Have you forgotten one of your killscreen performances already? 
No I did not, and I actually thought about that and smiled, but ty for remembering!
A player on 6+1 settings has a great game and gets to 21-5 on their 4th life, leaving 3 in reserve. They execute the standard high-score tactic of sacrificing their extra men (#4, #5, and #6) and leaving the last (#7) to try and reach the killscreen... How do we score a game like this?
If the player chose to do that, then the 4-man segment would end on 21-5, when the 4th man died, and you'd score it the same way you would any other 3+1 game. Don't make it more complicated than it is, sir!
The tactical quandary as to what to do (sac #4, #5, and #6 on 21-5 to beef up the 7-man score, or take #4 all the way to the KS to beef up the 4-man score) would be up to the player.
Yeah, I don't understand how the "Start" and Level 1-1 are relevant to this discussion either.
They're VERY relevant, because some of the points being made to argue against 4 men on 6+1 settings are contradictory with current DKF adjudication practices.
The 6+1 setting essentially allows a player to compete simultaneously on 2 tracks.... Not good. The player should be required to declare intent up front.
But that's not how it works here, Scott! At DKF, a player can submit the same game to the 1-1 track, the Start track, the standard (3+1) track, and even the No-Hammer track, and have that
one single game be ranked on all 4 lists.
In other words, DKF
already allows players to compete simultaneously on multiple tracks, and without declaring intent in any way. They can submit their game to whatever track they want, depending on how their game went. Ie, "Initially I was only trying to put something big up for the Start track, and I succeeded, but I kept going and I PB'ed, so I'll submit it to the 3+1 track too". Totally legal here. But if intent must be declared, and multiple-track-competition-by-default are, as you say, "not good", then it shouldn't be legal.
You would "declare intent" on a 1-1 score, or a Start score, by immediately killing your guy after you get your score.
We don't have a 6+1 track at DKF (I definitely want it now, by the way
), but if we did, there seem to be two main arguments against submitting the first-four-lives segment to the standard 3+1 track.
One argument is, "no, since getting a 4-man score was not the declared intent, and constitutes simultaneous competition on two tracks."
The other argument is, "no, because you'd play the first four men with the wrong mentality and wouldn't be scared enough."
The first argument is, as I've shown, contradicted by current DKF practices.
The second is understandable, but nonetheless pretty bizarre. If I'm feeling totally unattached one day and play No-Hammer (for example) with absolute YOLO, jump over every single fire-critter I see, get ridiculous luck, and back into the world record, should the score be DQ'ed because my mentality about the run caused an insufficient level of emotional investment?? That's basically what the "psychology" argument against "first 4 lives on 6+1" amounts to. I get it, but you have to admit that using psychology as the basis for enforcing a dipswitch setting has never been done before, and is very strange...
What if someone was playing the "no killscreen" ROM hack and finished 21-6 with a new PB? Would the score be accepted?
love it.
