Bride of Pinbot: Tactics and Strategies

[Mark W**a]

So, just confirmed that on the PS4 version you are not limited to registering up to 10b only. This was an issue previously with the PS3 version I had understood. The local high scores won't reflect it, but the leaderboard will!

Here's something else I can confirm after a marathon game that started last night and ended about an hour ago with a new #1 score (yes, I slept, watched football during it...lawl.. made DAMN sure my PS4s power saving feature was turned off):

We've been long convinced that the fully rom-emulated versions of the table stopped awarding billion shots on the big wheel after you complete 8 of them. So, you could get 8 plus the backdoor billion for 9, then have to earn points other ways the rest of the way. I'm pretty sure that mobile versions didn't have this limitation so there seemed to be an unfair advantage there. The news is, you actually CAN get more billion shots. It is just extremely rare. I'd estimate the odds at about 1 in 100. I got 6 or 7 more of them in my game, but I had to absolutely hammer away forever on big wheel shots, and I'm betting I easily hit around 600-700 of those over the course of the game after I had reached the 8 billion "limit". So yeah, maybe 1% chance. Strangely though, at one point it gave me two in a row, way later in the game! About 50% of the time, you'll get 5 million. The other 50% of the time you get any one of the others. Most of the time you're just hoping to get 50 million a lot. Hitting a few of those still makes the wheel the most lucrative thing in the game and it gives those out often enough. You can ride the whole process on rails if you just master the shuttle and heart ramps, and it's easy to keep 4 EBs stacked all day long (That's how you run up the skill shot multiplier because you never lose it on endless EBs)

Oh yeah, I was going to mention the 255 skill shot multiplier limit, but vikingeric already did. Funny thing happened... after 255, it actually goes to 0x for one shot. I happened to hit the 200k, and was awarded "200,000 x0" with the usual "YAHH HOO!" Good times.

Oh and yeah I also noticed you can make the ball hop to the plunger from the figure 8 track when it was meant for the right inlane... I've done it by accident during multiball and sometimes it just hops over on its own. Never thought to exploit it... heh. But, if you have the multiball cycle going, you'll end up with a lot of plunger shots anyway.

It's cool and funny that you'd do that. I could see doing something like that for fun.

However the top score is SIXTY-BILLION. NON MOBILE.

So basically if we work out the math. It took you around 8 hours to score 20 billion points, since 8-10 bil was given by the wheel. That means for 60, we're looking at a time sink of around 24 hours. TWENTY FOUR freaking hours. There's no way. It's either a hack or we're dealing with someone who truly has no life whatsoever.

 

[fromduc]

I agree, but then what about SS leaderboard top scores? It looks even worst to me.... and i'm sure there are even worst ones i forget.

 

[vikingerik]

TWENTY FOUR freaking hours. There's no way. It's either a hack or we're dealing with someone who truly has no life whatsoever.

In the immortal words of third grade, "no way? Yes way!"

I've put legit 12 hour games into high scores on several tables, and I have a normal job and family and social groups. It's not that hard to play for 3-4 hours per evening over the course of a week. Playing on a desktop PC definitely helps with no concerns about the device sleeping or anything if left paused overnight.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

In the immortal words of third grade, "no way? Yes way!"

I've put legit 12 hour games into high scores on several tables, and I have a normal job and family and social groups. It's not that hard to play for 3-4 hours per evening over the course of a week. Playing on a desktop PC definitely helps with no concerns about the device sleeping or anything if left paused overnight.

Please tell me you've never left an old game paused indefinitely while you had to deal with daily life. I've picked up where I left off countless times in the past. Especially on old cart systems, you don't have to worry too much about overheating or drive fatigue.

 

[DanBradford]

Vikingerik - when you say nudge leftward, you mean (on my tablet with nudging not reversed but as standard) tapping the left side of the screen?

Also, if anyone here is playing on iPad Air and is good at getting 200K every time on the skill shot, can I have a tip? In the view that focuses on the plunger from above (obviously) I think it's just above the final yellow triangle but whenever I think I've nailed it I overshoot into 25, or when I deliberately undershoot to avoid this I miss not only 100 but usually 75 too. Surely it can't move about with any degree of random?

My top is still 5B and change but I'm determined to make this my next 1000-pointer so I need to not only go for big wheels but also may as well maximise my plunger scoring as it does look like it could add up.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

Vikingerik - when you say nudge leftward, you mean (on my tablet with nudging not reversed but as standard) tapping the left side of the screen?

