Sonic Central > Rules Revisions

Route 101/Route 280 rings: What to do?

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SadisticMystic:
It has come to my attention that Route 101 and Route 280 share the same "rings respawn after 1 minute" mechanic with the kart races.?  This has drastic ramifications on those levels' ring charts, obviously.

Relevant facts:
-TSC rules generally dislike any allowance for collecting respawned anything under the virtue of not wanting to have obviously maxed (999) stats, or stats that completely obliterate anything that was possible without abusing the respawning
-The only levels affected by this are intrinsically reined in by time limits (3:40 R101 and 4:00 R280) which allows for at most one respawn cycle
-SA2's save file doesn't even keep track of best rings in kart stages, nor is the total shown in the blue box on level complete (it's only shown, de-emphasized, in the HUD at the corner), and there's no out-of total or all-ring A (well, there is an all-ring A on mission 6, but that's another story)
-It's worth noting that Hill Top in Sonic 2 has a respawning rock mechanic that's deliberately passed over by the rules on the grounds that the 10:00 time limit isn't enough time for scalping rocks to be anywhere close to the amount of points obtainable by "traditional" means
-Unlike Hill Top, use of respawning rings here will by definition be better than what's available without those rings, but there's still competition to be had, and clearly no hope at 999 or other easily maxed counts
-This would provide an extra element of strategy to the level, making its idealized form "What is the best point for me to turn around and drive backwards for 30 seconds, so I can pick up the newly-respawned rings and continue on for the rest of the level?" Note that such decisions have to be made on top of running the level in what would be a 2:40 clip, and without dropping excessive rings to boot
-Because GameCube has a sense of randomness (balloons on Dreamcast are worth a fixed 10 or a fixed 20; on GC they're whatever the DC value is plus an additional 5, 10, or 20 chosen at random), if this technique is to be allowed, the level will most probably become unmaxable on GameCube, as the odds of getting all random 20s are currently 1-in-243; with this route they'd drop most likely to 1-in-2187, and you still you to be able to run the longest section of backtrack possible that provides just barely enough time to reach the finish before time over, and do all that without missing a single ring
-Additionally, if this is allowed then it's worth considering whether kart stage mission 5 rings should be split off.?  The decreased time limits (2:50 R101 and 3:25 R280) prevent even one iteration of respawning rings from being able to materialize, leading to a more "pure" ring chart that plays like the levels always have in the past.

With this is mind, what should we do??  Allow respawning rings on the ring charts (with or without spinning off m5 charts), institute a rule to nip this in the bud, or just drop the charts entirely because rings were never emphasized on those levels except as boost food, and this brings it closer to some undefined and arbitrary "dumbness threshold"?

-----

RULING: This tactic is allowed. However, it hasn't been applied on the charts yet because apparently it's pretty tricky.

yse:
A couple more facts:

-Scalping is bad. Score scalping tactics are always banned, ring scalping (where it exists) is too, and even time scalping (HS-G). An offbeat example of ring scalping is in Scrap Brain 2, where rings for no particular reason sometimes appear multiple times. That was eventually banned, giving rise to my defense "When are you ever allowed to collect the same ring twice?"
-There is a case, however - SA2B mission 2's. The Back ring respawns all rings, and particularly on Dry Lagoon and Pumpkin Hill, it's quickest to collect 50 rings twice. However, there's clearly no point to doing that more than once.

I'd put this in the same category as SA2B mission 2s (even though it is actually an RA), since it's clearly not scalping - you can only do it once, and you have to have a certain level of skill to pull it off.

Mission 5 charts... I don't think that's necessary. At the end of the day, you're doing the same thing in mission 1, and it requires even more skill to pull off.

SadisticMystic:

--- Quote from: yse on November 07, 2007, 01:48:42 am ----There is a case, however - SA2B mission 2's. The Back ring respawns all rings, and particularly on Dry Lagoon and Pumpkin Hill, it's quickest to collect 50 rings twice. However, there's clearly no point to doing that more than once.
--- End quote ---

As a matter of fact, there's actually one instance I know of where it helps to hit the back ring multiple times: Aquatic Mine 2 when done for the no-A-button challenge.  Oh, and some hunting 2s under the "Play as Sonic" code for Codebreaker/AR, but of course those aren't up for discussion here.


--- Quote ---Mission 5 charts... I don't think that's necessary. At the end of the day, you're doing the same thing in mission 1, and it requires even more skill to pull off.

--- End quote ---

So R101 hard 1:50/R280 hard 2:25 are possible (because those are the clips that would need to be set to have time for a respawn in hard)?

yse:
Er, whoops. Let's try that again.

Mission 5 rings... I don't think that's necessary. At the end of the day, you're doing the same thing you used to do in mission 1, and the new 1 strat takes even more skill to pull off.

X-5:
from what you said it sounds like you can not get 999, and it would take a great deal of luck, skill and most importantly strategy to collect the most compared to 100% luck and pretty much no skill to get 350 or whatever is max. I vote you should let it be allowed, since it just makes more of a challenge which is good.

about mission 5, I suggested making time attacks for mission  4(I think)? of both routes, since obviously it is tons more challenging(The don't hit walls one is anyway, i forgot which mission) no one seemed to want something hard, so I guess mission 5 rings should be rejected for the same reason.

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