Lyman's Trio - Fun With Bonus

Xenonite

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Oct 7, 2014
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AFM: (5,000,000 + (49,570 * S) + (250,000 * M)) * BXM
MM: (25,000 + (870 * S)) * BXM
MB: (50,000 + (370 * S)) * BXM

How to verify this:
On AFM and MM, the Super Skill Shot passes three switches. I found out the numbers in AFM by looking directly at the "end of ball bonus" in the Status Report after a first ball SSS plunge. MM does not have this in its status report, but quick draining (and a bit of testing with variables and GCFs and whatnot) verified this as well. If you start Lyman's Lament via flipper code, where it then only switches the music, but otherwise does nothing, the game outright says "+0 Bonus X" and then "All switches add 370 to bonus".

On all three of these tables, Bonus X should cap at 250. I have done this personally for AFM, and seen it in a video for MM. I have not seen this happen for MB. Post a video if you have one, this seems like it'd be really painful.

It seems easiest to raise Bonus X on AFM, due to the two Bonus X lanes being extremely close to the rather powerful bumpers. (In the 1.13 home ROM, the patch notes actually mention lowering bumper power because of the common damage to said bumpers.) MM is slightly harder because the bumpers on MM are generally weaker and farther from the Bonus X lanes. MB is last because there are three Bonus X lanes instead of two. The ball(s) also seem to be in the bumper area for far less time than in either AFM or MM. In theory the Tombstone Target could be super fast, but this seems suicidal even in TPA, even with a Lament.

I've found that AFM bonus X is not overpowering (usually a few billion or so) in relation to the rest of the game (usually multiballs and, early on, saucers) until the end of long balls, where one EOB can then go into the tens of billions and thus represent 10-20% of one's game score. MM's end of ball bonus behaves similarly and usually stays within the single or low double digit realms, but a long ball can push this to 100M+. (I've had a 1,967 switch EOB + 25K, all multiplied by 108x -> 187M!) This is large in its own right, but seems ... sort of balanced with castle scores and BTFK (if/when I actually win it, which seems to be a coin flip).

MB, on the other hand, is the ugly duckling. As I just finished ranting in the Lyman's Lament thread at some length, the EOB is absolutely ugly. On non-Lament balls, even getting 10M is an achievement in and of itself, and even with Lament, 100M+ is hard. (Note that several people think otherwise, and this may be a lack of ball control on my part.)

Bringing in non-Lyman tables, CFTBL also behaves somewhat like MB, where end of ball bonuses, even with the 10x (actually 32x) multiplier are extremely low. I've never actually seen a 100M+ bonus on CFBTL, which is somewhat amusing considering that a good SJP can net 6 billion. TZ is somewhat incomparable since its bonus is exclusively made up of mode scoring, but bonuses on TZ tend to be all-or-nothing: either a few tens of millions for a piddly ball, or 400-700M for a 5X door panel / hitchhiker bonus and then loads of PB Mania points.

So that brings me to a few questions. What are your philosophies on EOB in this context? MM and AFM both behave somewhat like TZ, where tilting on long balls will cost you dearly. On MB, it's more like "change to switch the match digit". And somewhat more specifically, what are your experiences on EOB numbers themselves (as in, what do you score in EOB) with these tables?

Somewhat more specifically, why in the name of [insert deity here] is the per-switch bonus on MB lower than MM, when in fact MB scores tend to be anywhere from 2-6 times as large as MM scores? (This is from personal experience and does not represent everyone. With that in mind, however, the leaderboards seem to show a 3-4x disparity between MB/MM scores.) Thus, a "proper" switch bonus for MB would then be 1770 or such, with a Lyman's Lament scoring bonus being on the order of 10-20 thousand per switch.

EDIT: With a 100X bonus, a 10K switch bonus for Lament would result in unlimited millions scoring. This seems absurd.

Reference "250x" switch values:
AFM -> ~12.4M
MM -> 217,500 (half a Troll Jackpot)
MB -> 92,500 (without Lament; even bumpers score higher than this on occasion) 625,000 (with Lament, seems high, but is 250x on MB even realistic?)
 
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TomL

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Mar 12, 2013
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This is jaw droppingly awesome analysis.

Do we know for sure that the scoring is tuned as Lyman intended? You hear about various features that are dropped from the final production as cost cutting measures. Maybe something like that happened and skewed the scoring balance.
 

Sean DonCarlos

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Mar 17, 2012
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On Monster Bash to maximize bonus: Start Lyman's Lament right before entering Frankenstein Multiball with stacked modes, so that you go through Monster Bash and Monsters of Rock immediately afterwards. If conservatively played, this will result in a bonus of 250M or more.
 

Xenonite

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Oct 7, 2014
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This is jaw droppingly awesome analysis.

Do we know for sure that the scoring is tuned as Lyman intended? You hear about various features that are dropped from the final production as cost cutting measures. Maybe something like that happened and skewed the scoring balance.

