How the H!@#$# do I get the ball to settle in the damn saucer on Mata Hari (or similar games)? Am I just reading the ball flight wrong?
There’s two Mata Haris on location near me (next to each other), and on one of them (with a plastic playfield) the ball seems to orbit the saucer and leave much more often than than it settles in the saucer. Argh! (The other one settles nicely on shots from the left flipper and has a beautiful feed, just to make it more frustrating.)
I have a Mata Hari. It is generally difficult to land in the saucer.
First off, I’ll point out how polished my speech is when players complain about it. “The game would be too easy and boring if it went it almost all of the time,” I say.
There are pretty much 4 ways to throw the ball toward the saucer: i) left orbit; ii) right orbit; iii) direct shot from left flipper; iv) direct shot from right flipper. It is your job to identify which of these options gives you the highest success rate. Of course, i & ii don’t need to be quite as successful to be worth doing because of the A/B and bonus advancing. On my machine, a direct shot from the left flipper offset from center 1/4" or so is my best bet. At least it was the last time I played it. Another tip is that, of course, these odds will change and rubbers and flippers wear.
Other than that, experience should tell you how and when nudging will help find the saucer. There seem to be times when no amount of nudging will help, of course. The key is trying to get the ball moving as slowly as possible near the saucer, and the easiest way seems to be having it take a small deflection off of the right or left (left is better on my machine) lane guide at the last second.
My Mata Hari does the same thing. The feed on the saucer is much wider than what I would call a normal saucer feed. On my Space Time, if the ball even comes close to either one of the saucers, it drops right in. And stevevt is correct, it would be way to easy of a game if it landed in there consistently. I enjoy the challenge.
