Obligatory strategy thread. :)

i made over 5 million in normal game. TNT and vault multiball to get time back are the key. Making your shots helps too.

you wont' do great every time. but tnt and vault multiball are both worth doing well at. for tnt, as i said send every ball into the bumpers. you need to keep whacking the wheel post for vault multiball.

The only really save shot is the ramp ever and ever. I've tried a new strategy: Go for the board game until 5x bonus is lit and then collect donuts only. 600 donuts = 15M bonus. Failed. Donuts are limited to 200.
This is a casino game, not a pinball...

I would like to see the game pause button active only when the ball is being cradled like in real life. But I guess that can't be done.

Zaphod77 said:

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.

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I have had the guard catch me when I did 1 less. Even one can get you busted, and that's nasty!

i did say usually.

I have a really love-hate relationship with this game. It doesn't seem like a really unfair drainer, which is good, but the time limit stuff just drives me nuts. It's like I find "putting money in the machine" off-putting even though I don't literally have to do it here, obviously. But I feel cheated when I lose the ball shortly after sudden death starts and end up sometimes with a game lasting less than 2 minutes. It's like a bizarre pride thing. "I shouldn't have to start new games this quickly, dammit! I'm not THAT bad!"

But at the same time, the game is just so different that I feel compelled to come back again and again; the drive to collect tokens is ever present, even at the glacial pace I'm at in part because I haven't read the rules and this game seems to have a LOT of stuff that would be hard to just pick up through experience.

On balance I think I may end up really loving this game once I get a better handle on it. If nothing else it's unique and certainly a worthy addition to the game. Kudos to Farsight for being willing to tackle something that surely required quite a bit more work than usual to implement. It gives me hope that Banzai Run actually might be a possibility someday.

It seems like the strategy is to try and get the ball get caught behind that gate and then just put the game down and come back in a few hours when the score has rolled up high enough and call the attendant to reset the ball to finish the game an put in your high score.

Epsilon said:

I have a really love-hate relationship with this game. It doesn't seem like a really unfair drainer, which is good, but the time limit stuff just drives me nuts. It's like I find "putting money in the machine" off-putting even though I don't literally have to do it here, obviously. But I feel cheated when I lose the ball shortly after sudden death starts and end up sometimes with a game lasting less than 2 minutes. It's like a bizarre pride thing. "I shouldn't have to start new games this quickly, dammit! I'm not THAT bad!"

But at the same time, the game is just so different that I feel compelled to come back again and again; the drive to collect tokens is ever present, even at the glacial pace I'm at in part because I haven't read the rules and this game seems to have a LOT of stuff that would be hard to just pick up through experience.

On balance I think I may end up really loving this game once I get a better handle on it. If nothing else it's unique and certainly a worthy addition to the game. Kudos to Farsight for being willing to tackle something that surely required quite a bit more work than usual to implement. It gives me hope that Banzai Run actually might be a possibility someday.

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I agree with this post. A part of me hates this table, and part of me loves it. The uniqueness alone makes it a very nice addition, and it is beautifully done. Those ramps look great! The pinball/board game mix is really interesting, and I wish they would have gone even further to have those two elements blend together. It's cool to see a game with just 1 ball+timer. Can't restart the game after a lousy ball 1 here!

-The path from the Cellar entrance is horrible with all the squares lined up that will kick you out from there.
-If spelling ALARM would disable two alarms at a time (say first 1+3, and then 2+4), and replace the !-sign on the board (that I freaking ALWAYS end up on) with an ATM, it would be better.
-Most of the time the Main entrance is the easiest for me, both to activate and to reach the vault from.
-I would have loved a couple of pinball modes that makes positive changes to the boardgame, like a timed mode to hit 3 ramps which would deduct 1 from the guards movement for the rest of the game - stuff like that. The Explode cellar award isn't exactly worthless, but feels out of place. Something that affects the board game would be more fun.
-I hate it when I collect the Note to Teller, and end up getting TNT multiball from her (and still being kicked off the board game).
-A lot of times the cyberdog is a blessing, as it can move you very close to an unguarded gate.
-Collecting tokens is very much love/hate. I can't stop trying even though it feels almost impossible to get all 26. I don't even care about my score, just spell VAULT and get more tokens.
-The sound package is very repitivite and annoys me to no end. This is one of the few tables where I have to turn off the sound from time to time. Yes I want to find an off-switch to Candy 2000, and to the burglar as well!

The thing with pausing and controlling the movement on the board should absolutely be fixed, that just sucks.

Rich Lehmann said:

It seems like the strategy is to try and get the ball get caught behind that gate and then just put the game down and come back in a few hours when the score has rolled up high enough and call the attendant to reset the ball to finish the game an put in your high score.

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Where are you getting it stuck so that it does this?

Kolchak357 said:

I would like to see the game pause button active only when the ball is being cradled like in real life. But I guess that can't be done.

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I've been trying to push for no more pause function at all. Can't pause a real table.

rschwantner said:

i've been trying to push for no more pause function at all. Can't pause a real table.

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you fooled me +1

invitro said:

Can't play real tables for 12 hours, either, at least not as often as in TPA. A real table's circles don't look like octagons. Letters on real tables don't look like I forgot to wear my glasses. Etc., etc.

If you killed pause, I might quit playing, and I bet I'm not the only one. (At the least I would find a utility that let me perma-press a shift key, which I've gotta think exists.)

Don't try to fix what's not broken. You guys have been doing an awesome job, don't screw it up, and you've still got lots of things to fix. Disabling pause just on the SC board game would be fine, though.

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Haha he was only joking Even if pausing during the roll can give some people an edge, were not going to take it out and we couldn't even if we wanted to per Test requirements for every platform.

Ok, he fooled me . I already made a poll about it:
http://digitalpinballfans.com/showt...-Farsight-get-rid-of-the-pause-feature-in-TPA

My face is red now for a different reason...

What is the strategy to press the vault assault button without a mouse or controller? Menu up down doesn't work, while for all other buttons it works.
Cabinet here...

Yowch! After collecting 18 unique tokens on the pc version, I decided to start on the ipad. Holy crap I just got my ass handed to me. On the pc, I can reach the vault at least once per game. I just played 10 games on the ipad without reaching the vault once. As of right now, I have Zero magic tokens in my inventory. Yeesh.

"You have been terminated...have a nice day!"

FlippyFloppy said:

Where are you getting it stuck so that it does this?

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That hole near the ramp on the upper left. There is a rake that comes down at some point. I keep getting it stuck behind there. The score just keeps scrolling until I call the attendant.

so getting it stuck behind the vari target? i haven't been able to do this.

Rich Lehmann said:

That hole near the ramp on the upper left. There is a rake that comes down at some point. I keep getting it stuck behind there. The score just keeps scrolling until I call the attendant.

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Which platform are you able to do this on?

Unlike ! or other ending the board game events, cyber dog event doesn't close gates.
Cyber dog, TNT multiball, and locking two balls again makes all four gates open.