Glad you like it. I just googled "monster bash prototype", and the only things that came up were various playfield errata. So not sure what to make of that there.... It's possible that the MoR starting bonus was lower or something...

On Monster Bash to maximize bonus: Start Lyman's Lament right before entering Frankenstein Multiball with stacked modes, so that you go through Monster Bash and Monsters of Rock immediately afterwards. If conservatively played, this will result in a bonus of 250M or more.

"Start Lyman's Lament..." okay...
"... before entering Frankenstein Multiball..." okay... if the scoop doesn't just start it by itself (does happen occasionally)
"... with stacked modes..." okay... normally I can only stack like 3 or so but okay...
"... so that you go through MB and MoR immediately afterwards..." wait, hang on: if we're stacking modes, and we're stacking enough of them, doesn't that usually preclude a Bash? And isn't the additional Bash usually worth more points than the Lament? Okay, 250M is a high bar...
"If conservatively played..." oh great. I am terrible at doing that on this table. Not sure why...
"... this can result in a bonus of 250M or more".

Uh, what type of Bonus X are we talking about here? Because even at 100X, 100 * 2500 = 250K and that means it'd take 1,000 switch hits... which is a lot.... are we assuming Hold Bonus X or something here? Or do we just try to loop Mosh Pit over and over again during/after MB/MoR? There's something I'm missing here...

(I just looked again at my top bonus, 133 X basically about 110M. It was only 320 switch hits... but the 133 X was with a ton of Hold Bonus X.)
 

Sean DonCarlos

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Staff member
Mar 17, 2012
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A thousand switch hits isn't that many over Frankenstein > (optionally) Bash > Rock > (optionally) Mosh. You're talking about 20 to 30 minutes of near-continuous multiball.
 

Xenonite

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Oct 7, 2014
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And I suppose if you're in multiball all the time, the autoplunged ball save balls (does that make any sense?) would keep going into the bonus X lanes...

time to experiment... again... ack.

Getting back to the original topic... why is the darn switch bonus so low? WHY? Even if they just kept the per-switch value at 870, it would at least make drains somewhat tolerable... And in the long run, does it even matter?
 

vikingerik

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Nov 6, 2013
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It's an instance of this trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards

Bonus in these games is quadratic by ball length. Double your ball length and you get four times as much bonus, since both the switch count and bonus X double, and multiply each other. Any quadratic function exceeds any linear function if it runs long enough.

Maybe Monster Bash's bonus is lower to leave more room for Lyman's Lament to shine as something more special.

The overall leaderboard scores on Monster Bash vs Medieval Madness don't mean anything for this analysis. It's not really true that MB scores are 2x-6x larger than MM. This comes from a quadratic element in MB that MM lacks. Every Monsters of Rock is worth more per every previous instrument collected, while there is no score element in MM that escalates with game length.

There's also the infinity factor that skews what reaches the leaderboards. MM is fairly easy to go infinite on repeated Castle Multiball extra balls, so the 5B-plus scores just represent how long someone wanted to keep playing. MB is much more limited, since the only repeatable extra ball comes each time you cycle through Monster Bash, but starting 6 monsters every ball is beyond the capability of almost everyone (even I can't manage it forever), so the leaderboard scores are more reflective of skill.
 
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vikingerik

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Nov 6, 2013
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Oh, and why should the tables be balanced with respect to each other on bonus in the first place? It's perfectly fine to have some tables where bonus dominates (this means you Cactus Canyon) and some where it's all but irrelevant (hi CFTBL). Some tables will punish you more for a tilt than others. That's fine variety and you can play whichever you like more.
 

vikingerik

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Nov 6, 2013
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Oh, and just for fun, your info here let me figure out exactly what went into my bonus on AFM in the other thread. It was the starting 5M, plus 250k * 462 Martians, plus 49570 * 8568 switch hits, all times 250x.

I whipped out an Excel sheet that tried all possible numbers for the Martian count and subtracted out that portion of the bonus. That found 462 martians as the only number that left the remaining bonus evenly divisible by the 49570. In other words, this works mathematically because the values of 250k per martian and 49570 per switch are mutually prime except for the dummy zero so there's only one combination that can produce the final number.

So what if that 8568 switch hits was Lyman's Lament? 2500 * 8568 * 250x = 5,355M. Ok 250x is probably out of reach on Monster Bash, but even 50x would still reach a billion bonus.
 
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Xenonite

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Oct 7, 2014
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On a ball with 8,568 switch hits, you'd think that it would reach 250x even on MB...

Didn't know that MM was infiniable that easily. That darned left orbit...

"there is no score element in MM that increases with game length"

uh, BTFK? 50M+? (is there a limit on that?)

And of course MoR scoring caps out at 10M per monster but that's like impossible to get...
 

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