How do YOU figure out.......

[quackadilly]

the optimal star path??

On ILRR I tried my math and logic skills(pretty much going by the numbers) and got 133,855 on expert hitting EVERY star power.

That really pissed me off, 2 hours of work to match my top score.


The next run I purposfully missed 4 star powers by either activating late or in a completely random spot and got 135,305 beating my old score.



If any of you guys (JCirri, Echelar, random, ES or Krim) have any tips on what to look for or if you just want to tell me a couple of your star power paths, it would be very appreciated.

[quackadilly]

the optimal star path??

On ILRR I tried my math and logic skills(pretty much going by the numbers) and got 133,855 on expert hitting EVERY star power.

That really pissed me off, 2 hours of work to match my top score.


The next run I purposfully missed 4 star powers by either activating late or in a completely random spot and got 135,305 beating my old score.



If any of you guys (JCirri, Echelar, random, ES or Krim) have any tips on what to look for or if you just want to tell me a couple of your star power paths, it would be very appreciated.

[MLafer]

this thread might be helpful, i asked the same question a few months ago:
http://scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=545

Then again SP strategy has probably evolved quite a bit since then so perhaps we'll hear even more detailed responses. I'd love to hear it.
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[MLafer]

this thread might be helpful, i asked the same question a few months ago:
http://scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=545

Then again SP strategy has probably evolved quite a bit since then so perhaps we'll hear even more detailed responses. I'd love to hear it.
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[rabies]

First i start by looking at the notechart and seeing if there is a path from there that allows me to get all the star powers in a song and use them.
Then...if there is a window where notes/chords are more dense but you can still use all the star powers, I change...this often means you have full star power..but you wait until a section comes up to activate.

Finally...from there, you look at places in the song where notes/chords are really, really dense...those are the prime places to use star power..as your score skyrockets there. Often, it is better to purposely miss a star power or activate it just before in order to be able to use star power in these sections...these are usually the toughest ones to figure out.

I've star paths worked out for all the hard songs now. Some I know are the competitive ones..as they hold, or held #1. I've been thinking about releasing them....if you have a specific song you want, I may be inclined to divulge... getting star power strats is generally regarded as a big competitive secret.

[rabies]

First i start by looking at the notechart and seeing if there is a path from there that allows me to get all the star powers in a song and use them.
Then...if there is a window where notes/chords are more dense but you can still use all the star powers, I change...this often means you have full star power..but you wait until a section comes up to activate.

Finally...from there, you look at places in the song where notes/chords are really, really dense...those are the prime places to use star power..as your score skyrockets there. Often, it is better to purposely miss a star power or activate it just before in order to be able to use star power in these sections...these are usually the toughest ones to figure out.

I've star paths worked out for all the hard songs now. Some I know are the competitive ones..as they hold, or held #1. I've been thinking about releasing them....if you have a specific song you want, I may be inclined to divulge... getting star power strats is generally regarded as a big competitive secret.

[ES942]

yeah, this is also the case for me. hoever, on some songs having a leftover 1/4 bar or so is still optimal. this is the case for my ace of spades strategy on hard. i wasn't smart enough to do the same on expert when i FC'ed it

[ES942]

yeah, this is also the case for me. hoever, on some songs having a leftover 1/4 bar or so is still optimal. this is the case for my ace of spades strategy on hard. i wasn't smart enough to do the same on expert when i FC'ed it

[rabies]

[rabies]

[rabies]

What is also very, very helpful in planning out star power is knowing the following:

1 star power = 1/4 star bar = 2 measures in song
1/2 star power = 4 measures in song
3/4 star power = 6 measures in song
full star powe = 8 measures in song.

You can tell in the note charts where each measure starts ends by the bigger white lines.

[rabies]

What is also very, very helpful in planning out star power is knowing the following:

1 star power = 1/4 star bar = 2 measures in song
1/2 star power = 4 measures in song
3/4 star power = 6 measures in song
full star powe = 8 measures in song.

You can tell in the note charts where each measure starts ends by the bigger white lines.

[ES942]

this is when i realized my flaw in my infected strategy, so i altered it to get star power at the end with nothing left over.

