Star Formation Game

[Edward]

I'm having a hard time not playing Discovery Magazine's Star Formation Game.  One of the reasons I'm having such a hard time not playing it is the (impossibly) high scores.

Play it a couple of times and you'll see what I mean.  Some possible tips on how to achieve such high scores here.  As of now, my personal best is somewhere in the 5,000's.  That was yesterday.

I'm going to make a long-term game of it.  Starting now, from time to time I'm going to play and try for the high score.  In the interim, I'll post updates should I best my own best score, proof by way of a screenshots.  

I'd like some competition too, so feel free to join in.

[Edward]

[Edward]

[Edward]

[Edward]

[Schadenfreude]

Addictive - best so far is 12000ish

[Dawn Coyote]

Addictive is right.

I'm up to 16666, almost all of that from the first one.

[Dawn Coyote]

23700ish

[august]

22474

[Edward]

Not bad.

Oddly, I think the trick might be playing on a slow computer.

[largo]

Hints, then! I hit 10,000 once (level 1 .. levels 2 and 3 seem useless to this beginner)

[Dawn Coyote]

I suspect you're right. I got my high score as my laptop battery was dying.

Since then, I can't break 4000.

[largo]

I wonder. I just went back and did a slow spiral (as per somebody from the hint link in the top post), instead of my usual double ring, and got 10,000 again (L1). Still feel (well, know) I'm missing something. (And I'll add, cloud mass was still 131/625, so obviously room for improvement there.) But wonder if these high scorers are getting their 60,000 virtually all on L1, or are they getting 20, 20, and 20 sort of thing on each level. Either way, missing something big.

[artandsoul]

I completely suck at this game.

I guess I have to reread the instruction (again) because I mean I really, really suck.

[august]

I have no great insight, but I use the spiral method.  It matters how close you are to the edge (right on the edge of the cloud for the first spiral, a little away for succeeding ones.  I'd have said even spacing was essential.  What you want to wind up with on the first level is a very small (oddly, nearly invisible) ball, then just wait.  I've only done really really well once, but I　I think I got something around 50.  

On the second level, I've gotten some points.  When I get a very high score on the first level I keep replaying the second.  What can work for me is to set off a supernova right in the middle, and then continue with usual encircling.  Edward's scores are much higher than mine, though.  At least on level 2, some points are on offer.

The game does a great job of communicating its central point -- this  star formation business is harder than it looks.  One thing I don't understand, though.  Why don't the last two levels ever produce stars?  I mean, I get that there will be supernova, but don't you wind up with a galaxy that somehow has stars in it?   Does anybody understand this?

[largo]

hi, august .. thanks. i'm kinda there too. i hit 17,000 and a couple around 14, but it seems more luck than anything else. Agree re keeping some distance the last round (so as to not blow the gas right through the central core, presumably), and agree on importance of symmetry too. But whether you're hitting 5 or 15 thou almost seems a matter of luck (still talking level 1 only). Re symmetry, I tried what I might call 'compass-point method', N, S, E, W, NE, SW, etc, etc but found the outside ring too dense leading to early stars and draining resources for the big central explosion.

maybe edward will chime in on his almost-made-the-leaderboard score ..

[Edward]

august describes the basic technique.  Spiral in, but then not too tight.  If your symmetry is good, you'll be able to achieve a tight ball of gas.  Then stop, sit back, and see what comes of it.  One of the essential ingredients here is keeping all the gas moving until you've got it where you want it.  If you don't manage that, you'll get errant stars around the edges before you're done corralling all the gas.  But like you guys, this technique only gets me so far.  I wish I knew exactly what I did different that resulted in my nearly high score.  I do recall the star chains going off in a short line as opposed to a tight ball.  So maybe it's a last step, just before your chains start to ignite, sending a shockwave through them or something.

FWIW, I also achieved my high score on my home laptop which runs the game quite slow (i.e. slow motion), allowing me time to achieve superior supernovae targeting.

As for levels 2 and 3, the few times I've played them, setting off a supernova dead center and then quickly trying to set off a chain reaction in the ring it creates has been the most successful method I've tried.  However, the points gained on those two levels are negligible.  You'll need them if you get lucky on the first level, but unless I'm missing something, there's little point in proceeding to levels 2 and 3 (other than practice) if you don't first score close to 40,000 on the first level.

[largo]

I just got 16530 on level 1. It's also Chain: x57, which of course comes from here [their scoring algoirthm: Score at Chain(N) = Score at Chain(N-1) + N*10], assuming you don't have any early stars):

1 10
2 30
3 60
4 100
5 150
6 210
7 280
8 360
9 450
10 550
11 660
12 780
13 910
14 1050
15 1200
16 1360
17 1530
18 1710
19 1900
20 2100
21 2310
22 2530
23 2760
24 3000
25 3250
26 3510
27 3780
28 4060
29 4350
30 4650
31 4960
32 5280
33 5610
34 5950
35 6300
36 6660
37 7030
38 7410
39 7800
40 8200
41 8610
42 9030
43 9460
44 9900
45 10350
46 10810
47 11280
48 11760
49 12250
50 12750
51 13260
52 13780
53 14310
54 14850
55 15400
56 15960
57 16530

Chain x89 would get you to 40,000, and x100 would get you to 50,000.

So if you're targeting 40,000, at 16,000 the good news is you're actually about two-thirds of the way there; the bad news is it's about the best you (me) can do anyway. Possible to get a chain of a hundred ? I guess, but not here.

---

p.s. (one day later): 30,810 .. definitely a tight "bullseye" type cluster