Disabling the inter lock inside the coin door is the best way to avoid this. Then you can put it on the flipper. I just use old flipper rubbers to keep the switch closed.
Yes this is exactly what it does. Available on any reasonably recent Stern machine. (Although on the newer ones with no interlock it is less of an issue)
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They aren’t my machines, so I don’t want to go disabling a safety feature and then forget to put it back. The last thing I want is one of his techs to get whacked because I forgot to re-engage the interlock.
Any thoughts on the ball being launched when the coin door is closed?
I don’t know of a way to disable this, but I’ve never seen it to be a problem. Let the player know it’s going to happen and have them get in position as you’re closing the door. If the game has a manual plunger, I like to soft plunge a few times to get it off the shooter lane switch to prevent the autolaunch.
Thanks. That’s what I currently do, but thought there might be a setting.
Games do this when switches have already been activated for that turn but it’s registering a ball in the shooter lane that shouldn’t be there. Like @jdelz said, have your players be ready.
I understand what you mean about the interlock, but it could also just be a small ritual you do before/after any league or tournament play. I keep interlock open besides running tournaments and league myself for the same reasons. I just go back around and set them inside the coin door while I’m turning back on extra balls.
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I have to be honest on this, but I don’t even know where the interlock is on the machine (Says a guy with a 15 machine collection) 
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Usually they’re the white button that pops out when you open the coin door, on the left side. It’s either one peg or two, depending. If you look closely at the coin door, there’s a small bracket that touches it when the door is closed, completing the circuit. That’s what the flipper rubber would stand in for during competition.
F@$king genius… Guess I’m going to stop throwing away my old rubbers from now on.
As far as the “install vs adjustment” debate goes; the first two years of the Bat City Open I did Factory reset, install novelty, then competition, then went in and fiddled with the settings I didn’t care for, or wished to adjust.
After the second Bat City Open I no longer had to do that because I adopted (much to the chagrin of some of my regular players 
) a more tournament aligned setting for all of my machines, so now all I need to do is change two or three settings per machine. Obviously not every event has a location or operator that is providing 15-20 pins for an event, but if you ask whoever is bringing pins to install novelty and competition in advance it will drastically reduce the time it takes TD’s/organizers to set the software up for an event, which will leave you more time to make physical adjustments (lightning flippers on EVERYTHING).
Well that’s my two cents…
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Multimorphic games allow this. You can set up individual profiles, group profiles, and event profiles. Multiple people playing the same individual profile on the same game even gives you team game rules.
Settings, high scores, and audits can all be set and tracked for any of these.
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If coin door ball save is on there is no need to put a ball in the shooter lane. If 3 balls are in play (2 trapped, 1 stuck) you open the coin door, ball save insert starts flashing, drain all balls into the trough. The game knows how many to put back into play once you close the door. It will save all 3.
I can’t remember the game, but they removed the coin door switch but the coin door ball save setting is still in the settings, so it doesn’t do anything. (GoT maybe?)
Install #PINBALL
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I’m guessing putting all this in the manual is hard due to code not being finished at launch - manuals don’t seem to get updated with new code updates, so new features will be missed and the list of what is affected will be wrong.
What would be really useful is to have a ‘settings dump’ option along with the audits so you can save it out to USB, then you can definitively see and record all items not set to Factory and it would be simple to create an app that took that dump file and then allowed you to print out a ‘Changed from Default’ list to stick to the machine for competition.
I’ve often wondered what the various installs do on machines (mainly at the easier end), but can’t be bothered to load them and then scroll through all the menus to find ones which have changed.
I guess on newer, SD card based games, it should be possible to read out the state from the SD card (or an IMG of it).
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That would make things so much easier, but I’m having problems finding it on some of the games. We had orientation last night and I found it on GoT & ST, but couldn’t find it anywhere on Iron Maiden or Deadpool. I can’t remember if I checked TWD or not. That was towards the end of the night after a few beers. 
Is it called something else on the newer games? It was adjust #51 on GoT and ST. I scrolled through the entire menu on both DP and Iron Maiden and didn’t see it.
It was likely removed from Spike 2 games because the switch is no longer there. The switch opening is what starts the ball saver. Without the switch, it has no way to know that the coin door is open.
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Maiden 1.06 “Can I Play with Madness - defaults to off in competition mode”. Change logs like this don’t help with clarity. The “defaults to” makes me feel this is part of install, but I don’t actually know.
Absolutely. If it’s in competition install, please have the changelog say “competition install” 
That reads to me like the competition mode setting in standard settings. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mention of the installs menu in a readme file. Maybe for Director’s Cut years ago? If no one clarifies here, maybe an email to Stern software support can get an answer.
I’m not sure the installs menu should even be discussed in the readme file. Readme files these days seem to be directed at home buyers. The old way, where the Installs menu was charted and feature settings were described is the way to go. For competitive play, you could print out the Installs chart, highlight the competition column, then add any needed notes (eg: Can I play with Madness disabled). Tape it on the backglass and you’re good to go.
It’s tempting to bag on Stern for not documenting changes well. I won’t though because they’re cranking out lots of really fun games at a real fast pace. If I was still operating games I might feel differently. For now, i have no complaints. Good time to be a pinhead.
The other consideration for me is that Installs changes are easy to figure out by using the diags menu to see what has changed, then confirming by playing with the glass off. If this is indeed talking about the competition mode standard setting, it would make sense to mention it in the readme because that usually just evens things out (like mystery), doesn’t remove anything.