Attribution desired.
Yes, playfield scoring x timer only goes up when there’s no flipper being held. If you can loop balls in some place you don’t have to deal with them as much, it’s a benefit. The playfield x timer can go up to 99 seconds.
The best mb strat would be to just loop the right ramp, obviously. 8M/3 shots and pf x time. Other good temporary parking places are the Juggler (where you start multiball) and the ferris wheel as it takes a LONG time for those balls to come back. Little known rule: Ferris wheel scores 750K/1M/2M for balls put in there fairly quickly. Not usually worth going for, but noteworthy.
I do not recommend shooting the center ramp during mb, generally. You have to deal with the ball a lot faster, and therefore are way more likely to interfere with another ball rolling around (remember you don’t want to hold balls on the flippers for multiplied scoring time to increase). What I do recommend, though, is as soon as your 2nd ball is obviously draining from multiball, start shooting the center ramp then, so you’re as close as you can be to scoring millions when playfield x kicks in. 99 seconds of shooting 5M center ramps? Yes, please.
Advanced strategy: I won’t even collect a million on the center ramp until after multiball 1 to be one step closer to the million (ramp starts at 100K before first million and 50K after that). I WILL collect the 300K for the clown’s mouth, but not the million.
The jackpot can get high (between 15-16M), but the highest single shot in the game is the 5M award from mystery during 5x scoring (25M) as the playfield multiplier does not apply to the jackpot. You’ll probably have mystery lit after multiball (by completing right cats targets), so make sure you take a shot at it during playfield x time. You might not get points, but the chance you will is worth it. As soon as I flub a million shot, I’ll go for mystery, or make it the very last shot of playfield x time.
Clown time is started by shooting everyone once when lit (or the center ramp up to 300K). The Ducks and Cats (3 bank and 4 bank) are always lit. Ferris wheel not lit? Shoot the Ducks 3-bank (also lights lock). Center ramp not lit? Shoot the Ferris wheel. Right ramp not lit? Shoot the Cats 4-bank. The last thing for you to get will often be the nose. To get the nose, you need to Dunk the Dummy. For clown time champion, it’s not physically possible to get more than about 14M in one round (looping center ramp the whole time), so to get the largest Clown Time records, you need to play it multiple times in one ball (they keep adding up).