Also, if anyone here is playing on iPad Air and is good at getting 200K every time on the skill shot, can I have a tip? In the view that focuses on the plunger from above (obviously) I think it's just above the final yellow triangle but whenever I think I've nailed it I overshoot into 25, or when I deliberately undershoot to avoid this I miss not only 100 but usually 75 too. Surely it can't move about with any degree of random?

My top is still 5B and change but I'm determined to make this my next 1000-pointer so I need to not only go for big wheels but also may as well maximise my plunger scoring as it does look like it could add up.

Considering it's somehow possible to run the bonus up to 255x, those 200,000 point skill shots will rack up quick! Potential 51 million points if you make the skill shot with a 255x multiplier.

 

[vikingerik]

I don't know how tablets nudge, but I think the left side without nudging reversed, yes. Leftwards meaning whatever pushes the table to the left. Like you are trying to knock a ball away from a right outlane (say Whitewater's boulder garden) back towards the center.

I can't hit 200k every time on the skill shot either on PC with very precise mouse pullback. I get it less than half. There is some unpredictability in the physics there. On the real table, the dividers between the holes spin on a horizontal axis and are lumpy rather than round to inject some indeterminacy. TPA seems to simulate that at least somewhat even if it's not obvious visually.

 

[Mark Miwurdz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfKPNITjhDk

 

[StarDust4Ever]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfKPNITjhDk

That's some mad skills there. I made the billion point shot once. Got 1,032,000,000 points. Sadly I was 10 million short of the grand champion score though...

 

[Mark Miwurdz]

I gave up at 15b. Just made sure I had the Xbox One top score.

 

[relaxation]

I'm 12hrs in and paused atm, my 14th Billion Point Shot happened to be at a 9bn mark.. was I suckered and lost those 9bn points? ... crap my 9th Billion Point Shot was also at the 9bn mark too golly I hate this RNG table.

Really wish they'd implement something to show you how many times you've rolled a table in the pause menu or something.

 

[Slam23]

This is a great idea [MENTION=5759]relaxation[/MENTION] ! Just have the pause menu give you the real score instead of having to guess and all the accompanying handwringing. Let's put it in an official request thread ok?

 

[StarDust4Ever]

IDK, purchased the first four season packs for TPA on Wii-U, and scored two billion point shots in the first night. Sadly not in the sme game, but my aiming has improved dramatically on Wii-U due to snappier controls than Ouya. The first time happened so quickly I somehow rolled the big wheel with one ball while hitting up the heart ramp with the other. No fanfare at all, didn't even see the big wheel rolling animation, just an instant "Welcome to the billionare club." Second time I was focusing primarily on completing the last Wizard goal of 600k bonus and jacking up the score in the process. I was actively avoiding the metamorphosis, crazy as that sounds, by allowing one ball to drain so I could shoot the ramp again and reset the audio/visual circiuts and continue advance the bonus. I had earned a crap ton of extra balls and hit both balls up the ramp and ended up geting my second billion bonus, this time with 40+ millions so I knew I had grand champion. I'm getting a lot better at hitting the heart ramp with decent accuracy, and nearly got a second billion bonus. Right as I spun the Big wheel and lit the bonus, my ball drained. This time there was no "same builder shoot again" as before and I advanced to ball 3. Third ball didn't get very far, managed to get the first eyeball in place but then I drained. 1,051,000,000+ points Grand Champion ain't too shabby. Easily my best game ever. I would likely have gotten multiple billion bonuses during that game (almost did get it twice) had I not been hell bent on intentionally draining my multiball to avoid metamorphosis in order to quickly advance the 600k bonus. But just like on my Ouya account, all Wizard goals unlocked...

 

[relaxation]

Well if it helps you any StarDust4Ever I've been using the tables artwork to figure out where shots are.. take for example the heart ramp, from the left flipper you shoot at the middle of the booster.. from the right flipper its near the end of its booster, also from the right flipper you can hit the ramp solidly when you have the ball in the middle of the blackline.

A lot of tables seem to have graphics near the flippers aligned with shots.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

Well if it helps you any StarDust4Ever I've been using the tables artwork to figure out where shots are.. take for example the heart ramp, from the left flipper you shoot at the middle of the booster.. from the right flipper its near the end of its booster, also from the right flipper you can hit the ramp solidly when you have the ball in the middle of the blackline.

A lot of tables seem to have graphics near the flippers aligned with shots.

Never thought of that, thanks for sharing! It also helps when you hit the heart ramp, you can just hold the right flipper up to cradle the ball when it drops. I had the experience of playing a real BoP table at Texas Pinball Fest in 2014. Works the same way!

