What rank control?

I've been playing Pink Sweets on and off for about two months now, and have run into a brick wall in Stage 4. The game just gets too difficult, and I wasn't able to break the 4M score barrier. For those that know Raizing type shmups, rank control is a vital strategy to completeing (1CCing) the game. What rank does, is increase the difficulty in direct proportion to how well you are playing/scoring.

Score too good in early levels (by medaling and picking up weapon options) and the game bitch slaps you in later levels. If you don't medal, or avoid options, and even suicide your ship (if you have extra ones), the rank drops or maintains, giving you a chance to reach the later levels, and thus potential for obtaining a higher overall score. Very ingenious play mechanics like this make it fun to figure out which parts of the game give higher score potentials but minimal rank increases.

Anyway, since I've only started playing this, I've been ignoring the rank side of the game, happily picking up options, medals, and milking bosses for all the points they are worth. So I've reached that inevitable brick wall and need to start strategizing.

Tonight, I was able to finally break 4M, again ignoring rank, but only by picking up two extends (extra ships) in Stage 3 using a "super power up" option, which in turn made the game quite pissed. I then proceeded to loose two spare ships on the Stage 3 endboss and two more at the begining of Stage 4. I think I could have avoided these losses, and gotten about 500K more in score, if I reach the Stage 4 endboss. Maybe then I'll begin a rank strategy.

4,091,030 - Lace - Stage 4 - DJK