GaijinPunch wrote:
Actually the ships are invulnerable until they come to a complete stop or are at the very end of their deceleration (forget which but the timing is very close).
That is incidental... or your eyes playing tricks on you. It's frame based a la mushi.
I went into practice mode today to check this and I'm actually quite sure that it's not frame based. Here's how to prove this:
- Before the midboss, charge up your guard barrier so you can kill it right away when it spawns.
- If your timing is fast enough after the midboss is down, a carrier will appear on the left, followed by one to the right, and then one in the middle.
- If you hold down shot to shell the carriers, the left and right carriers have a lot more frames of invincibility than the ship that spawns in the middle.
If you try using the same amount of shots on the carrier that spawns in the middle as you did on the left and right carriers, you will definitely end up destroying it instead. This leads me to believe that the invulnerability timing is not frame based, but rather based on when a carrier has stopped.
My level 1 runs have gotten way more consistent after keeping this in mind.
GaijinPunch wrote:
That's why if you bomb the mid-boss, the middle ship that appears at the top of the screen afterwards (the one after the ship on the right spawns) seems to go down almost instantly- because it stops right away.
You lost me.
Ok... sorry for the awkward wording. What I meant is that when the middle carrier (see above) comes to a halt (which is almost immediately), it loses its invulnerability.