[ES942]

this is when i realized my flaw in my infected strategy, so i altered it to get star power at the end with nothing left over.

[eachann]

I've never really looked at the note charts so there is probably a better way but what I do is first I just play the song several times and get an idea of where the stars are at. Then I just start looking for a way to play the song such that I can hit all of the stars without activated staropower overlapping stars and thus wasting some of them. If I can do that , then I start looking at where there are stretches in between starpower useage and the next star where I have time to "choose" my starpower useage and I try to find a point where a) there are the most notes and b) where i'm least likely to miss notes.


It's not scientific and I know that the people competing for the top spots on the ratings come up with better strategies but it works pretty well... especially on songs that you can't play right away and thus have more time to spend figuring out star strategies. If you are able to play a song well right from the beginning the tendancy is to move on to the next one without really nailing down the star strategy

[eachann]

I've never really looked at the note charts so there is probably a better way but what I do is first I just play the song several times and get an idea of where the stars are at. Then I just start looking for a way to play the song such that I can hit all of the stars without activated staropower overlapping stars and thus wasting some of them. If I can do that , then I start looking at where there are stretches in between starpower useage and the next star where I have time to "choose" my starpower useage and I try to find a point where a) there are the most notes and b) where i'm least likely to miss notes.


It's not scientific and I know that the people competing for the top spots on the ratings come up with better strategies but it works pretty well... especially on songs that you can't play right away and thus have more time to spend figuring out star strategies. If you are able to play a song well right from the beginning the tendancy is to move on to the next one without really nailing down the star strategy

[CrackerRiley]

[CrackerRiley]

[quackadilly]

good stuff.....

I'll have to try out some more methods before I can make anymore huge gains.

Thanks all

[quackadilly]

good stuff.....

I'll have to try out some more methods before I can make anymore huge gains.

Thanks all

[Echelar]

I know you all wanted another extremely long post on paths.

Consider your wish granted.


I'll be playing Fire it Up on hard mode: Chart Here

1) Look for all the SPs. I've marked it out visually Here.

2) Look for where the biggest point sections are. I'll add them to the picture like so.

Now you're ready to start planning. I always like to plan simply first to get a "baseline" path, then start making improvements from there.

-- First activation. Obviously your first big point area is the chords. You can get 3 SPs before the chords, and there's a 4th one within. If you count, you see that the SP in the chords is less than 6 measures in (though barely) from where the third SP is*. So, you're going to have to skip one of these 4. Simplest approach is to skip the last one so you can get the most out of the chords.

-- Second & third activations. The next time you get two SPs is after the chord sections. The next large point areas that we labelled are the chord holds, and the part after that. The latter is worth more points, so we'd prefer to use SP there.

So, we could use it in the point part that we want, but we'd accumulate 5 combos in the meantime. That seems a bit wasteful, so let's use the first two in a low point part, and accumulate only 3 SP combos for the big points. If you look at those 3, you easily have 7.5 beats of whammy, so you'll still have a full bar.

However, if we look at how long until the *next* SP combo, you'll see we need to use our full bar really quick. So, we'll keep that in mind.

-- Fourth activation. Seems straightforward. We have two SP combos, then a targetted location to use it, though this skips a SP. If we try getting that SP and then using it, we skip a different one ... but this will leave us with a loner SP at the end. Since the density of notes isn't much different, we'll elect to skip the less important SP.

-- Last activation. Pretty obvious.

Path 1: Here

----------

Now, compare this to the chart that we marked out our places with lots of points. We hit a lot of them, but not all of them, so let's go back through and try to get more of them. The most important ones are obviously the chord parts near the beginning. Even the really hard and fast parts near the end of the song are worth fractionally more at best... but the chord section is much longer.

So, the biggest section we missed is the 2nd round of chords. What would it take for us to nail them with SP? Well, the two previous SP combos of course. However, we already said that we have to skip one of the first 4 combos. If you mentally shift the SP so that you skip the third one instead... you notice that you get less time in the chords originally, but you get an extra use later.

