Upsurge explanation

[mugnus]

Can somebody explain to an idiot what the actual strategy is for the new 'Upsurge' gamemode in Neon Nights?
The main menu claims it's all about 'being the first to hit the target zone by hitting speed pads to build up energy'.

So currently I try to hit every boost pad and use the energy I gain from it immediately to create a barrier, since that 'boosts my current zone' and the other option you have to 'create a shield' does not. If I simply keep the energy, or wait to deploy it at a better spot to hit opponents, I cannot collect more. So instead I just dump out barriers left and right immediately.
Meanwhile the AI keeps winning every time for some reason, even though by about 10 seconds into the race I'm so far ahead that I never see them. Theoretically if they'd also 'boost their zones' they'd catch up with me, right?

What are you actually supposed to be doing in this mode? I really don't get it.

[Shadow Cheese]

Don't dump your energy into barriers immediately after building the minimum charge. It is very inefficient to do so and the other opponents will overtake you in the long run as you are discovering. The HUD displays a few pieces of information in the bottom left corner. The red bar that looks like your shield bar on the right is how much energy from speed pads you have stored until you gain a level of charge. The bar above that reflects how many charge levels you have that can be put into a boost or a shield, up to 10 levels. Shielding is purely defensive to negate the damage from running into barriers. The charge level of boosts will correspond to an increase of zones. What you're aiming to do is charge up this bar until you get 8 to 10 levels and then boost. If you max out the bar, additional speed pads will not contribute any more charge so you want to make sure you boost at the max so you don't waste any potential charge. An important detail is that the more levels of charge you have, the easier it will be to build more charge from speed pads so saving them up is far more effective than spamming level 1 boosts.

[mugnus]

Alright sounds good.
Thank you I'm going to try that. I simply did not notice that you can store that much energy, cause I missed the second bar and only paid attention to the shield bar filling up. Thus it looked like I lose my stored energy if i don't use it fast instead of it simply showing the next pip being filled up.

[xstar960]

https://youtu.be/KqTPnXKv2GE