Lyf How to reach or beat a GHS? (Part 1)

The relationship and the difference of “strategy” “efficiency” “ability”

Hi all,
Here I will challenge myself to try to write something about how to reach/beat a GHS. Actually I am not as good as a few GHS hunters, with keeping (only) about 70 GHS in lasertank.lvl file nowadays. But since no one wrote about this topic before, I would like to make a start.
In order to describe things better, I have to say something about how I beat some GHS of levels. Then readers may have more chances to re-beat them. I welcome the re-beating but if someone beat one of them after watching my following hint, please send a comment.

 First, “Strategy” is a general plan. With the plan, you know which flag you will get, where the bridge is built, where the moveable objects will go… If there is no shortcut, a level usually contains only one strategy that allows you to get the flag, like one Soduku map is intended to contain only one solution. There are also many levels containing more than one right strategy.

Second, “efficiency” is about how fast you get the flag. With replay a level once and once again you can improve the efficiency until you run out of ideas or reach the limit.

If you want the best efficiency, you should at first choose a strategy. Better strategy corresponds to better efficiency. If you choose a wrong strategy, it is no use no matter how hard you try to reach/beat the GHS. Then the question is: how to judge whether your strategy is the same one as GHS’s, or worse, or even better? My answer is to watch the number of shots. The more shots the more tasks. So the limit of moves is likely more. If GHS’s shots are remarkably less than yours, it probably means you need to find another strategy.

Eg. #0147

Picture 1.1

the previous GHS is Ihab’s 965/493. There is an interesting experience. I worked hard on this level and got a score 965/513, yes, only needing 2-moves’ improvement. However I thought for long time and always failed. I also tried to reduce the shots but in my strategy this is in vain. Actually the 20-shots’ difference (while the denominator is around 500) is not a remarkably difference in my opinion, but in this particular level the difference is much enough for me to doubt whether Ihab used a different strategy. I tried to make different bridges on the southwest and northeast areas. Succeeded with a better number of moves and exactly 493 shots.

Picture 1.2-1.3 to see the difference of the 2 strategies.

Picture 1.2

Picture 1.3

The process is complex so I don’t say the details.

There are certainly exceptions, like #0002, #0610… but just now we were talking about the most normal cases. Next we see Picture 2.1(#0610). It is interesting if we want to reach the current GHS 77/113.

Picture 2.1

At first I reached the previous GHS: 79/65.(Picture 2.2)

Picture 2.2

Then With a different strategy, I reach a score of 79/113. I thought for quite a while then suddenly found a saving of the 2nd strategy.

Picture 2.3 shows the strategy: push 2 blocks into EF10.

Picture 2.3

Picture 2.4 is a key situation:

Picture 2.4

Next we want to push B10 to O10 then to O9; push O5 to H5; push O9 to O5 then to F5; push N11 to O11 then to O5…

Wait, here is a question: how many moves does this process (which I said in the last paragraph) cost at least?

2 moves?

The answer is 0 moves. See Picture 2.5:

Picture 2.5

We don’t go up to A11, instead, shoot up to push A10 to A11. Then shoot up again to push N11 to O11, shoot right to push O11 to O5. So the process cost 0 moves. Then we go to Line10 to push O5 to D5. Because then I will go to I10 to push I7 up, we don’t spend extra moves if we go to Line 10 to push the last block.

The ending is as Picture 2.6:

Picture 2.6

It is also an example of making use of mirrors to save moves.

Third, if you have better “ability”, you probably have got better rank on some level file, though your efficiency in a certain level is not necessarily good. You need much practice in order to raise the ability.

In Ch-II#1875 “tableau” Iron(I&B) once kept a GHS with more than 400 moves. It is not correspond to a good efficiency but since his ability is probably the best of us, he now keeps a 220-moves’ score.

Thanks for reading this article.

This tutorial is written by Li YiFeng nick lyf.