I always believed the pauses are directly correlated to the number of wild barrels thrown, because the timer has to be at 000 during the last barrel, and wild barrels are released faster than normal rolling. So, by that, if you get a lot of wild barrels early on your barrel board, could you then assume you'll get an increased set of groups then?
I used to think that it worked this way also with that same reasoning, but it turns out that this is incorrect. The Timer works differently on the barrel screens than it does on the other 3 screen types. On the other screen types, the Timer ticks down at a predetermined constant rate based on which level you are playing. On the barrel screens, the Timer is not constant. Instead, it ticks down by one tick for each barrel released. In other words, the Timer does not determine when barrels are released -- it's the other way around ... depending on when the barrels are released determines how quickly the Timer ticks down. For example, you could play out a Level 5+ barrel screen all the way to 000 (with no hammer smashes) and finish at the last moment and 140 real time seconds will have elapsed. Then, on the next Level 5+ barrel screen you could again play it all the way down to 000 (with no hammer smashes) and finish at the last moment, but perhaps 145 real time seconds elapse this time. The differences will be due to the number of wild barrels released (which tends to speed up the amount of real time remaining) and the number of pauses by Kong (which tends to slow down the amount of real time remaining) -- these two factors are NOT specifically programmed to cancel each other out -- they are both somewhat random events.
Believe it or not, it IS specifically programmed for Kong to "get tired" in the second half of a Level 5+ barrel screen (once the Timer hits 4000) which causes him to pause more often between barrel releases, generally causing more opportunities to group the barrels with Kong's ladder. This is independent of how many wild barrels have been released.
If your 4000 timer asumptions about getting more groups is true,
I agree that this is still somewhat of an assumption -- but it is known that Kong pauses more often after the Timer hits 4000, and in my experience this yields more opportunities to group the barrels.
The problem is, even if you prove that more wild barrels early on during a barrel screen lead to more grouping opportunities, the randomness can still mess up your groupings
This is actually false. The increase in the number of pauses starting at a Timer value of 4000 is independent of the number of wild barrels thrown.
Also, you mentioned that its harder to group above 4000 on the timer because kong has fewer pauses but I don't think that's necessarily the case. As long as you steer barrels down the far right ladder you can set up groups without getting a pause, just be sure not to steer down that ladder when kong does pause because you will miss a potential group (a mistake I make more often than I should).
Jeff makes a good point here. I have not done enough exploration into "alternate" grouping methods which take advantage of steering barrels down the top right small ladder as Jeff has done. I agree that there are likely methods available along those lines which may somewhat increase barrel grouping opportunities. However, without deeper analysis, my hunch would be that the number of grouping opportunities is something like this:
"Standard" methods under 4000 > "Alternate" methods above 4000 > "Standard" methods above 4000
So, I guess the better question is whether or not enough can be gained during the transition to create points at a greater rate than can be gained by EITHER of the methods used above 4000? I believe the answer is yes, but again it's more of a hunch than anything else at this point and look forward to further thoughts and analysis by others here.
Another related thought for this discussion:
The concept of "efficiency" becomes very important when trying to point press at the highest levels. However, in my opinion, the concept means something different on the barrel screens than it does on the other 3 screen types. On the other 3 screen types (conveyors, elevators and rivets), being efficient with how real time is spent is directly related to points earned since the Bonus timer ticks down at a constant rate on these screens.
But, on barrel screens, the Timer is directly related to barrel releases, so I tend to think of efficiency on these screens not so much in terms of how the real time is spent, but in terms of how I'm using each of the barrels released to score points -- how many barrels are missed, and so on. I guess "points per barrel" is a relatively accurate way of describing it.
So, for example, if I happen to create a group of 2 barrels on the 3rd girder at the very beginning of my Transition when there are very few barrels remaining on the screen -- I might decide to jump these and go back down to the 2nd girder for a rejump. Now, from the top of that middle ladder, climbing back down to the 2nd girder, running all the way over to the short ladder, climbing up, and running to the right all the way back to where I started at the top of that middle ladder -- I would not be surprised if it's common to see 300 points tick off of the Bonus Timer during this process. So, rejumping that double gained nothing right? WRONG. You are thinking in terms of real time, or perhaps in terms of Bonus Time. However, in this situation, thinking that way is deceptive. When the process began, there were very few barrels on screen. After this process, with those three timer ticks there are now 3 MORE barrels on screen . . . and I haven't missed any of them yet! In fact, it's not uncommon to be able to group the NEXT two barrels at the left side broken ladder on the way back around to gain another 100 points (300 points for 2 barrels), and simultaneously creating a hole to move on to the 4th girder with minimal barrel misses. Even though it appears like we are not beating the clock with this maneuver, there are actually very significant points gained if it works out this smoothly. I believe that thinking about efficiency on barrel screens in this way is something that even most of the best players are still missing (maybe).
Of course, it doesn't always go smoothly, so you have to consider what happens on average. But, if it works out that on average doing one thing like this on every barrel screen during the Transition yields an additional 100 points per barrel screen ... remembering that there are 51 L5+ barrel screens in the game we've just created an additional 5000 points of pace, which, at the highest levels is very significant.
Again, this is still mostly a hunch at this point. Hopefully one of us will eventually dive into the minutia of properly analysing it to determine which strategy should yield the most points on average.
