Question about rank specifics (LLS)

[chirpy13]

Ripped from the wiki

Factors that increase rank:

• Play Time
• Getting extra lives
• Point items collected in a single stage
• Collecting items during a bomb (Bomb Bonus)
• High Clear Bonus
• Attaining full power and getting power items
• Clearing a stage without getting hit
• Clearing a stage without using bombs

Factors that decrease rank:

• Getting hit
• Letting items go off-screen (not including power items)
• Low Clear Bonus
• Timing out on boss attacks

My question is exactly how much of an effect do each of these factors have?  Has anyone ever looked into it before?  Is there anyone able to look into the game data for it?  Rank is becoming nothing but my bane lately.  Sometimes everything works perfectly, and other times the rank is too low at a couple critical spots (midboss Kurumi, Reimu).  I need to figure out what's wrong and how bring it back to max as quickly as possible, but there's practically no documentation on this sort of thing...

As a side note, does anyone know of any big Japanese Touhou communities I could ask around on as well?

[nintendonut888]

I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about. Unless you're on lunatic, the amount of patterns that become significantly different based on rank, to the point of becoming impossible, are non-existent. Even on the highest difficulty, the only pattern I can think of that becomes literally impossible is Yuka's final (if there is a way to survive below max rank, I don't know). But you're overthinking the importance of rank here. Quite simply, the rank will increase as you play without dying, and will decrease when you die. The other factors are negligible. It's true that the game is generally easier on a lower rank, but you shouldn't have to base your playstyle around such a thing. After all, I believe another thing from the manual says that this is the kind of game where "you should try and play as best you can no matter what the rank is."

[chirpy13]

Playing normal, and yeah, for the most part it's not a big deal but those two spots in particular are troubling.  If midboss Kurumi's rank is too low then one of her shots will aim at you instead of away, which is an instadeath when supergrazing it.  On Reimu, the first phase will only shoot half as many bullets at low rank, and thereby not providing enough graze to reach 999 on the stage.  In both cases low rank costs 1-2 million, so being able to find a way to consistently max it after a suicide is essential to maintaining those points.

Shorter version - LLS scoring is silly.

[nintendonut888]

Oh, you didn't say you were scoring. In that case, good luck. BV Though still, I don't see how that would be a problem. If one bullet is misaimed, then you can change the way you graze it. A simple tap would probably solve your problem (or, dare I say, don't die and low rank won't be a problem?)

[chirpy13]

I thought of that myself but sort of just disregarded the thought because I was doubtful I could recognize and react to the aim given the proximity.  Decided to try it out though, and it does seem doable... More difficult, but doable.  Also somehow managed to max the graze on low rank Reimu on a stage 4 practice run just now too (it's always been around 700-800 before).  Needed a little extra milking to go from 900 to 999, but it at least proves me wrong about it being impossible.  Just gotta hug her tightly I suppose :3.  I am still curious about this though... It always bothers me how little is known about the PC98 games in comparison to the rest of the series.  I can understand the lack of popularity, but when you consider the fact that even MS is 14 years old, you'd think there would be nothing left unsolved by this point - alas anything pre-EoSD is largely ignored, almost as if nothing existed before then.  Quite sad really... I think I'm getting a bit too off topic now though so I'll just leave it there.

(or, dare I say, don't die and low rank won't be a problem?)

If only it were so simple :<

[Zil]

If only it were so simple :<

Indeed. Dying and scoring go hand in hand in LLS.

I'm no expert on how rank works in LLS, though I have to doubt that there's much you can do about it. The things that increase rank (collecting items, grazing, etc.) are things you're probably doing as much as you can anyway, since they help your score. The only trick that occurs to me now is waiting as long as you can to capture the patterns (regardless of how much graze you get from them), allowing rank to increase over time, and preventing it from decreasing by capturing the pattern at the last second.

And yes, it's unfortunate that these early games get so little attention.

[Karisa]

What's your route before midboss Kurumi, anyway? If you're dying on the first half of stage 2, could that death be moved to stage 1 Orange instead? Or do you still have bombs remaining at Orange? In that case, it'd probably be better to avoid dying at all before midboss Kurumi (if you're planning on dying there, perhaps you could suicide as you defeat her, double KOs still give you the bullet cancel bonus).

And yes, there needs to be more information about the PC-98 games. I'm not even sure how accurate the factors that increase/decrease rank on the wiki are, considering the EoSD ones were incorrect for quite a while.

That reminds me, does anyone know what determines the amount of points you gain after each boss phase in LLS/MS? It doesn't seem to be directly linked to number of bullets (it is for the final phase and Ex-Alice, but you gain more than the amount displayed at the top), or to your current graze count like in EoSD.

[chirpy13]

I'm not sure... I feel like there was a reason I suicided on stage 2 rather than Orange, but I can't remember what it was.  Dream counter I think, though that's not really worth much if anything at all.  Or maybe something to do with my power (though again, miniscule impact)...  Anyway, my route up to Kurumi mid is 2 bombs on the ghost rush at the end of stage 1 (just after the midboss and those side spirit thingies), a bomb as the second set of ghosts is leaving the screen on stage 2, a suicide immediately following that, and then 2 more bombs on the spinners.

As for the phase clears, I got the impression that it is affected by the bullets, but on a much smaller scale than the big cancel at the end.  I decided to test it out on Stage 5 Yuka's opener and it turns out I was right:

192k (15*12.8k) gained with 0 bullets onscreen
284k gained with bullets onscreen

I tried messing around with point items, lives, power, dream, and graze and it was always 192k when 0 bullets were present.  So you've pretty much got a static bonus for clearing the phase, plus a bullet clear bonus that seems to be somewhere around 1k/bullet.  Pretty tiny really - too small to be worth paying attention to when you consider that all phases share the same lifebar.

[Karisa]

Thanks for the testing the boss phase bonuses.

With the midboss Kurumi graze, I think a suicide on stage 2 actually loses points compared to a suicide to Orange. Since you won't have a chance to reach 12800 dream bonus in stage 2, a loss of one dream item in stage 2 will affect the value of the second-half point items as well as the stage clear bonus, while a loss of one dream item in stage 1 will only affect the stage clear bonus.