Because I don't have much of a clue still about what will or won't work, I usually make a series of large and small moves with wiggles and fuzes between them until something starts making sense and scores reasonable well.
That method is a disaster on these puzzles because I get a high multiplier too early and then can't get my stability score up.
Also having to explicitly save every few minutes takes most of the fun out of it. (and can also lead to harm being caused to those in proximity when the save cannot be found.)
Are these puzzles designed only for people who can look at the puzzle and immediately know how to correct them? Thereby getting a nice stability score. Then they can go on and explore and build the multiplier.
I'm quite confused by it all.
(By the way how does sheet stacking work? :-))
These puzzles came about because players often tend to drill down on folds which are close to the starting structure. This can be helpful on some puzzles, but on others, we know that the native fold of a protein is actually further away, and so this tendency hurts the chances of finding the native.
In particular, often times we derive the starting structure of a puzzle from its sequence's closest known homolog. In layman's terms, we know how to fold something that is "close" to this protein, so we use an alignment from that fold as our starting structure.
This method also provides us with an estimate of how far away the native is from our starting structure. In the case of the most recent puzzle, the native is a distance away from the starting structure which provides a multiplier of around 2.95.
So basically, if you aren't close to this multiplier, you aren't close to the native. However, being close to this multiplier doesn't mean you are close to the native. The multiplier rewards all exploration equally, so you could have gone the wrong direction and ended up even further from the native than the starting structure. I am assuming this is why you are feeling like there's a lack of direction.
However in these puzzles, we're actually giving you MORE information than you're used to (basically, the extra information of how far off the native is). Your direction should be guided by your expertise in knowing which changes are obviously incorrect, and which changes have potential.
Exploring just once and finding something close to the native is near impossible, so we aren't designing these puzzles for players who, as you say "can look at the puzzle and immediately know how to correct them". If some attempt at exploration isn't developing as well as you would like, you should try something different. We are interested to see what strategies players develop to deal with exploration.
"Sheet-stacking may end up being a strategy just to get up to somewhere reasonable on the scoreboard without too much effort, for people who don't intend to actually be competitive, but just want points. We will see whether this becomes a problem. "
…or simply flipping some sheets from the starting position then shaking, since that requires very little effort…at least sheet-stacking takes more effort and skill than making a giant helix, so it'll be less of a problem, even if it tends to lead to structures with more sheets than there ought to be.
