The best part of this "optimal UFO route" thing is that you'll probably never be able to pull it off. UFO is not about finding the most optimal UFO route, memorizing it and then grinding it until you get it. You approach a UFO 1cc like you would any other shmup, collect things as they appear, go for lives when you can, but if you miss one no biggy -- you'll be able to recover it later. Just remember that collecting reds is good. Memorizing and executing an "optimal" route only invites frustration as you attempt to perfect it every time. I strongly advise a more relaxed approach to the UFO system, just collect reds and greens when you can. If you "mess up" and spawn a rainbow, that's fine, it'll cancel bullets, convert points to power and provide an extra ufo token to help you towards the next UFO you want to spawn. If you somehow spawn a blue (which, if you're going for survival, can only mean you screwed up at least twice in a row), then that's fine too, you'll have a less embarassing score when you finish the game :V
Scoring is about sacrificing more reds in exchange for rainbows or blues at a rate that you can handle. If you went and memorized the WR scoring route (there is more than one, by the way) you'd quickly get pissed off and quit, since へかて sacrifices 9 spare lives just by not collecting any reds, and he also suicides off the rest of them for graze, leaving him with no resources and absolutely no room for screw ups anywhere. Good luck with those routes.
my approach is usually to try to not acquire bad habits, so I won't have to worry about fixing them later, and worry about the time spent trying to unlearn what I got from experimenting and learn how other people play, when you can do the latter first. Even if I'm no superplayer, I can't ignore the missing scoring potential from not raising point item value.. I don't know how much, but I know the lost potential exists and hurts you through the game. (for comparison, breaking a medal chain in Garegga/Batrider isn't such an unrecoverable mistake which will hurt you through the game like not having a high point item value or graze count do -- though when it's done on a section with lots of medals at once, then it's demotivating)
Though things aren't as simple (it seems) as just getting rainbow UFOs and collecting other UFO tokens while an UFO is on the screen, which is why I complain, but I agree that your suggestion is viable, since if your life stock becomes dangerously low, you can choose to play defensively, at least until you can have more resources or find situations with low risk and high reward. Maybe I'm angry that sometimes, people who avoid risks which I choose to take still get better rewards, not rarely due to having better memorization for doing stages more safely and at the same time scoring more. (I mean, games rewarding memorization and not having balanced enough risk/reward)
This only applies for scoring since using UFOs to cancel bullets is almost always more trouble than it's worth. Scoring always involves memorization in any shmup (though for some it's more necessary than others), so I don't really know what the point of this is.
what you said in parentheses,
(though for some it's more necessary than others), help me try to explain that sometimes, games reward greatly one player over the other with a single criteria, with no or little in between (one example being Ikaruga; if you don't know what enemies will come and how to chain them, you'll have a considerable gap compared to one who does). On the other hand, Batrider has a lot of possible optimizations, but it's also intermediate player-friendly (for example, at one point you'll choose to just chain the medals, before learning that there's more things to do on the game -- fortunately, there's not so much emphasis on aura usage or else I'd dislike the gameplay). Also, on topic of memorization versus freestyling, think, for example, about falling medals on Garegga and Batrider, too. You don't "memorize" how you're going to pick them, you find a way, and there are a lot of possibilities for paths and enemy bullet paths and medal trajectory. Same thing with Dangun Feveron. Opposite of... Mars Matrix :V
What memorization has to do with Touhou shmups? (most of the main ones)
If you don't know which attacks are going to come, you don't graze them as well. (and I particularly have problems with grazing, I think I've said once how grazing in Shuusou Gyoku felt more flexible and felt more rewarding, as in the risk stays the same, but the graze chaining adds reward so if you mess up the grazing, you do it knowing that it was worth it)
Here's hoping for something similar to the UFO system in TD, where you can slowly trade off lives for score as you get better at the game. I'm not too concerned with how ZUN achieves this effect (hopefully not by suiciding), just as long as it's present and allows room for active improvisation.
mine are, so far:
- optional, additional, triggerable bosses (yes I liked that stuff in Batrider)
- hidden guest playables (yes I liked that stuff in Batrider and Garegga and Dimahoo too)
- intermediate scoring (in addition to basic and advanced, of course), it helps avoid having players restart or stop playing mid-game
- balanced risk/reward
- no punishing those who can't memorize well (but as long as there's grazing, it will be really difficult for this to happen)
- some sort of help for bullet or enemy character hitboxes (gradually changing color of nearby bullets, for example, would help, since the sound effects don't help much if you need to plan a route or is dodging while grazing more than one bullet), if you
ever have to hug bosses for graze
- no point-blank grazing or invulnerability grazing (in Varth, there's invulnerability point-blanking, which is fun. But point-blank grazing or pixel-perfect grazing is not fun
)
- more scoreplay styles than grazing (MoF/PoFV, for example, though PoFV on a whole-number game would be lol)
This main point right here does not get emphasized enough. Too many times I see people raging about UFO because they have divined some purpose from the game that simply isn't there, and then get angry when they can't complete this purpose. It's like saying, "If Rebecca Black is supposed to be a fish, how come she doesn't have any gills?"
Scoring, though, is a purpose which is in the games. I just happen to not like how it's done in any game where I have to memorize things and keep such information (data, not gameplay systems -- compare, for example, to having to memorize historical events' dates vs. understanding why a program code won't work by understanding what the programmer wanted to achieve) in mind while playing. (doesn't mean that I mean that there's only one way to enjoy the same game, but the way most other people enjoy games, I don't, and vice-versa)
