maybe I'm not understanding....grunts are designed to be way faster than the player when they are at full speed.
In Mame, using insight from Sean R., I can adjust the blitter timing so that the player is too sluggish. but that is manipulating the emulation of the special chips for blitter. so if you really have a blitter problem then wouldn't that manifest itself on just the rom board? yet you indicate 2 different rom boards started behaving the same?
what does yellowdog, make of a diagnosis? it's over my head.
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jon- here is how close you are to being able to play continually. If we guess that your RQ (see note below) is around 27.5k. that means 3 million is somewhere close to wave 109. and you have 123 men at your disposal. 109 waves / 123 men means you are losing around 1.128 men per wave. simply drop that value by 1 man every 7 waves and you have a number that lets you theoretically play indefinitely. at 109 waves, that means you've cycled through the 20 hardest waves almost 4 times! that is very good!
without every having seen you play, i'm going to put a bet that you have the same issue that cliff clavin and I did. you are dying 3-4 times per brain wave and by using "straight line" firing and hugging side walls to guard yourself, you will get that down to losing 1-3 men per brain wave. thus problem solved and you'll be a 10 million player. ...send payment for this session to paypal in value of $100 per hour.
note: RQ=early 80's VidKidz term meaning robotron quotient=score divided by wave. A master player hits 31k up to high end of 35k, a marathoner is 29kish-30kish, a decent player is 27,500 or a bit less.