Obligatory strategy thread. :)

1) TNT multiball is your friend, and you can easily get time back. if you get kicked out of the board by an alarm, and the cellar is a poor choice for a starting spot, take TNT multiball instead. Even if you would get a good board position, it's often the better play to take TNT multiball if you get kicked out of the board, if you are in sudden death.

2) token mutiball just isn't that good. sure you get three tokens out of it, but the jackpots are actually less then a good board run, and they DON'T grant time after the multiball ends, unlike vault multiballs, which DO.

3) Don't think you can affect anything requiring pressing a flipper reliably at all in the board game, except for the candy 2000 square, and you are still at the mercy of the game for what real codes will scroll by. Randomly moving boxes will jump to whatever the heck they want as soon as you flip.

4) Filling all three lanes in advances the cellar value. you CAN repeat already cleared ones. so use it to advance to the one you want before collectign the cellar.

5) If the nearby gate is open, the roof entrance is safest. otherwise it's a bad choice, and will usually have a long route, have you pass the teller spot or both.

6) after lighting lock gets difficult, the light lock wheel award is the best one.

TO get the vault jackpot goal, don't reset your game, and intentionally drain a lot of balls to get the ball back up top to advance the cellar value to the fourth light from the top. often you will get lucky and collect many inlanes from the ball bouncing back up the right side one.

To get the cellar award goal, only the first one (ATM card) actually counts. the other 4 do not. TO get it, AVOID completing the lanes.

Computer disables only lasts for 10 seconds usually. not 20 like the instructions say.

My highest score so far is normal game, not assault on the vault! Lots of TNT multiball and a couple vault breakins were involved. TNT multiball and vault multiball can get you lots of time when played well. for tnt multiball the bumpers are where it's at. you need to hit the spinning wheel post for Vault multiball.

Thanks Zap!

yeah. turns out regular play has the greater scoring potential, because you can earn more time and go infinite. that said, it does get harder to keep getting the multiballs. so if you do go infinite you deserve it.

light lock and call guard will help you get into the game, and from the game you can then start tnt multibll if you are kicked out by the dog or alarm.

I'm wondering what the best score in AOTV might be. My best score is just over 6M and the current #1 (Tarek) has just under 6.5M.

Keep hammering drops? Deliberately drain and never flip to keep feeding the bumper drops?

If you're chasing tokens for the Wizard goal, save up enough so you can get VAULT lit for the regular game.

EldarOfSuburbia said:

I'm wondering what the best score in AOTV might be. My best score is just over 6M and the current #1 (Tarek) has just under 6.5M.

Keep hammering drops? Deliberately drain and never flip to keep feeding the bumper drops?

If you're chasing tokens for the Wizard goal, save up enough so you can get VAULT lit for the regular game.

Click to expand...

I agree. Haven´t played much until yet but I promise that I will never reach a 29M AOTV score. Same for the normal high scores, 14M maybe, 22M very hard, 84M impossible. PAFSUX = Pinball Arcade Fans sucks?

Tarek Oberdieck said:

I agree. Haven´t played much until yet but I promise that I will never reach a 29M AOTV score. Same for the normal high scores, 14M maybe, 22M very hard, 84M impossible. PAFSUX = Pinball Arcade Fans sucks?

Click to expand...

Yes, same account was also present in the PC tournament. I was deliberately not referencing it to avoid giving it the publicity it wants.

I disagree with Zaphod on TNT multiball. It doesn't give anything worthwhile. The points are crap. It does give time, but it doesn't give enough to make back up for the time spent enabling the lock and board game. I can't see how you can go infinite from this. I guess it might be worthwhile over a poorly located cellar restart, but only marginally so, and never over a cyberdog restart.

Agreed that Token Multiball doesn't do anything better than Vault, there's no need to chase Vault letters for it.

The computer disable is 10 seconds the first time you get it but 5 seconds more each time after. I got it as high as 25 seconds worth.

I think it's a good idea to go for the ATM card right away as the game starts. Doubling all the ATM yields adds up quite a bit, since they go into the jackpot value for vault multiball. Vault multiball is pretty much the only thing on the table that scores anything significant; your score is all about getting it and making it last for many jackpots.

Do pay attention to the cellar awards. When Light Outlane is lit, make sure you DON'T advance the upper lanes again, and shoot the cellar until it opens and you get it. Lighting the outlanes is worth the effort. Note that you can do it a second time to light both outlanes, but both turn off when either is collected. Also, this is another reason to avoid TNT multiball, as it can collect a lit outlane when you don't really want to (you'd rather keep it to save your life on a draining ball rather than just adding a bit of time.)