 

[relaxation]

Well I had to find out, if you were at 9B and then got a Billion Point Shot.. should you shoot for it?, if there was an issue and I recorded the event.. warning contains cursing.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

Well I had to find out, if you were at 9B and then got a Billion Point Shot.. should you shoot for it?, if there was an issue and I recorded the event.. warning contains cursing.

I mightwant to add, you still had one ball left. Why not just play the ball and potentially get even higher score? You potentially left billions on the table by simply allowing the final ball to drain...

 

[relaxation]

Too hung up about whether or not those counted...
Here's an example: With a top score of 99B and the 100Bth place value isn't confirmed with a 20B spread.. I could either lose it all (leaderboard wont support it*) or come in 5th if I stopped at 80B, the spread could have been worse going forward also.

I'm certain those scores above me were purposely drained just as I had done before the clip you saw (I was playing on ball 1 4EBs left).


I also wanted to confirm if the billion point shot would 'come back' after 10, my previous game of ~7hrs didn't see them often so I almost doubled the time and got 4 more.. In the end repeating the skill shot is likely the way to go after they've dried up.**

*Look at the Fish Tales leaderboard, they aren't doing that for fun, how high the leaderboards will support is unknown until someone reaches it. However I do remember someone posting a rather large cheated score but I don't know if the game will support a legit score that high.

**

billion shot timestamps in my game
1 3:09
2 16:04
3 26:50
4 51:49
5 53:01
6 61:32
7 62:45
8 67:53
9 85:00
10 93:19
11 218:07
12 269:53
13 412:38
14 695:26

the first couple I fumbled a lot with multiball, 4 to 10 happen within 45 minutes of eachother though

Here's some math before I had done my gap in recording..
12.5hrs, 31,517,110,140 points, 13B from billion point shot so..
(31.5-13)/12.5=1.48B per hour, just for shooting the shuttle exclusively. Next time I'll see what the skill shot does for me.
if we extrapolate, (80B-31.5B)/1.48B.. it would've taken another 32.7 hours or about another 8 4hr sessions to accomplish 80B.

 

[StarDust4Ever]

^^Yeah I remember for a while when viewing the high scores through the Ouya app back in 2013, some hackers posted ludicrous values such as for instance username "icheat" with a posted score of over one trillion points on a table like Big Shot or something that normally rolls at 100,000.

Someone figured out a method to hack the game so that tables where it was actually possible to score one trillion points (Attack from Mars for instance) would be submitted to the leaderboard for tables that had much lower score thresholds. But Farsight kicked those morons off years ago and updated all of the pinball apps to make falsification of scores much more difficult.

 

[relaxation]

Since I've got a 4 day weekend open I'm going to try and tackle this table again, I put in 5hrs last night and here's it's breakdown so far...

Bllionaires Club
01 03:22 (1.0151B)
02 04:01 (2.0177B)
03 04:33 (3.0204B)
04 08:26 (4.0325B)
05 13:16 (5.0689B)
06 14:32 (6.0752B)
07 16:05 (7.1305B)
08 22:28 (8.2466B)
09 1:41:02 (10.8494B)
10 1:43:28 (11.9669B)
Backdoor Billion
4L 1:44:48 (12.0244B)
5L 1:45:33 (12.0484B)
6L 1:52:40 (12.1121B)
7L 1:54:02 (12.1523B)
8L 1:54:46 (12.1735B)
9L 1:59:13 (12.2119B)
#breaktime 2:10:00 - 2:16:20
Billion 2:17:13 (13.3590B)
Skillshot scoring starting at 2:21:08 @ multiplier 58 (13.3890B)
(2 balls in the plunger at 2:27:58 for giggles)
x255 multiplier at 3:39:21 (16.8118B)
x255 multiplier at 5:17:47 (20.4701B)

1st to x255: 1h 18m 13s, 3.4228B or ((3.4228/78.216)*60), 2.6256B an hour
2nd to x255: 1h 38m 26s, 3.6583B or ((3.6583/98.433)*60), 2.2299B an hour

ETA to 100B? ((100-20.4)/2.2299), 35.69 hours to go.. I don't think I can do that in my weekend but we'll see if weather permits me to try (Tuesdays power outage was 15hrs). I don't think I was scoring 200Ks as much as my game in May but at least 25Ks were a rarity.

edit: adding the way I'm doing the skillshot is pressing and releasing a button, analog stick doesn't do it for me and I don't want RSI from the mouse

up to date averages here