This might be an FSPA rule – we have a longstanding rule that on games set to 3 balls or less, each player may play one earned extra ball … but it does not necessarily have to be the first earned extra ball. A player can choose to plunge an extra ball any time they wish, at their own risk. The most common use of this is on a game with significant Hold Bonus, like Road Show… you finished a ball in play with 2 EB’s stacked and Hold Bonus? It may be wise to plunge the first EB, collecting your (possibly) huge bonus from the held bonus, and then play the second EB trying to re-rack the bonus X.
The philosophy of the FSPA rule is that we want to restrict the number of balls played to manage the overall flow of play – some games hand out EBs like candy and could lead to nearly infinite games – but still offer some strategic opportunities.
(FSPA rules are often mentioned in discussion – sometimes mockingly – but they have been used for pinball competitions since 1995, and have influenced many other competitive pinball rulesets, including the PAPA/IFPA rules.)
Not directly related, but an interesting quirk came up the other week while playing Ballyhoo in the UK cup.
Extra balls were meant to be plunged.
Player 1 earned an extra ball. They then drained down the side with the centre ball save post up. (The post doesn’t drop when you lose the ball, nor are there ball searches on an EM).
When they plunged the extra ball, it came to rest in the post.
The get out (rather than getting the keys and manually drain the ball) was for player 2 (me) to try and skillfully ? drain the ball scoring as few points as possible. No matter how many times I tried it proved impossible to tap pass it drain past the post. In the end i just flipped it so that the ball reset the post from the rollover target.
I play for a couple of hours a week, but I’ve played in very few tournaments. Knowing that there are some differences in league/org body rules about EBs and other things, I guess I just don’t understand why manufacturers don’t just give regular players a Game Mode option of “Competition Play” or whatever you would call it.
No extra balls awarded
Minimal time for ball return
Difficult tilt settings (if applicable) etc…
They do? Which ones? I know some of the newer Sterns have sub-menus that players can access with different modes, but I never saw a Competition Mode comparison…
I play for a couple of hours a week, but I’ve played in very few tournaments. Knowing that there are some differences in league/org body rules about EBs and other things, I guess I just don’t understand why manufacturers don’t just give regular players a Game Mode option of “Competition Play” or whatever you would call it.
No extra balls awarded
This would be easy enough to do (basically, an opt-in for novelty mode where extra balls award points instead).
Minimal time for ball return
If you mean ball saves, ditto.
Difficult tilt settings (if applicable) etc…
This one is a lot trickier as a lot of the difficulty of tilt settings is based on the height of the tilt weight, not something that can be accounted for easily in software. Even changing the number of tilt warnings is not quite the same thing.
Can’t they just control the trigger time for TILT with software, based on how long the weight rests against the magnet? Seems like it’s simply a value and not a single actual physical action.
Or just count the # of times the weight hits the ring. I don’t think there’s any magnet there unless something has changed on newer games I’m not aware of.
They already have tilt timeouts/cool downs programmed.
