Tradeoff between Survical and APS

Sorry to hear that the recent experiment on bullet power does not improve performance. Anyway, my research gives me similar result — it seems that, when you are in significant disadvantage, the best chioce is to bet on bullet damage, which also prevents opponent from scoring as well. But when you are in little advantage — the best choice is to keep that.

This strategy feels the same as stock, where percentage energy is analog to market value. When the market value drops, it indicates the company has something wrong, then you’d better sell the stock (fire relatively high power bullets). While when the market value increases, the company is good now and may continuing increase, then you’d better keep it (fire reltively low power bullets). Note that high and low here is compared to the opponent.

Agreed, if there is no chance of getting the survival bonus then it makes sense to try to get some damage at least. However if for a very small reduction in damage you can get some guaranteed bonus, it can make sense to try for the bonus. Judging where that point is, is difficult though =)

Yes, and that’s what separates a good energy management from ordinary ones. For where that point is, my experience told me that, it depends. For those don’t react on your bullet power (and firing relatively high power bullets), reducing bullet power earlier (e.g. immediately when having noticeable disadvantages) generally works, even for the extreme case iirc, e.g. reduce to 0.1 suddenly. I think that’s because the opponent is losing advantage shortly (for wasting energy), then you can fire normal power bullets again. (this increases both survival and bullet damage, some of the time). But for those reacting on your bullet power, this trick only cause them to keep their advantage, therefore making you lose the last chance to win.