Uhm... the tutorial does tell you that points are higher the smaller the circle is when you do a move.
The bonus seems to be fairly small, though, and it could prevent you from doing a Starmie + another trick in the same jump without getting swallowed by the wave.
Would you believe I thought that part was just telling me "Do the next trick after your first asap" for the longest time.
At any rate though, how timely you execute your inputs does have a heavy influence over the tricks point value. You can get 2700ish off of a fresh Primarina or Lanturn or 3150 depending on how well timed your directions were. You can see a massive point variant in Gyaradoses thanks to this too (like +/- 4000 or something insane like that) I suppose it doesn't matter too much early on, but it can be the difference between getting 50 BP on the Akala course (which is the most BP farming effective route once you've getting ~180Kish scores on Ula'Ula because the Akala course ends sooner) Or 40ish.
The only real reason to rush and not get the full points from clean execution barring an error is if you have to do two starmies in the same orange jump. You flat out don't have the time for the two of them.
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Since the new Global Mission is out, I wanted to share a bit of knowledge I've learned since my post on the last page:
Getting Speed:
Going straight up and down the waves and cutting into the non-wave water slightly builds speed insanely fast. It won't look like you're building speed at first because the colors around you won't change, but you should be able to feel it. I can usually get to orange speed from a stand still at that start between 3.5 and 4 trips all the way up and down the wave.
Once you land, if there aren't obsticles in your way, try and slam right back down into the non-wave water, then high tail it back up the wave. you should turn orange again as you get half way up the wave, if not sooner. This applies to both big and small waves.
Getting the Most Opportunities to Jump:
Your goal should be to launch yourself at orange speed as often as possible. Think of the course like a tube. If you gather speed mostly going straight or nearly straight most of the time, you'll get out faster and have launched yourself less. If you get speed going as perpendicular along the tube as possible, you'll get way more opportunities to launch yourself.
Most Points From a Magikarp:
The most points you can get in a Magikarp is through any combination of two Ups and Two left or right movement. You will have enough time for a Primarina or Lanturn, but not a Starmie. If for some reason you need to do a Starmie and a Magikarp in the same jump, going left and right twice each will let you
First Wave Penalty:
I forgot to mention this, but for some reason, your first two tricks have a significant point penalty for seemingly no reason. It doesn't matter what order you do these two first tricks in or if they're on different waves, you'll still lose a fair bit of points. Don't do your Gyarados or Magikarps here (you shouldn't be doing that anyway)
Stale Moves:
I've got a good guess for how much move staleness reduces the move's score. Your Stalest move (using the exact same move right after using it) reduces points to 66% of their normal strength. Your less Stale move is at 80%. This means that the pattern I described last time of going back and forth between 80% power moves is less effective than eating the stalest move immediately, and then getting a fresh move off (over four moves, you get 166% of each moves full power instead of 160%). I would still be comfortable recommending that flowchart of moves to people since it's not particularly difficult to learn and still effective, but it can be optimized slightly more:
So with that, I have a new opening I've been using to start off every round to burn through my Gyarados and Magikarp and get as many fresh moves as possible:
Getting two tricks in on the first wave is a little tricky sometimes. If you don't feel comfortable doing that, you can shorten the entirety of the first small wave to Starmie, Primarina
Once the double Starmies kick in at the end, you just keep alternating between double Primarina / Lanturn depending on the wave weight and double Starmie.
With that said:
- If you feel as if the wave is about to transition after your next trick and you're set to do double Starmie on your next jump, do Starmie, (height trick) instead. This'll get you more points than a stale starmie since you're about to switch height tricks. You then get a cool cascade of Fresh Starmie, Stale Height Trick, Fresh Other Height Trick, Fresh Starmie. From there, continue to do consecutive tricks.
- If you feel the wave is about to transition after your next trick and you're set to do double height tricks on your next jump, do the two height tricks, then on your first jump on the new wave, do Starmie, new height trick in any order you want. Those'll both be fresh, so go ahead and get your freebie before resuming the pattern.
As always, this is all by pretty crude testing. I look forward to others trying to refine my techniques.
I don't feel like spamming my twitter with Mantine Surf high scores right now for proof so I'll add that later, but here are my current records:
Big Wave: 110,484
Heahea: 156,055
Ula'Ula: 210,434
Poni: 187,379