Yup, after you get enough points to get your 1000nps, it really becomes a matter of luck. I had gotten a score of 1800 a few days ago (bronze trophy
), yet on that same day it took me 3 tries to beat the better than you score of 1200. Getting a major consecutive bonus in the early levels helps.
As was mentioned, once you've played a few times and understand the rules you really don't have to worry about getting too much waste, so if you're in a time crunch it's worth it to overflow the vats. And in the later levels, watch out for the nifty bonus blob that looks like an atom, it fills all the vats up to the top. Much more useful than the angel blob, which seems to come from the direction of the vat I want it to go in over half the time.
Oh, and it's like the time blob in that it can't land on a neopet.
Also, you don't always want to click on the speed blobs. Only use them when one neopet is slightly behind the others and you would lose consecutive bonus otherwise, or when time's almost up and you need to get the last neopets processed quickly. Otherwise, if there are neopets in the queve, they will be spit out at a rate that is equal to the normal speed's (there will be a greater gap between them, with the increased speed making up for it), and when the speed blob wears off you can lose consecutive bonus points, as the neopets that have been just been spit out by the queve are too far away. (hope that all made sense :wink:)