What’s the point of this multiball? On the Prem/LE, you start it with the 2nd HS Hurry-Up shot, and it starts looping a ball in the hyperdrive habittrail while another one is auto-plunged into play. And if you put the 2nd ball into the accelerator, it does absolutely nothing other than have two balls racing around in the hyperdrive, eventually dumping both balls out (often not cleanly to the right inlane).
What’s the point? And points available for scoring?
Lately, I’ve been using HS MB merely as a means to stack onto a Planet MB and detain one ball so I have one less ball in play to worry about (often just a single ball left), and use that time to progress through the Planet MB for points and possible completion to start Victory MB.
I always thought that you would keep getting balls fed to you to load the loop until a timer ran out. I know I’ve gotten 3 in there at some point in the code development.
I recall that as well from a prior code rev, but at least the last time I had HSMB and bothered to shoot the hyperspace fork ramp with my 2nd ball, it sadly gave me no additional balls and simply looped the two balls in the hyperdrive for around 5-10 seconds, generating no points, and timing out my 20x shot multiplier
I remember watching that and mark said it was like tortuga, where it’s supposed to keep kicking em out while the balls circle round. Nope. Just watch your balls do a loop DE loop while the timer runs out.
I haven’t spent much time on Prem/LE, but the Pro I’ve been playing definitely has a few add-a-balls on the death star shot during hyperspace. The LE’s wireform loop is emulated by locking the ball in the inner loop similar to a death-star or hoth mode start/selection.
A shot to the DS when the ball is locked here both releases the trapped ball, and awards an add-a-ball. I wanna say the HS jackpot value increases every few seconds the ball is locked in the loop (or each time a ball makes a circuit on the Prem/LE). Once the ball is released from the loop, a number of jackpots need to be made to allow a ball to be locked in the loop again, and open the door for another add-a-ball.
As recently as a couple weeks ago (no clue what software rev, but the operator does an OK job of keeping things up to date) I was able to get at least two add-a-balls, each time taking me from a 2-ball to 3-ball MB. I’m not sure if it’s possible to go 3-ball to 4-ball this way, but assumed it was?
I asked Steve Ritchie specifically about this at CAX last year. He said all six balls should work on the loop and that they had tested the mech extensively. It does sound like a tall order, but I was happy to hear it.
I’ve gotten the pro up to six balls, but six in that loop does seem like a lot. Hope they didn’t quietly neuter it.
I’ve had several at some point in the past, but most recently it stopped at two. I wondered if maybe it’s a timing thing and I had put the second ball in there too late?