How much did you lose or gain, though? Well, you lose 2 measures on the first set of chords because of the one you skipped. However, you get 5 measures of chords in the second set (5 because you can whammy the 2nd SP). So, net profit of 3 measures of chords (~48 notes).

However, we lose the next activation in our original path, so let's count our loss. I count it at ~30 notes, so it's a definite win. Additionally, we only lost one of those two SPs (we still get the one at the end of the second set of chords to use). So, this is where we are right now:

Path 2 (partial)

We're already around 20 notes up on our original path with an extra SP to use. This is an enormous improvement already (4000 points).

Looking forward, we'll now achieve a full bar with just the next two SPs (with perfect whammying). So, we have our choice of all of the next parts we've marked out to use it in. Where are the optimal 8 measures? This is really an easy question, because the most valuable part is at the end of the back-and-forth part (OBOBOYBYBY etc), and the chords before it. Count back 8 measures, and you get a bit of the chord holds in there.

If you count, it looks like that shift got you about 9-10 more notes (another ~2000 points).

Now we're back to the same SPs that we had originally. We might want to shift the 2nd-to-last usage forward a beat or so to get a few more notes.

Final Path: Here

Hopefully this was helpful. I even have a video of me playing this path (check the rankings). Although, perfect execution of this will beat me, since I was somewhat sloppy.

* For the sake of creative planning, I assume it's not possible to fit that 6 measure SP in there, but it may be barely barely barely possible. I sure haven't been able to do it.
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[Echelar]

I know you all wanted another extremely long post on paths.

Consider your wish granted.


I'll be playing Fire it Up on hard mode: Chart Here

1) Look for all the SPs. I've marked it out visually Here.

2) Look for where the biggest point sections are. I'll add them to the picture like so.

Now you're ready to start planning. I always like to plan simply first to get a "baseline" path, then start making improvements from there.

-- First activation. Obviously your first big point area is the chords. You can get 3 SPs before the chords, and there's a 4th one within. If you count, you see that the SP in the chords is less than 6 measures in (though barely) from where the third SP is*. So, you're going to have to skip one of these 4. Simplest approach is to skip the last one so you can get the most out of the chords.

-- Second & third activations. The next time you get two SPs is after the chord sections. The next large point areas that we labelled are the chord holds, and the part after that. The latter is worth more points, so we'd prefer to use SP there.

So, we could use it in the point part that we want, but we'd accumulate 5 combos in the meantime. That seems a bit wasteful, so let's use the first two in a low point part, and accumulate only 3 SP combos for the big points. If you look at those 3, you easily have 7.5 beats of whammy, so you'll still have a full bar.

However, if we look at how long until the *next* SP combo, you'll see we need to use our full bar really quick. So, we'll keep that in mind.

-- Fourth activation. Seems straightforward. We have two SP combos, then a targetted location to use it, though this skips a SP. If we try getting that SP and then using it, we skip a different one ... but this will leave us with a loner SP at the end. Since the density of notes isn't much different, we'll elect to skip the less important SP.

-- Last activation. Pretty obvious.

Path 1: Here

----------

Now, compare this to the chart that we marked out our places with lots of points. We hit a lot of them, but not all of them, so let's go back through and try to get more of them. The most important ones are obviously the chord parts near the beginning. Even the really hard and fast parts near the end of the song are worth fractionally more at best... but the chord section is much longer.

So, the biggest section we missed is the 2nd round of chords. What would it take for us to nail them with SP? Well, the two previous SP combos of course. However, we already said that we have to skip one of the first 4 combos. If you mentally shift the SP so that you skip the third one instead... you notice that you get less time in the chords originally, but you get an extra use later.

How much did you lose or gain, though? Well, you lose 2 measures on the first set of chords because of the one you skipped. However, you get 5 measures of chords in the second set (5 because you can whammy the 2nd SP). So, net profit of 3 measures of chords (~48 notes).

However, we lose the next activation in our original path, so let's count our loss. I count it at ~30 notes, so it's a definite win. Additionally, we only lost one of those two SPs (we still get the one at the end of the second set of chords to use). So, this is where we are right now:

Path 2 (partial)

We're already around 20 notes up on our original path with an extra SP to use. This is an enormous improvement already (4000 points).

