Making a point about points

[shadowcrust]

No worries, this isn't about high scores, just a chat about what scores you'd expect from a victorious run on Normal without mods (or modded ships). When I've looked at my last runs, I found that my last 29 wins were above 5000 points, and only 3 of these were going for high scores, i.e. fighting more Elite Fighters than necessary to reach the exit beacons.

I'm usually going for boarding, inferno or bio-beam strategies, if at all possible. Most often I don't chance upon a Scrap Recovery Arm, but I tend to plan my jumps to reach as many beacons as possible in most sectors, unless my ship is about to break apart.

Several of the ships not explicitly going for high scores also scored more than 6000 points, and I consider my own scores below 5000 points half a loss - if I don't thoroughly intimidate the rebels by leaving a trail of mayhem and destruction, will they not simply go and build another flagship after I destroyed their prototype?

I've seen many high scores that are just scratching at the 5000 points barrier, and that's why I want to ask what your expectations for winning points are? Higher than 5000, higher than 6000? Or lower than that? Obviously, this question is not aimed at players that simply don't care about points and don't even look at their scores, but more at players that spend considerable time contemplating their Stats page

[Coderro]

Top 5, none played for score, but I do play for getting the most scrap before taking on the boss:

6069 Red-Tail
6035 Noether
5772 Carnelian
5627 Vortex
5552 Basilisk

The highest one there I believe I had two scrap arms and long range sensors for. Long range sensors actually help more than a scrap arm at getting scrap in my experience.

When I break 5000 it feels like a good run, and breaking 6000 feels like absolutely demolishing the game.

[5thHorseman]

I've mentioned it before, I don't care one whip about points. I've not really paid that much attention but it almost seems that, the more fun I have the lower my score.

[shadowcrust]

I've mentioned it before, I don't care one whip about points

Obviously, this question is not aimed at players that simply don't care about points and don't even look at their scores, but more at players that spend considerable time contemplating their Stats page

And as such, you are not the target audience of this thread, but thanks for your valued input nonetheless

[shadowcrust]

When I break 5000 it feels like a good run, and breaking 6000 feels like absolutely demolishing the game.

For me, 5000+ feels like a normal, but decent run, 6000+ is a very good run and I haven't had 7000+ on a run not specifically going for high score yet, but I think it is possible. My highest score not specifically going for high score is either 6647 (but I forgot if I engaged some extra Elite Fighters there) or at least 6418, so I guess getting 10% more score should be quite feasible with 10% better luck with encounters and scrap rewards.

[itg]

My high scores have been consistently on the rise since I started playing. At the moment, all of my top 5 scores are in the 6200-6800 range, and over the last ten games or so, nearly every win has been a new top 5 score. That has to level off after a while, since there has to be a cap to how high your scores can reasonably go without farming the rebels. At this point, if I got a score under 5000, I'd consider that unusually low--not necessarily a bad run, but unusual.

For the record, I don't farm rebels in my normal games, but I'm perfectly willing to go for beacons far from the exit, then fight my back through the rebels, if my ship can handle it. When I started doing that, my high scores went up noticeably. Another thing that seems to boost my score is constantly going for hostile and nebula sectors, and of course, fighting ships at every opportunity.

[Elhazzared]

I don't really care about points because like everything else, not only is it dictated by RNG, but also it can be broken.

As an example, if you get a monster run through the first or second sectors, don't leave, stay there and fight the rebel elite ships if you are sure you can do so without taking damage. This will artificially augment your points by a bajillion by the end of the run.

Again I don't care about points, but if they are going to be there, there should be a very simple math in obtaining them and no way to artificially inflate them. An ideal way would be through objectives. Do this, get X points.

[shadowcrust]

I don't really care about points

Point taken, but I pointedly point out that you also may have missed the point of this thread, which is chatting about what range of points you expect from a run on Normal.

My high scores have been consistently on the rise since I started playing. At the moment, all of my top 5 scores are in the 6200-6800 range, and over the last ten games or so, nearly every win has been a new top 5 score.

So your experience is very similar to Coderro's and my own: scoring less than 5000 points on a Normal run is surprisingly low.

Mh, we may actually approximate the number of points you can expect from a normal run with the following considerations:

You get 12.5 points for each beacon visited, and judging from my own maximum of visited beacons (including the hidden sector), 122, I'd say that around 130 visited beacons is probably near the maximum of beacons you can visit and get points for (beacons overrun by the rebel fleet don't give you any points).

So the maximum score from beacons is roughly 12.5 times 130, that is 1625 points.

Each defeated ship yields 25 points, and in theory every visited beacon could be a ship, but normally it is about half the beacons in my experience. Let's settle for a high value and say that 75% of visited beacons may get you a fight, so it would be 130x0.75x25 = 2437.5 points.

The last scoring bit is scrap earned. I never managed to get more than 3000 scrap (2919 maximum for me), but I think you can get more, at least I've seen much higher values from other people, although that might have been runs on Easy, or worse, with mods . Let's go for a maximum of 3600 scrap, which yields 1.25 points each, that would be 4500 points.

All together, it would be 1625+2437.5+4500 points, which is 8562.5 points (all numbers calculated in my head (and confirmed with a calculator ), by the way), quite a bit over my current maximum of my scores that were not going for Elite Fighters. If we substract 750 points (estimating maximum scrap at 3000 instead of 3600 - how much have you guys got on Normal without mods?), it would still be comfortably in the upper 7000s, at 7812.5 points.

So still something to improve!

[shadowcrust]

Addendum: for getting 5000 points, using the same formula, we need: 100 visited beacons, 45 defeated ships and 2100 scrap earned

[Coderro]

Again I don't care about points, but if they are going to be there, there should be a very simple math in obtaining them and no way to artificially inflate them. An ideal way would be through objectives. Do this, get X points.

Little bit off topic, but you brought up something that interests me. I think the game should have just used scrap earned as score, or perhaps the value of your assets at the end (all scrap on hand, all scrap put into upgrades, the scrap worth of weapons and drone schematics, etc.). Because if I were going to rate how good a run of someone's was, this is how I would do it.