And wasn't sure if I wanted to post this, but let's get it out in the open. You can cheat your ass off at the board game.

While the dial is spinning, pause the game. Hold the left flipper during the resume countdown to stop the dial immediately as the game unpauses. The dial will click exactly once more after unpausing before it registers. So you are guaranteed NOT to get the movement value that was displayed during the pause. So when you're near a nasty space, do this repeatedly until the nasty number comes up, then you're guaranteed not to get it. This alone can substantially increase your odds, but there's more.

The dial always clicks by 1's or 2's in either direction, wrapping around between 5 and 1. If you can resume and repause quickly enough to see two consecutive dial numbers (I can do this), you can hold the left flipper while unpausing again to get the next dial value in sequence. If you pause on 3 then 4, you'll get 5. If you pause on 3 then 1, you'll get 4. With patience, it's possible to control your landing spot with shocking reliability. This isn't 100% reliable, but works for me well over 50%.

This same trick works on some of the other board game elements. On the "choose your award" space, pause repeatedly until the worst award is selected, then hold the flippers while unpausing to guarantee you don't get that one. Candy's "choose a code" is trivial to win. The "run and hide" space actually works slowly enough that you DO get the result shown while paused. I haven't gotten Wing Shoes yet since discovering this to try it, but it should be manipulable the same way.

So there's my evil deed for the day.

wow... that's... horrible.

This MUST be fixed.

Simple fix. if the camera is put onto the board game, make the emulation unpause at 1 instead of zero. Problem solved.

leaderboard reset is needed here.

vikingerik said:

The dial always clicks by 1's or 2's in either direction, wrapping around between 5 and 1.

Click to expand...

And thus it also goes by 3's and 4's, and 6's, 7's, 8's, ..., thus all nonzero (mod 5) integers, in either direction!

Thanks for the tip. I haven't yet tried to predict the next one, and I think I have gotten the same value on the display a very few times, but it seems be helping me get tokens.

I can't wait to see how the top scores go on SC in the PC tournament, starting in 3 days.

Zaphod77 said:

Simple fix. if the camera is put onto the board game, make the emulation unpause at 1 instead of zero. Problem solved.

Click to expand...

To be clear, what we mean is unpausing the emulation a fraction of a second before the game accepts any more flipper input. That would indeed plug all these holes.

invitro said:

And thus it also goes by 3's and 4's, and 6's, 7's, 8's, ..., thus all nonzero (mod 5) integers, in either direction!

Click to expand...

Yeah, I may have overstated that case a bit. ±1 or ±2 mod 5 is exactly the same thing as allowing any available number other than a repeat. After playing more, I'm thinking there isn't any reliable pattern to the next number. But the pause method is consistent at avoiding one particular result.

The one case where you can control your next number is if you catch the pause at the single frame instant where one number is fading into another. Then you will get the faded-into result. You must be able to identify which of the two crossfading numbers was the previous one before the pause.

One more aspect: The Gate space falls to this manipulation too, but it's tough. Basically, sometimes the cursor will advance one notch after unpausing and sometimes it won't. It depends on how late in its duration on that space you caught the pause. The timing isn't the same as the ? spaces, it's slower, which actually makes it harder. The way to do it consistently is the same as the movement dial - catch it at the instant where it's fading from one to another, and you'll get the second one.

This manipulation definitely improves my success rate at reaching the vault. I'd guess it at maybe 30% for the best case setup (main or roof to nearest gate) without manipulating and 60% with. The biggest threat is being caught by the guard, which this method doesn't do anything about, particularly if you wound up needing to avoid a 4 or 5. The other threat is ? spaces full of move-backwards and TNT multiball.

Some non-cheatyface strategy:

When plunging, safely short-plunge to the flippers. Plunge softly so it just barely passes the gate, and HOLD the upper flipper. The ball will head for the center drain, but you can often nudge it into a catching position. If you don't get a catchable drop, DON'T FLIP, let it drain, if it hasn't hit a switch, you'll get it back, even during sudden death. The timer doesn't even run until the ball hits a switch.

Whenever the ball is in the bumpers, take a glance at the wheel's position. You need to know where it is and aim high or low if the ball feeds to the upper flipper. Just blindly whacking in the direction of the wheel isn't good enough.

When you need to hit the wheel and the post is tucked off to the left where you can't shoot it, aim from the right flipper at the A standup and you have a good chance of dropping into the wheel post on the rebound. Very important during Vault multiball to relight the jackpot.

