Deep cuts of semi-useful pinball knowledge

Couple things about this TSPP exploit:

  1. It was addressed in the final release (possibly earlier) in that the garage will not give the same award back-to-back, so it’s at least more annoying to try and start every mode.
  2. The behavior can be defeated by changing adjustment 20 (according to the manual - Garage Door Diff). Setting it anything harder to default should remove the need to lock a ball. The hardest will likely make it never open for free, next-to-hardest probably will not reopen after a mode start has been achieved.

EDIT TO ADD:

Hey, it’s in the readme file. Thanks, me! As of 2.00:

  • Implemented Garage Door Difficulty adjustment. This allows the Garage
    Door to reopen automatically under certain circumstances as follows:
    • Extra Easy: Until Couch Multiball is started.
    • Easy: Until any couch lock is made.
    • Moderate: Until any couch lock or tv mode started.
    • Hard: Until any couch lock, tv mode started, or mystery lit.
    • Extra Hard: Never reopens
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Neither - it’s because lexan isn’t as compressible as wood and the designer decided they liked it after finding it was possible. You can do it on some traditional games too but it’s iffier. If you don’t like it it should be addressable with a mod and the flipper assemblies are the easiest thing to swap out on the p3, I’m sure there will be other flipper/sling layouts or mods that change things up.

It’s pretty neat in action, you can pop the ball back and forth between the guides with single flips if timed just right.

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I am having a hard time picturing this. On Genie a lot of my drains are 1. Ball hits elbow 2. Ball drifts into center and drains. If Genie was a P3 I could save the ball by flipping when it hit the elbow?

Soft plunging (moving the ball off and back on to the shooter lane switch) on Motor Show resets the timed Skillshot.

On behalf of @bpb who found this fun trick in PPL finals: you’re welcome!

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I only knew this because it was posted on pintips

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Slo moing it added a few artifacts, but I think this shows it.

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In Bride of Pinbot, if you have one ball locked in one of the eyes, and you can manage to get the game to do a ball search (by trying to not hit a switch with the other ball while not cradling for more than a second or two - which actually isn’t that hard to do) the game will pop the ball out of the eye to the lock position, and for some reason this will turn on the “all switches score double” insert in the middle, and al things do score double. Once you shoot a ball up the ramp again, it will start the multiball and then all switches will score because you are in multiball, which will end when one is drained.

I have also gotten this to happen in the virtual version on Pinball Arcade.

Haha another exploit foiled by @keefer’s attention to detail! I really gotta get an updated ROM for my TSPP :stuck_out_tongue:

Out of curiosity, was the ability to bring a treehouse mode into alien invasion added in a later ROM revision? I attempted the Apu’s Giveaway + AI stack you suggested in the TSPP thread but AI seemed to kill the giveaway mode.

Here’s my first post on tilt forums… also, I played my first tourney just a few months ago so I’m still a noob, but I was really proud of myself when I figured this out on “Black Rose”. On the first ball: Plunge the skill shot
, utilize ball save and drain. Full plunge to load cannon, hit as many targets as possible for letters, thus starting double broadside. Seemed like a good strategy nobody else at league was aware/goin for. Maybe not huge secret to ya’ll, but it’s the best I’ve got.

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I’m still digging around, but I think these are the requirements to qualify for pity Lard MB on Family Guy, going into the final ball:

  1. Must have less than 2 minutes of ball time. (Clock ticks during valid playfield, but also ticks during end of ball bonus count…!!)
  2. Cannot have collected Extra Ball (even if it’s worth points).
  3. Cannot have started any multiball.
  4. Cannot have played Stewie Pinball.

Score is irrelevant.

If you are pitiful going into the final ball, the beer mode will change to Lard, your beer count will increase to one hit remaining, and bumpers will no longer change the beer mode. Funnily, it’s possible to un-pitify yourself, for example, if you go over 2 minutes of ball time on the final ball. The bumpers will start changing the mode again, although you will still only need one hit to start the beer mode.

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I feel like this one is in a bit of a grey area rules-wise, not that any TD would be using BoP unless they were really hard-pressed to get enough games.

Can anyone comment on how legal this’d be under IFPA or PAPA rules? Seems rather exploit-y to me.

Not in the grey area. Definitely illegal in the IFPAPA ruleset.

A player may not intentionally cause a ball search in order to activate any feature of the game.

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Excuse my ignorance, by why can’t or shouldn’t you use BoP in a tournament?

Billionaire Club and its shot are awarded for achieving metamorphosis during multi-ball, but it can also be a big wheel award. It can really make a game lop-sided when something like that occurs. Even if you’re crushing it and have 35 million+, it doesn’t mean anything without a billion in front of it.

There’s a Bride of Pinbot 2.0 rom I’ve heard that does a good job of addressing that, but otherwise…there’s more factors of luck in some places that can really hurt for opponents that felt like they earned their points versus gained via mystery.

That’s a matter of perspective, however. I put Orbitor 1 in my tournaments and people tell me I shouldn’t all the time.

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It’s possible to set the Billion percentage to 1% and the Billion collect timer to 1 second, which effectively disables this award. (Occasionally it’ll be awarded and then immediately time out, which becomes a poor award, but still prevents the unbalanced aspect.)

The 50M award (which is also pretty unbalancing) can be similarly neutered.

We use it in one of our leagues and it’s totally fine.

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I can confirm that when the timer is set to 1 second, it is impossible to collect even with an immediate shot. I found this out the hard, sad way: the first time I ever earned the billion (through the metamorphosis) it was on a game that had the timer set to one second since it was also used in league play. I made the shot as soon as it was physically possible and it still failed.

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Huh, never knew that.

I suppose at that point it just becomes a bit of a dull game, since it’s still largely a one-shot wonder even without the billion award.

Even with the billion shot, would it work to include BoP if you just say “ your score is x-1B if you happen to get the 1B” shot?

Yeah, even under the best of circumstances, it’s still a lot of “shoot the left ramp”. But there are a couple other options… if jackpot is high, some left lane shots may be a good idea. Shooting the center ramp repeatedly gets you to a state where each center ramp shot is 1M, which can be good money. And bonus can be huge… I’ve had 40M bonus on a ball. Bonus is primarily switch bonus, so if your game has a juiced spinner and pops, shooting the spinner lane starts becoming interesting, especially once your bonus X has been boosted (completing standup targets).

You could certainly make that a local rule if you wanted; of course this should be announced to players before your event starts. If you were to do that, I’d probably say that any billions digit is discarded; it’s possible to get multiple Billion collects. (Although it might be really interesting to do a -1B solution and allow additional billions to stand; that would become a serious “big risk, big reward” solution…)

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But… but… What if you get one of the backdoor billions like the 10-way combo?

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