, I have let quite a few large enemies by despite concentrating a lot of firepower on them).

I'm also working on the health variable thing...though there's definitely quite a few variables in use. I also think I may have found one of the boss countdown variables, but it's very difficult to pin down as it seems both the health and the countdown get assigned to some random temp-variable, of which there appears to be a staggering amount. I'm still trying to determine if there's temp-variables just for the health and countdown timers, or even if there's any pattern to the variables used at all.

Two values I have pinned down:
Address 20A36B (this appears to be a health variable, sometimes. As far as I can tell it seems to consistently be the "main body" variable for Deviate--i.e. if this hits 0, it dies. I'm still figuring it out for sure, though.)
Address 2086E2 (this appears to be a countdown variable, sometimes. I've seen it act as such for both Gob-Robo and Bashinet Mk. II, but I'm not sure if those were isolated causes as this is still quite untested. One thing's for sure, though, when it acts as a countdown timer, it starts off in about the 1.5 million range and decreases by somewhere in the neighboorhood of 150-200? each frame. It's also noteworthy that when I was testing it out on Bashi-2, I somehow got the value to jump up 300k. I'm not sure how this happened (I THOUGHT it was dropping a Max-medal (from which my chain somehow didn't die...), but I dropped my chain again and the value didn't change) but it DEFINITELY delayed the timeout by that much because it still didn't timeout until this variable hit 0.)

Can someone watch these variables (notably the first on Deviate and the second on Gob-Robo and Bashi-2) and see if you can get consistent results with them?

~EI

EDIT: Got some pictures (on Bazzcok) of the drone change in action:
Minimum rank (rank at F00000):
Maximum rank (rank at 000000):

[Icarus]

I just double-checked it now. Between a decent rank when I was playing without much regard for rank control, and setting it to max on a seperate playthrough, there was almost a doubled drone output (this was tested on Boredom). He went from a volley of four (x2 drones x2 generators for a total of 16) to a volley of eight (x2 drones x2 generators for a total of 32). This definitely has milking potential.

While this is very interesting, there is one major problem: the game does not start at maximum rank (000000) even on bootup, and to get the game to that rank level is near-impossible even when grabbing everything and keeping a brick on the Shot button. And carryover is even harder as losing your last life knocks a massive chunk off the current rank counter.

While I can see some potential in high rank scoring theory using waypoints, there is the little issue of practical application under actual game conditions.

By the way, send a PM to Twiddle, he might be interested in your findings since he has done rank system hacking for both Garegga and Batrider for the forum strategy guides.

[zakk]

I just know you guys are going to go through months of theories+tests+whatever else, only to find out it's some insanely boring 6M points of bullet scraping or something.

[Icarus]

I just know you guys are going to go through months of theories+tests+whatever else, only to find out it's some insanely boring 6M points of bullet scraping or something.

That wouldn't surprise me at all. Which is partly why I'm not bothering with this high-rank business for the time being. ^_-

[DEL]

Icarus wrote;

That wouldn't surprise me at all. Which is partly why I'm not bothering with this high-rank business for the time being. ^_-

I've decided against it too.
From my minimal experience with a high rank bootup Advance run with a team, I'd say that the increased popcorn enemies don't add enough to make it viable, especially when Advance with a team is hard at low rank, let alone max'ish.

Icarus - Could you remind me of the prerequisites for triggering Blk Ht MKII on Advance Course?

(Ps. Boss that killed me yesterday on the 5.55mil Special Course run was Blk Ht MkII - for the ranking)

[Icarus]

Icarus - Could you remind me of the prerequisites for triggering Blk Ht MKII on Advance Course?

Select your team with different buttons - A, B, C, Start - and make sure you have your Garegga team member still alive by the time you clear Highway. Black Heart2 appears before you move on to Zenovia City.

[EIHoppe]

While this is very interesting, there is one major problem: the game does not start at maximum rank (000000) even on bootup, and to get the game to that rank level is near-impossible even when grabbing everything and keeping a brick on the Shot button. And carryover is even harder as losing your last life knocks a massive chunk off the current rank counter.

While I can see some potential in high rank scoring theory using waypoints, there is the little issue of practical application under actual game conditions.

That's very true. Getting max rank is horrendously difficult (even setting autofire to 60Hz, picking up everything, etc. etc.) to achieve and maintain, and it's entirely possible that high-rank play is completely useless.

However, I'm doing my comparisons between minimum and maximum rank because the differences will be that much more profound (and therefore noticable) than a more moderate test.

I'll PM Twiddle when I get a chance. Maybe he can crack the health/timeout timers variables better than I can so we can definitively find if rank affects either and if there's some way to extend the timeout...time. I distinctly remember the timer increasing by about 300k when I was testing the one variable I found for Bashi-2, so there appears to be some way...and finding extension methods, or even a way to freeze the timer, might just be our solution as to where all these points are coming from...even if it is (and it very well might be) just minutes of tick points.

