Elite Tournament Strategies

[Fleshcrawl]

I've had Wipeout HD/Fury sitting on my PS3 ever since the Welcome Back package, but only got around to giving it a proper go late last month. Ended up really loving the game and being impressed by all of the crazy sideshifting, nose pitching and barrel rolling that I've sifted through on youtube, the likes of which requires one to think outside the box. Of course, I haven't had a great deal of time to practice, but I did devote the last few weeks to trying to Platinum the game. So far, I've beat Zico, got most of the sp bronze trophies out of the way and am one elite gold away from Elite Campaign Legend.

The problem is, the AI is ruthless. In a single race, I could restart whenever I felt that I couldn't catch up. In the Meltdown tournament, I obviously cannot restart any given race (except for the first) without having to do the preceding races again. I am wondering how people approached this particular event. Do you try to ignore the AI and have the best possible racing line? Or do you prefer weapon pads over speed? Barrel Roll at every possible opportunity and absorb the weapon pickups? Restart every time you're eliminated? I know I could manage a bronze or silver at the very least if I somehow manage to survive every track, but surviving is an art in itself with the Elite AI.

Compounding the difficulty is of course, an AI with double standards. Hit them with a weapon and they recover far quicker than you, sometimes getting in your way when you try to pass them, resulting in you bonking them further ahead of you. If they hit you with a weapon, you often go sideways/backwards and take a long time to reach full speed again. The best example of this injustice is when you're ahead of most of them and get hit by a quake, and are then passed by the rest of the AI even though you should be ahead in theory since they got hit by the exact same weapon. You may be first and then all of a sudden 8th because of their weapons. Get too close and you're shred to bits. Stay too far back and you won't have enough time to catch up.

Here's my strategy, but it's not working out atm:

-Do as many BR's and weapon absorbs as possible on Vineta K (2 BR's, 3 /w boost), Anulpha Pass (1 BR off ramp) and Metropia (BR /w boost using that incline in the beginning).
-Try to hit every speed pad on Sol 2, don't bother with trying BR's (I have a lot of difficulty pulling off even one here)
-Hit all the speed pads that you can and absorb after the 2 natural BR opportunities on Chenghou Project. Watch out for that sharp left in the beginning, in which I always lose precious seconds.
-1 BR on Sebenco in the beginning, try to do the rest conservatively.
-Hit every speed pad and weapon pad on Moa Therma. Straightforward.
-Save boost for large hill before finish line of Ubermall. BR on hill in the middle.


I suppose a lot of it is just practice and execution, but perhaps there's a better way to run one track or the other. I know that I'm missing out on plenty of BR's, but I also don't know of too many that I'm not already doing. There are about 3 others on Sebenco that I can think of (1 involving that little incline before the S-shaped passage) and 1 on Moa Therma that's a pain to pull off. I feel like if I keep running through this stupid tournament over and over again, I'll eventually get the Gold, but on that same token, why not take the time to improve each track as much as possible to increase my chances of doing it sooner rather than later?