It's all about scoring...

It's less than two week to go until the Söldner-X 2: Final Prototype product launch, time for another in-depth article. We've spoken before about how the play rank system has an influence on the game's scoring system and today we will give you a little more insight about how the whole scoring system works.

Score multipliers linked to the play rank & difficulty setting

First and foremost, the best way to increase your overall score will be through the score multiplier, which is linked to your play rank (dynamic difficulty) and the difficulty you have selected in the options menu. There are eight different score multipliers linked to each difficulty setting. The lowest one is linked to the lowest play rank ('G'), the highest one to the highest rank ('S'). Whenever you score, the score you obtain will directly be multiplied.

Difficulty/Rank	G	F	E	D	C	B	A	S
Beginner	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Normal	2	4	6	8	10	12	16	24
Hard	6	8	12	16	20	24	32	48
Extra hard	12	16	24	32	40	48	64	96

Playing for the first time, only the 'beginner' and 'normal' difficulty settings are available. 'Hard' and 'extra hard' can be unlocked by clearing the game in 'normal' and 'hard' mode. Further, the play rank you start with is higher on the more difficult settings, which gives you an extra advantage when playing especially on hard and extra hard mode.

In other words, the biggest key to top scores will be to maintain the highest possible play rank throughout the game on the highest possible difficulty setting. Sounds fun? There's more...


Additional score multipliers & score bonuses

You can collect additional score multiplier extras to further increase your multiplier by up to +16x. Score multiplier extras can be collected by shooting down certain enemies and through the chaining system. Each time you collect a score multiplier extra, it will stay intact for 80 seconds.

There's also one challenge in the game that awards you with the status of a 'treasure hunter', which doubles the chance for score and score multiplier extras to be dropped by enemies by 100%.


Victory screen

Well, you may still remember this part from the original Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer (PS3 edition) and it's back again in Söldner-X 2 with more juice added to it. Upon completion of one stage, your overall summary will be reflected on the victory screen.

The following factors will add another bonus to your score:

• Boss time (the faster you beat the boss, the higher the bonus)
• Stock bonus (number of player ships left)
• Chain ring bonus (number of chain rings collected)
• Key bonus (number of secret keys collected)
• Enemies killed (an obvious one, no?)
• Chain count (number of chains successfully completed)
• Extras bonus (number of extras collected)
• Rating (You will receive an overall rating for your performance, based on the numbers of enemies shot down as well as your boss time)

Based on your play rank during the time the boss was killed, your victory screen rating, the stage you have played and your difficulty mode, all victory screen bonuses will further be multiplied by up to 20 times. In other words, your victory screen bonus can range from a few thousand to over a million bonus points, depending on your performance.

These are the three major factors that can influence your score. There are still a few more small details, but we will leave that to each one of you to find out (hey we can't spoil everything here right now, right?).

During testing, our scores for a full play-through ranged between just a few millions to over 90 million points. We will be excited to see how the battle for the top places is going to unfold and have prepared a detailed online ranking table for you, which will go live on www.soldner-x.com/sx2/ upon product launch. Oh and don't forget, there's always still the score replay function to check out how others managed to do so well.