Purse bonus in Stalker Trials?

[Cherokeedog]

I’m a bit confused about this bonus, which seems to affect the score quite heavily. I’m inclined to believe it is connected to the number of attempts to clear a map. So I got these two questions.

1. Is it indeed connected to the number of attempts?
2. If it is so, can it be reset?

I’m asking this 'cause I seem to be stuck on the 4th map (7 robots). I can’t get the 3 star rating for the life of me and it seems everybody who’s got a top score also had a hefty “purse bonus”, which I cannot increase (stuck at 4600 or something like that).

[Jens_Erik]

@MasterBjorn1337

@Jens_Erik I guess it is not a prioritized matter on the devs part, but do you have anything to add to the discussion?

Hey!

I’ve reached out to The Bearded Ladies about this and was told that there’s a patch coming to the game that will update the leaderboard system that should resolve the issue.

@Cherokeedog: It’s true what MasterBjorn is saying: The Purse bonus is connected to how much scrap you have left over from buying equipment and items. The more scrap you have, the bigger the Purse bonus.

[Cherokeedog]

MasterBjorn1337, thanks for the Purse Bonus explanation. I did indeed sell everything I was not using, save for some helmets, and my Purse Bonus went up, yet just as you said, it’s nowhere near 250k, like I’ve seen other people having (I’m somewhere around 30k). So…is there a way to increase scrap earnings?

As for the maps, I still have to get a 3 star rating for the last 3, but I’ve been doing them in order, so I don’t know how difficult it is to get on the last 2. I’m stuck in the Grogg Den and frankly…I only have one more attempt to make. I managed to clear the map in 8 turns / approx. 10 minutes, with only the two basic modifiers, yet my score only reached 770k. My next and last attempt will be to try and get the most modifiers activated, but that will definitely increase both the number of turns and the time. I will see how that comes out.

Jens_Erik - I guess my question stands for you too: is there a way to earn more scrap, other than selling my rewards?

[Cherokeedog]

Managed to jump over 1 mill in Grogg Den, with a purse of 26k. 8 turns and 5 modifiers, but it was a freaking surgical operation. So it’s doable, but it’s painful.

[Jens_Erik]

Hey again! I sent your questions and this thread over to the developers and got the following response that should hopefully clear some things up:

@The Bearded Ladies

Hi guys,

The Bearded Ladies here. Wanted to answer some of the issues here and in the referenced thread: The leaderboard is just wrong - Stalker Trials.

Purse bonus:

As pointed out earlier this is calculated from the total amount of scrap left when you enter a map. This means that unlocking all the stars on all levels will give you a higher maximum bonus since you can sell anything you are not currently bringing to the fight.

My own favorite strategy is usually to have one unit with an expensive “killer rifle” and the other two with lesser (and cheaper) equipment to soften the enemies up. This is, of course, a tradeoff since it can take some more turns to finish the map.

The users with 250k purse bonus are, indeed, cheating and will eventually get cleared of the tables. Since we do not run the actual servers for the scoreboards we can’t do server side checks, so we are not able to automate all checks. Now that we see what tactics are deployed we can also add some counters.

(In reality there are very few cheaters near the scores we have pulled of internally on the different maps btw).

The leaderboard bugs in this thread: The leaderboard is just wrong - Stalker Trials

There are two things going on in this screenshot. The first is that names matched to the scores have been swapped around. This is a UI bug that has been fixed and will be deployed soon.

The other is the mismatch betwen “Your best score” and the one on the leaderboard. Since MasterBjorn1337 seems really good at the stalker trials I do not question the score at all. The only thing I can see happening here is that the higher score was achieved while offline. This can sadly happen even if you start out online and
your connection drops at some point. The reason for this is:

• In order to make it a bit harder for cheaters (not letting them have all the time they want offline to edit savedata etc) we do not upload local scores to the tables. So in order to get onto the tables you have to be online while playing.
• However we did not want people to loose progress if their internet connection goes down, so we still store your best local
  score and use it for your progress (unlocked stars). Sadly this have not been communicated well enough in the UI and we will see what we can do to make it clearer.

If this was the case you should be able to spot it by not being taken to the leaderboards directly after the score screen.

Cheers,
David

I’m also going to post parts of this message to the other thread about the leaderboards. Hope it cleared things up, but do let me know if there’s anything else