Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26257239-20150724203251/@comment-25467429-20150725000921

I think there is a thread about somewhere that covers this, but in case there isn't I'll say this:

It first depends on the spot you're aiming for. Doing well (top 2 or 3 in any given room), in any given mission, using up 3 or more of your supplied fuel, every day will usually get you top 3000, top 1000 if it's a relatively slow tournament. If you're going for something better, that's when you start having to tweak your strategy.

Top 1000 in most tournaments will likely mean either striving to use all six possible units of supplied fuel each day, scoring top half of the room, of a room that gets an S, or using up some stocked fuel to compensate for failure to accomplish any of the tasks mentioned earlier.

Top 200 (and above) is all about how consistently you can do the things mentioned for top 1000, plus using purchased fuel at the going rate needed to achieve the desired ranking. It's entriely unavoiadable that you will have to use a fair bit of stocked fuel for any tournament that lasts longer than a weekend, and has a popular reward.

In general playing your best mission will alleviate any burden when it comes to fuel. For example, I can routinely score 80000+ points on Moscow at my current MR (aroun 2050) with players of similar MRs. If the players aren't that good or their MRs are in the 1900s, I can usually break 100,000 for the mission. That translates last co-op tournament into about 4000 to 4600 tournament points, after the maxed forced sortie multiplier. At best one any other mission I can only get around 3500 points. So, the last couple days I only sortied in Moscow. To go a little deeper, you want to balance the number of players in the room too. If your room has good players, you only want a 2v2 match so you aren't competing with as many players for points. But if your room is realtively weak, you may want to go 3v3 or 4v4 to make sure you get an S for the mission. Getting an S is important.

I use the multiplier becasue I know my scores are consistent, therefore I don't have to worry about "wasting" fuel by doing poorly one mission to the next. It saves time to use the multiplier if you're going for a higher rank, as constantly flying the same mission over and over can become extremely frustrating given how many missions you'll have to fly, if you have to do them one by one without the multiplier.

MVP is for the most part inconsequential, in my opinion, so long as your score is really good. This is circuitous though since a really good score is what gets you MVP anyway. But between getting MVP and getting an S, you should prioritize an S for the room as it has a larger impact than missing MVP.

Long story short, playing your best mission, getting MVP, getting an S for the mission, are the only ways to maximize your tournament points mission to mission. The multiplier helps cut down how often you have to play missions, and can sort of lock in your best scores, but magnify your worst too. And if your goal is top 200, or worse yet top 20, there is no way to avoid burning fuel. I've yet to see a tournament, even the comaparatively light PvP we had last weekend, that didn't require a moderate amount of fuel burn to break the top tiers. It's just not gonna happen right now. Maybe in time if people stop playing the game as much, but not right now.