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Message: <blockquote data-quote="smbhax" data-source="post: 71099" data-attributes="member: 396">I could swear the current bonus is cashed in when you hit the Special. I got something like 120+K on ball 2 with four specials...that makes uh say 15K bonus X 4 + oh say another 15K scoring X 4...that's about right. If bonus wasn't cashed in I couldn't have got anywhere near what I did. I think. I should probably go check on this specifically, but I can never think straight (to check my score) once that Special light goes on.~~~~~~Thanks to that gargantuan ball 2 I finally beat that 250K goal (ball 5 hung on just long enough...), so here are some strategy things I had to learn to do it that haven't been mentioned yet--they may not be that valuable considering that it took me this long to crack 250 <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite7" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":p" />P:- Points on this table are pretty much limited: they come from the drop targets, and the targets only reset with death or a Special. Balls 1-3 give 1x bonus for targets hit; ball 4 gives 2x, and ball 5 gives 3x; you'll pick up other points here and there but they won't amount to all that much by comparison. Fifteen targets with bonus plus trickle points from other things over those five balls works out to about 195K--this means that in order to reach 250K you pretty much need to hit at least one Special; in practice, because you will probably have a wasted ball or three, you will most likely need at least two Specials to reach 250K, and more if they don't come on ball 4 or 5.- I had to learn to nudge lightly, so that I could get in more than a couple nudges in a row without tilting.- When the ball is coming down the slanty part at the bottom of those little side lane loops, if it's going slowly it'll tend to skip off the top of the slingshot, hit the opposite slingshot square, and then it's totally out of control and likely heading for a side drain; if it's going faster, it'll spit out somewhere around the middle drain maybe, which is danger. So to avoid all that, nudge upward lightly as it's coming down that slanty part at the end of the lane--this will generally cause it to spill mildly out for an easy catch on one of the flippers.- If the slingshots have got your ball and are just flinging it back and forth, give 'em a light upward nudge when the ball's about to contact one of them--if you're a bit lucky this will take the whiplash out of their sport and cause the ball to drop down to the flippers in a rebound or two.- If the ball is headed for the middle or upper part of the slingshot, you'd better nudge, because there's a very good chance its next move will be down an outlane.- The worst is when the ball is falling straight down toward the very tip-top of the slingshot; you can try to time a sideways nudge to kick the ball off to one side or the other, missing a possible ricochet into the outlane, but I found I screwed this up more often than not. I had much more success pre-emptively nudging as the ball passed the green barrier that forms the little side lane above the slingshot: use that barrier like a paddle to swat the ball away from the top of the slingshot. If you're too late with that and the ball is already past the barrier and about to land on the top of the slingshot, the best I could come up with was to nudge upward and pray.- If the ball is coming down to the flippers under the slingshot with enough steam, you can just hold up the near flipper and let the ball skip over the center drain to the far flipper.- I really should have worked on eh nudge passing or whatever it's called, you know, nudging a bit to the side as a too-fast-to-catch-but-not-quite-fast-enough-to-skip-over ball comes toward the flipper, to give it that extra oomph to skip over the center drain and land safely on the far flipper. I did not and every time I have tried to figure this out in the past it has been a disaster. Still gotta work on this.- Get good at hitting the Special targets. They can be hit forehand from a moving ball, and either forehand or backhand from a caught (or possibly very slow) ball. I found I was actually better at the forehand shot--it looks like the Special target is at a nearly untouchable angle for a forehand shot, but this isn't really the case.- You can ricochet the ball off the Special targets or the wall next to them and into the adjacent targets reasonably reliably; so, for instance, if there are targets at your backhand that you really want to hit from a trapped ball, you can try banking the ball into them off the Special target area. I thought this was a great breakthrough at one point, but if your aim is off you can get a really nasty ricochet into danger off that central thingy, so I can't say I really recommend this technique.- For whatever reason--probably nerves <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite7" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":p" />--I had a lot of trouble with post passes on this table, so I gave up on them. If there were targets to shoot forehand from that side, I'd just shoot them; if all the targets had been hit and there was no Special to go for, I'd just fire the ball up toward the top of the target area--this seemed to be the safest option left, since I was stinking at active passes, and if I still needed the 8-ball there was always a chance the ball would get up to that center rollover and grab it for me.- I didn't worry about trying to concentrate on the targets on one side or the other; I had more success just going with the flow and shooting whichever targets were available at the moment.- When shooting targets, I would start at the top and work down: the top ones are maybe an easier angle, and are almost definitely safer, but mostly a hit on them has the potential to ricochet off the pop bumper and back into some targets lower down; it was nice when the ball would trickle down to the lowest targets because that very bottom one was by far the toughest for me to hit directly.- Dead passes are your friends, your mothers, your secret lovers.- I have no patience for skill shots generally so I just flicked a full-strength skill shot--a decent amount of the time this would ricochet a few times across the top, then drop near the center rollover for the 8-ball. Convenient for the lazy.- I shot targets first before going for the 8-ball, since generally some carom or other would get the 8-ball for me anyway while I was going for targets.- I found that I could sometimes backhand targets from a briskly moving ball, surprisingly enough; I never really tried this consciously, it would just sort of happen in the flow of things.- Don't miss targets: not only do you need to clear those suckers as quickly as possible to have a chance of reaching the Special before the inevitable drain, but they also absorb a good deal of the speed of the ball; if you hit, say, the blank area behind them instead, the ball will tend to ricochet madly around the table and end up somewhere bad before you know it. Also, because targets give you the target value plus the bonus value, they end up being much more valuable than the blank area behind them, points-wise.- If I still needed the 8-ball after clearing a bank of targets, as I mentioned above I'd just fling the ball up toward the top, either the top of the target area, or the gap between it and the rollovers, and hope the ball would get up to the top and drop down through the 8-ball rollover. Didn't usually try shooting the saucer for the 8-ball since it was hard to get the ball to stick and a miss that close to the center drain is risky.- Generally, for every Special I lit, I would drain the next two or three balls fruitlessly. Some kind of mental block I think, for whatever reason I just became fatalistic after lighting that thing. As soon as I overcame this--probably just through my subconscious getting really sleepy--I finally cracked 250K.- I found that nudging at the top of the table was dangerous--I needed all the play in the tilt bob for the real danger at the bottom of the table.- If you've just done a few nudges and can catch the ball, do so and wait five seconds or so for the simulated tilt bob to settle--this will save you from a tilt due to accumulated nudging, I mean if your next flip would end up requiring another quick nudge or two.- The advice I followed from someone more learned than I was to nudge outward if the ball was headed into the outlane. This did produce an honest-to-goodness outlane save now and then, but most of the time it seemed to have no effect; I got to wondering if a good hard nudge inward as the ball kissed the top outer wall of the outlane might not work better, but I didn't manage to try this out.So basically I finally had to stay up all night and play a bajillion failed full or fragmentary games until I got this thing done. : P Take my advice for what that's worth.</blockquote>

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