Based on the original question
what counts as a 10/10/10 game from back in November, I'm finally weighing in.
This was a tough question, because the core spirit of the "I beat the game on difficulty 10, please fix the bug" is based around some degree of standards. But the game is intensely designed around making things have variable difficulties or challenges or even styles beyond the vanilla AI itself. We've had a lot of people claim a diff 10 victory and "report the bug" in ways that were... not quite what I'd consider as a "pure game." But what they accomplished was still impressive and should be recognized.
We need two ways to talk about this, though, and fortunately there is another community that has the same problem: speedrunners. There are "any %" and "100%" speedruns, and they are super different. They both require two different kinds of skills, and that's true here also.
Many Any% speedruns rely on outright glitching the game they are on, warping to final dungeons without playing 99% of the game, that sort of thing. Clipping through walls, bouncing off enemies to fly across the entire overworld, using strange button combos and jumping on and of yoshi to input new code into the game itself, etc. Those take a lot of skill and precision, and they're fun to watch. But they're a category separate from how fast you can do all the things, which is just a different skillset.
Pure 10 or 10/10 Wins1. The difficulty should be set to 10 on the AI and the sub-factions (Warden, Hunter, P Guard).
2. Any of the various sliders or knobs that change mechanics in galaxy options are off limits for a pure game.
3. No other factions, friendly or enemy or otherwise, count for a pure game. Allied or against you, it's just skewing things.
3.a. If the faction comes WITH the game and you can't turn it off (outguard, zombies, etc), then those are fine.
4. Anything you can find in the galaxy during a normal run under these conditions is fair game. So if the lone spire frigate is out of balance in your favor, that's your good luck for now and that's a cause for us to "fix the bug" since it can show up in any game.
EXCEPTION: Beacons that enable factions. Those are in every game, and basically just let you turn on other allies or enemies later in the game rather than from the lobby. This would not count as a pure win if you hack one of them to add a whole faction to the game. Outguard beacons are fine. Badger notes there is now a game lobby setting to disable Beacons. This should be used for Pure games.
5. The AI type needs to be either Full Ensemble, Random Moderate or up, or Adaptive Moderate up, or any of the Moderate-or-up AI types. The Easier AI types other than Full Ensemble are not-okay for the spirit of this.
7. Either background parallel processing needs to be ON, or you need to never go above 1x speed.
8. No debugging-style cheats, no mods, etc.
If you beat this scenario with at least one AI, then this counts for purposes of "reporting the bug."
10 or 10/10With one AI, the above is what I would call a "10 game." That's technically 4 10s now, so I don't think writing all those out is helpful.
Playing double AIs at difficulty 10x4 like that would be a "10/10" game and is a superior achievement to beating a 10 game.
Any% 10 or 10/10 WinsThese are incredibly fun and something that you should feel proud about (unless you turn on all the allied factions at max intensity and let them win for you, I guess), but they're not valid for "reporting the bug" of beating difficulty 10. There are too many factors. But if you have a starting state that people can replicate, and you want to see if they can do it better than you, I think those become subcategories of things people can compete in if they desire.
1. The difficulty should be set to 10 on the AI and the sub-factions (Warden, Hunter, P Guard).
2. Any of the various sliders or knobs that change mechanics in galaxy options are valid.
3. Any other factions, friendly or enemy or otherwise, are valid. Some will make the game pure cheese, of course, if you set them to just be allied to you.
4. ---
5. The AI type needs to be either Full Ensemble, Random Moderate or up, or Adaptive Moderate up, or any of the Moderate-or-up AI types. The Easier AI types other than Full Ensemble are still not-okay for the spirit of this.
7. Either background parallel processing needs to be ON, or you need to never go above 1x speed. The AI and factions otherwise get a lobotomy.
8. No debugging-style cheats, but mods are at your discretion.