Looking forward, we'll now achieve a full bar with just the next two SPs (with perfect whammying). So, we have our choice of all of the next parts we've marked out to use it in. Where are the optimal 8 measures? This is really an easy question, because the most valuable part is at the end of the back-and-forth part (OBOBOYBYBY etc), and the chords before it. Count back 8 measures, and you get a bit of the chord holds in there.

If you count, it looks like that shift got you about 9-10 more notes (another ~2000 points).

Now we're back to the same SPs that we had originally. We might want to shift the 2nd-to-last usage forward a beat or so to get a few more notes.

Final Path: Here

Hopefully this was helpful. I even have a video of me playing this path (check the rankings). Although, perfect execution of this will beat me, since I was somewhat sloppy.

* For the sake of creative planning, I assume it's not possible to fit that 6 measure SP in there, but it may be barely barely barely possible. I sure haven't been able to do it.
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[rabies]

echelar pretty much sums up what I do...he just gave a great example. It's all a matter of how much time you want to spend shifting around where you can activate star power paths and counting to see which one is better.

..it takes time away that you could be playing the game..but I like knowing that when I finally nail a full combo on a song, I did it using a star path that I calculated to be optimal....or at least a heck of of a lot better than one that gets formulated from just playing the song and figuring out the best one through trial and error.

...I just looked over my star chart for fire it up hard...which I thought up some time ago..and compared it to the last example he gave. They are exactly the same.

its a lot easier to plan this stuff out if you have photoshop or something to tool around with to manipulate the note charts.

[rabies]

echelar pretty much sums up what I do...he just gave a great example. It's all a matter of how much time you want to spend shifting around where you can activate star power paths and counting to see which one is better.

..it takes time away that you could be playing the game..but I like knowing that when I finally nail a full combo on a song, I did it using a star path that I calculated to be optimal....or at least a heck of of a lot better than one that gets formulated from just playing the song and figuring out the best one through trial and error.

...I just looked over my star chart for fire it up hard...which I thought up some time ago..and compared it to the last example he gave. They are exactly the same.

its a lot easier to plan this stuff out if you have photoshop or something to tool around with to manipulate the note charts.

[popemobile]

to answer the origional question, im pretty sure its this. JC will probably correct me if im wrong.

1. get 1st two and whammy fully, use slightly before the YO chords

2. get the next two and activate immediatly

3. get the RB hold and whammy fully, and chord squeeze on the YO chords.

4. whammy the next 2 fully and activate immediatly in the solo

5. get the last two and use it somewhere in the last part (im not sure where)

i got 138,100 using this, but i missed a chord squeeze and i didnt fully whammy the two before the solo, and i activated it late in the solo

[popemobile]

to answer the origional question, im pretty sure its this. JC will probably correct me if im wrong.

1. get 1st two and whammy fully, use slightly before the YO chords

2. get the next two and activate immediatly

3. get the RB hold and whammy fully, and chord squeeze on the YO chords.

4. whammy the next 2 fully and activate immediatly in the solo

5. get the last two and use it somewhere in the last part (im not sure where)

i got 138,100 using this, but i missed a chord squeeze and i didnt fully whammy the two before the solo, and i activated it late in the solo

[JCirri]

That's correct.

And the last activation that you're unsure of should occur on the last 4 measures such that you squeeze the final chord under SP.

So basically there are two note squeezes (activations 3 and 5), and two activations where hold points can be squeezed (4 and 5). Those last two are the key to getting really high scores by activating them at the very latest possible moments.

I've just posted a picture of the path in the Song FAQs topic.
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[JCirri]

That's correct.

And the last activation that you're unsure of should occur on the last 4 measures such that you squeeze the final chord under SP.

So basically there are two note squeezes (activations 3 and 5), and two activations where hold points can be squeezed (4 and 5). Those last two are the key to getting really high scores by activating them at the very latest possible moments.

I've just posted a picture of the path in the Song FAQs topic.
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[quackadilly]

this is great!!!!

I'll try it out tomorrow.

[quackadilly]

this is great!!!!

I'll try it out tomorrow.