~EI

[Icarus]

However, I'm doing my comparisons between minimum and maximum rank because the differences will be that much more profound (and therefore noticable) than a more moderate test.

I'll PM Twiddle when I get a chance. Maybe he can crack the health/timeout timers variables better than I can so we can definitively find if rank affects either and if there's some way to extend the timeout...time. I distinctly remember the timer increasing by about 300k when I was testing the one variable I found for Bashi-2, so there appears to be some way...and finding extension methods, or even a way to freeze the timer, might just be our solution as to where all these points are coming from...even if it is (and it very well might be) just minutes of tick points.

If you both come up with something, please let me know. I'll be putting together some form of ST guide within the next few weeks (inbetween work... ack) and some advanced information on this so-called timeout counter and other variables within the game would be very interesting data.

Your efforts are appreciated. ^_^

[jpj]

just to clarify: i'm only telling you what i've been told - don't take it as cast-iron. but DEL raises a good point about differences between particular versions etc. even though i'm not really into batrider i'm hugely intrigued by a motherfuckin' S score... if i get any more info i'll let you know

[Kaiser]

Advanced course ^_^ weaker score than on normal

Kaiser - 2,732,650 - Stage 5(Highway) - Strawman(A)

[Kaiser]

Little improvement in score on advanced level

Kaiser - 2,888,390 - Stage 4(Sky high) - Strawman(A)

[DEL]

Keep going Kaiser!

I'm playing Advance too, but with a team. I put Miyamoto back in for Advance Course, as I need the speed.

Icarus - Thanks for the Blk Ht MkII triggering info! I encounter him with Flying Baron. Although I've battled him on low rank so far on Advance, so the point gain has been minimal. On high rank, I agree with Plasmo, he's a Goldmine!

Plasmo - Are you taking the Advance Team Challenge

[Kaiser]

Keep going Kaiser!

I'm playing Advance too, but with a team. I put Miyamoto back in for Advance Course, as I need the speed.

Icarus - Thanks for the Blk Ht MkII triggering info! I encounter him with Flying Baron. Although I've battled him on low rank so far on Advance, so the point gain has been minimal. On high rank, I agree with Plasmo, he's a Goldmine!

Plasmo - Are you taking the Advance Team Challenge

Yeah it's definitely harder than on normal but c'mon this difficulty is at least challenge

[Icarus]

Icarus - Thanks for the Blk Ht MkII triggering info! I encounter him with Flying Baron. Although I've battled him on low rank so far on Advance, so the point gain has been minimal. On high rank, I agree with Plasmo, he's a Goldmine!

The main technique with Black Heart2 is to destroy the wings before it phases into its second or third form. Plasmo will probably agree with me that Black Heart2 was a lucrative boss before, but when you destroy a wing, it continually spews red grenades from that side, doubling pointgain.

One of my favourite techniques in Special Course is destroying the wings, then switching to a really slow Shot frequency, which makes it harder to actually hit the weakpoint, making the boss last longer. Only works with ships like Bornnam with a very indirect wide Shot, however. ^_-

I've had over 2mil from the battles where I actually do this properly. You could probably get more if you use a area-effect bomb such as Gain's or Bornnam's.

[DEL]

Icarus wrote;

The main technique with Black Heart2 is to destroy the wings before it phases into its second or third form. Plasmo will probably agree with me that Black Heart2 was a lucrative boss before, but when you destroy a wing, it continually spews red grenades from that side, doubling pointgain.

Aah so that's it! I'll make sure to destroy a wing ASAP.

What's the secret to getting Bashinet 2 to spew constant missiles? I had it spewing out tons of missiles throughout the whole battle on Special Course the other day. Is it to do with Rank? Or is it to do with what parts of it are destroyed?

[Icarus]

What's the secret to getting Bashinet 2 to spew constant missiles? I had it spewing out tons of missiles throughout the whole battle on Special Course the other day. Is it to do with Rank? Or is it to do with what parts of it are destroyed?

I've had it spew missiles when I've quickly stopped it from firing those green discs and throwing bombs. You need bombs to be able to do that, however.

[zinger]

Normal Course

zinger - 4,430,800 - ALL - Maria (C)

MAME-score, I'm going to get back to playing this as soon as I can get a hold of the japanese PCB, the controls don't feel very precise in comparison.

[DEL]

Icarus wrote;

I've had it spew missiles when I've quickly stopped it from firing those green discs and throwing bombs. You need bombs to be able to do that, however.

Yeah, I've got an idea to drop bombs on it as soon at it appears/becomes vulnerable. A bit like the old R-Type trick where you beam half the ST4 Amoeba Boss out with 1 beam as soon as it enters the screen.