Scoring
•10 points for placing a pipe upon the game board.
•-10 points for placing a piece on top of an already existing pipe.
•5 points for each second left on the timer if you fill the system early.
•-10 points for each dead pipe left on the board once the system starts to flood.
•50 points for each successfully flooded pipe.
Strategies
The pipe pieces given to you on the preview bar are random, but are randomly selected from a suitable selection, so that if you require a certain piece to complete your network it won't be too long before it becomes available for use. There are many more vertical and horizontal pipes than the others.
The best approach is to place out the pieces given to you into a suitable design that will accommodate future pipes that have yet to appear on the preview bar, rather than simply attempting to connect one pipe to the next. The less pipes you waste through overwriting the higher your score will be.