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Points and Score works as the same thing in the game. The points you earn doubles as the high score in 1player and the credits in Tournament Mode. I use “points” and “score” inter-changeable.

The score system is largely divided into two sections:

• Combat Score
• Post Combat Score

This is the points you gain while in combat. Hitting with attacks, making combos, and using special attacks. Arguably also not taking damage, though I'm detailing that in the post score instead.

• Consecutive Hits (1+)
• Combo Hits (2+)
• Special Moves
• Stunning Opponent

The actual points values are taken from entries in the .AF files. Each HARs attack has a point rating, this number is never changed in any way (by stats, upgrades, or anything else). Special moves have their own points in the same way, though usually higher.

Example: Jaguar 5P is worth 800 points. Jaguar Throw is worth 4000 points.

How many attacks you make in a row without you getting hit back. This is not Combo's, you can jump kick the opponent, walk away to the other side of the arena, and concussion cannon him from there, and it will be: 2 Consecutive hits. If you're hit for any reason, the consecutive hits stop, and you're rewarded for the number you reached so far. Arena hazards breaks Consecutive Hits.

If you hit 4 or more attacks without taking damage, you're given those same attacks base points worth in extra reward. So doing 4 jaguar jabs, will net you 4×800 points in consecutive hits. 10 jabs will give 10×800 points etc.

Formula: 4+ hits: +Base*1

How many attacks in a row, that does not allow the opponent to regain control. If at any time the opponent regains control, even for a second, the combo ends. Control is defined as the ability to do moves/block etc.

If you do 2 or more attacks without letting the opponent regain control, you're given the number of combo hits x4 as bonus points. Some special attacks works weirdly in this system, and needs to be examined further.

Formula: 2+ combo hits: +Base*4

Note: Special attacks like Electra's Electric Shards works correctly: The first hit counts for 4000 points, and the next 4 shards counts as 1200 points. Jaguar's extended leap works correctly at 2×4800 points.

Note2: Jaguar's throw seems to make things weird with combos, for example: Throw, Jab, OHT. is a 3 hit combo. This should give: 4000+800+7200 points in base (12000), and same x4 in combo bonus (48000). Instead I get 3200 points, which is what I would get for the jab alone

Each time you stun an enemy you get free points. This includes when the arena stuns them. The points seems to be the difficulty number, so 400 for Ultimate/Heavy Metal.

If the AI is especially bad, they can actually end up self stunning in the desert arena multiple times and feed you points. Cossette especially.

These are the points you gain after the combat is done, notably the remaining health percentage as points. But also some situational and optional ones like perfect and scrap.

• Health (%)
• Perfect
• Scrap
• Destruction

All of these numbers uses the difficulty setting as a base multiplier. I'll use 400 for Ultimate/Heavy Metal as example.

Once the fight is over and you have won, you gain the percentage of your health remaining as bonus points. This takes your remaining health in percent, and multiplies it with the difficulty modifier, for the final number.

If you have a perfect match and take no damage, you get the full 100% of your health (400) and a perfect bonus in addition to this, which is again the difficulty number, so 400.

If you do a Scrap you gain half the difficulty, 200. And if you do a destruction you gain another half the difficulty, so another 200 for a total of 400.

In 1-Player mode the points is the High-Score. So the goal is to rack up as much points as possible so you can impress your friends with huge numbers.

This follows the standard score mechanics, but has a few exceptions that we'll get more into later:

Exceptions:

• Best X out of Y rounds
• Fire & Ice hidden characters

Since you get “Combat Score” for everything you do, it means you gain more points for winning 2 and losing 1, than you do for winning 2 and losing 0. The optimal play here is to beat the opponent down to 1% like, and then let him win. Then beat him perfectly two times in a row. The same applies for “Best 3 of 5” or higher numbers etc, lose as many rounds as you can while racking up points, then perfectly dominate them in the rest.

These hidden characters in 1player mode can only be accessed on the Fire Pit arena, by using a Scrap/Destruction + Fire&Ice move. So if you want to maximize score in 1player highscore, you want these two. Especially since they give crazy much points, to the degree that you won't get a decent high score without them.

If you perfect against every normal enemy except fire (and don't play ice), you will get less points than another player not perfecting against any of the normal enemies, but perfects Fire (and doesn't play ice). And Ice gives even more points.

BUG: If playing on 2of3 or higher, there is a way to fight Fire multiple times until you defeat him, this means you can get some insanely high highscores, and completely negates highscores in this mode.

In Tournament Mode the points is your credits. So the goal is to rack up as much points as possible, while taking as little damage as possible, to get the most credits.

This follows the standard score mechanics, but has a few exceptions that we'll get more into later:

Exceptions:

• Repair
• Unranked Challenger

In tournament mode you got to repair in-between matches, so unless you perfect the enemy, you're subtracted some score after each match. Primary a problem if you lose.

These always have a much higher base value, thus you gain a lot more score from beating them, or even doing combos etc.

So the optimal way to get higher score is to make a lot of low damage combo attacks, with many specials. Electra is probably the best at this, with a pilot like Crystal. If you are going to maximize points, you must play a perfect game, and do scrap + destruction.

If playing best 2 out of 3 or more, then you'll want to beat the enemy to 1% health, and then lose, in order to get as many fights as possible, for more Combat Points. Winning 2-0 is actually less points than winning 2-1.

This can be abused further with Fire&Ice in 1player, as with an exploit you can repeatedly fight on the fire arena, fight Fire, lose 1-2, and do the same again 10 times and win on the last time 2-1, and then fight Ice. Before fighting Kreissack for absolutely crazy points. To the degree that any other points you gain for the normal matches doesn't even matter.

Couple of tables with some stats for points and damage from two bots.