As I said upthread, the scoring is all about keeping Vault multiball going for jackpots, nothing else scores anywhere near what that does. Unlike most tables, I get into the best grooves by keeping both balls circulating rather than trying to catch both for maximum control before shooting. The smaller flippers mean it's considerably harder to handle multiple balls together, so keep them moving. The best groove is to shoot the jackpot, then hit the wheel and the jackpot again with the other ball while the first is still feeding out of the lock and the bumpers. I've strung together five in a row that way and 15 or so for an entire multiball for 3M score total.

The most important space to avoid if cheating on the board game is Bribe Guard. You absolutely don't want him taking away your entire bonus. Donuts are worth 25K each of fully multiplied bonus; you lose a million if he takes away 40! (Why don't we have any option to just refuse the bribe and get caught?)

Also speaking of donuts, that's what to do during TNT multiball. Keep looping the ramp for a donut each time worth 25K of tasty bonus. It still doesn't match Vault multiball scoring, but it's more than peanuts. I had 93 donuts in my game for 2.3M of bonus in the 12.1M leaderboard game that I just put up.

vikingerik said:

Some non-cheatyface strategy:
(Why don't we have any option to just refuse the bribe and get caught?)

Click to expand...

There is actually a ROM version where you can opt out of the Board game altogether and just go back to pinball.

you can refuse the bribe, and it will lower it. if you refuse it enough you get caught and kicked out of the board game. one or two refusals will usually be safe. a third will nearly always kick you out of the board, with your points.

Not when the bribe is donuts, you can't refuse it.

OK, so I've played this a bit today -- haven't gotten the rules fully mastered, but the game feels intensely frustrating to me. I had a good AOTV -- 5.5m or something like that. If Tarek says his best on that is 6.5M, then I'm close to my upper limit there. But I can't get anything going in the normal game. My high on that is a measly 1.6. So what's the big tip? I could start cheating the board game, I suppose to get more mileage there. But in the regular play, the time counts down fast, and so I'm mostly playing in sudden death. What's the strategy to keep the game going?

Anyway, unless I can find a way to move the normal game along, I'm already maxed out on this game point wise -- because I'd have to do *MUCH* better on the normal game for that score to be my high score on the leaderboards (and for HOF points).

Tips aimed at a so-so player would be much appreciated!!!

You do spend most of the game in sudden death. It's normal to reach that before your first trip to the board game, and then you're there for good except for occasional respites of brief time gifts. It's a very unforgiving game by TPA standards.

To score more, you have to reach Vault multiball and keep that going for many jackpots. That really is the only way to score any significant number of millions. TNT multiball feels good but really doesn't do anything in terms of scoring.

AOTV scores have absolutely nothing to do with the regular game and shouldn't be compared. It's as disparate as comparing AFM scores to MM scores.

The frustration is that it seems out of reach to top the AOTV score with a normal score, but that means less incentive to stick with it. No advance in either HOF or leaderboard in the foreseeable future.

That said, I did go back and play again, and pushed my normal score up to 3m. So maybe I can progress that score up past 5.5m. Is there some non-linearity? Getting two vault multi balls seemed to make a big difference.

Maggie... how many trips to the board game are you making? My score seems to depend mostly on that.

I kind of like TNT MB to get some time (aka ballsaver). I seem to have scored as well before using the board game cheats as after, although I get more tokens with the cheats. I'm probably stinking up Vault MB. I don't know all the rules yet or I'd say something more. I'm mostly trying to get tokens now as it's gonna be a long haul to get that Wizard Goal and I'm already tiring of SC a bit. And I played for awhile just trying to accumulate VAULT letters so I could get that Token MB at least once.

Well, here's one thing... see if you can loop the ramp with a backhand, and rack up donuts. My scores are low but I had 60 donuts one game without trying really hard, and that's not too far off the 93 that v.e. mentions.

Invitro -- Not enough! But yes, my best scores happen when I get there more than once. But I've never been as many as 4 times. I think I'm figuring out that I absolutely must master the wheel scoop. I miss that a lot, which means fewer locks, and more missed opportunities to enter the bank. So I'm going to work on that a while. I'm stuck on 13 tokens. As per your very useful explanation, it should take two tries to get the 14th -- but I've had a ton of duplicates. I'm slightly triskaidekaphobic, so that's motivation to keep plugging away. If by the time I finally get my 14th token, I haven't made any progress on that wheel scoop, I might set this table aside a while.

I'm also not taking much advantage of the vault MB. I think I may have had 4 jackpots on one. But usually it's one, or two at most and then out.