ST:TNG Tactics and Strategies

[pinballchris]

I am in 2nd place of the gold tournament last time I checked:
ST: 2nd place with 14,728,299,390

I basically played like I usually play. I tried to do the missions to the best of my ability. At Launch, I picked Warp 4 first, then missions afterwards, locks at the end.
Video mode, I played out to get items.
I only had 5 items during Final Frontier, usually I get 6. I did get a good Final Frontier though, scoring a lot of ramps.
Afterwards there was no time left to go for another FF. At that point I concentrated on multiballs and I got a great multiball as well. (3rd multiball in total).

I have tried to concentrate on just Final Frontiers, it's not worth it IMHO. I think borg multiballs are the way to go. I did try this, but couldn't score above my score I listed here.
Edit: a test game where I ignored Borg multiball at all and just tried to get to Final Frontier twice ended in about an 8 ~ 10 billion score.

I had 8 items once, but had a crappy FF, and 3 MB, and still get the yips. Ticks me off.

 

[Dedpop]

True, but did they really have to make a show about the cardassians? Bad joke. Ok, I take it back

I take it.

 

[Extork]

Thanks dedpop. I'm so close to making a teed off joke for pinballchris, but I'll refrain

**easily amused

****figure I should be serious a little bit. Pinchris, if you hammer the **** out of that spinner while also doing Borg MB, that's the way to go. If you can nail that left orbit, it's beneficial because it doesn't waste any time, right? Post transfers from the right flip don't work the greatest, so just increase that warp

 

[Dedpop]

Thanks dedpop. I'm so close to making a teed off joke for pinballchris, but I'll refrain

**easily amused

Feel free to do it. Please.

 

[Extork]

Ok. How ticked off where you pinballchris? Were you pretty teed off? Ahahahaajahaa. Oh lawd

*fun. It's all in fun. Love lamp

 

[vikingerik]

So I'm on the PC which doesn't have tournaments, but the strategy choices for a 20 minute game intrigued me enough that I gave it a shot by just running a stopwatch timer myself.

There's three distinct ways to go: the spinner, Borg multiball, and Final Frontier. I played one game targeting each.

Here's the fast way to max the spinner. Always take warp 4 obviously. First bang on the Time Rift targets to get the spinner up to 1.6M so you only need four doublings to max it. Go to warp factor 8 once (for the EB) and 7 twice, intentionally draining after each (do NOT reach warp 9), so you can take warp 4 on each new ball and quickly get to 7 for the doubling again. I maxed the spinner within four minutes this way, then just shot it continually for the rest of the time, winding up with 22 billion at the 20 minute mark. Borg Multiball started once from stray shots but didn't really help me hit the spinner any more often.

Borg multiball: I think it might be correct to drain out from the first two instances, then start collecting jackpots at the third once it reaches 100M. I made five Borg Multiballs within the 20 minutes, doing very well on the last for fifty or so jackpots, ending up at 28 billion total in the 20 minutes.

Final Frontier: I shot really well on the missions, including the double artifact from Search the Galaxy. After collecting each mission artifact, I shot warp factors while waiting for the mission time to run out, hoping to max the spinner, but that was probably a mistake as I wasted a couple minutes in warp 9 modes. Anyway, the mission and warp factor artifacts plus two from holodecks added up to 12 artifacts in 12 minutes before Final Frontier. Then I managed to get through all the missions again, by skipping holodecks and actually intentionally draining out of Rescue to avoid waiting for the timer. So I started Final Frontier a second time just as my 20 minute clock ran out during its intro animation! The score was 22 billion before Frontier started, 26 including the starting bonus, and 29 billion after the (rather lousy) Frontier.

Conclusion: All three routes are surprisingly close, but Borg Multiball probably wins overall. Frontier needs you to be really good to reach it twice with a ton of artifacts, while there's quite a bit more margin to spare in the Borg Multiball approach. The spinner doesn't quite keep up with the other two plans.

 

[pinballchris]

Ok. How ticked off where you pinballchris? Were you pretty teed off? Ahahahaajahaa. Oh lawd

*fun. It's all in fun. Love lamp

Thank you Mr Data

 

[Dedpop]

Ok. How ticked off where you pinballchris? Were you pretty teed off? Ahahahaajahaa. Oh lawd

*fun. It's all in fun. Love lamp

You did it !

 

[fromduc]

Just to let you know, trillions are not taken on the leaderboard, at least on PS3... i just did a long game (where standard jackpot was at 2B), and my score was registered at 55.000.000.000, i'm pretty sure it was 1.055.000.000.000. I finally let my last balls go but too late. It's really a pain in the ass to not be able to know where your score is on this table, after 200B i had no idea of where i was. If somebody has an idea on how to evaluate it, i'd be pleased.

Erik, did u score this Trillion for nothing like me or not? I see u're at + 900B, so i asked my self... Maybe on PC it's possible...

 

[vikingerik]

I am quite sure my 950B game was more than that, could have been as much as 1950B. Yes, it's impossible to know how many times you're rolling it over since you don't even see the ten-billions digit, never mind hundred-billions. Maybe STTNG doesn't take trillion rollovers. But there is a trillion in the top leaderboard score. Don't know if that is legit or fake.

 

[fromduc]

I am quite sure my 950B game was more than that, could have been as much as 1950B. Yes, it's impossible to know how many times you're rolling it over since you don't even see the ten-billions digit, never mind hundred-billions. Maybe STTNG doesn't take trillion rollovers. But there is a trillion in the top leaderboard score. Don't know if that is legit or fake.

OK tx, for the +1T score it's a good player on other tables so either it's a glitch from an another leaderboard, or it's because on some devices it's possible to reach the trillion (I dont remember if it's IOS or something else, but he doesnt play on PS or PC, u can see it on the PS3 leaderboard). If it's a case it's a probleme for Invitro's global leaderboard coz we cant compete, anyway not a big deal. I'll maybe take a shot with some math, but when i see the hard time i had on Fishtales where u know ur score, i cant imagine how ugly it will be to catch this top 3 :/

PS: do you remember how much was the standard jackpot at the end of this 1.9T game? And more or less how long was the game?

 

[vikingerik]

I'm unsure on the numbers, but I think about 2.5B for the jackpot and 4-5 hours for the game.

It's also possible that STTNG does take trillion rollovers in general but missed it in our cases, like CFTBL does. It's pretty much impossible to actually know.

 

[JPelter]

One more data point here for trillion rollover not working. I'm pretty sure it's just not enabled at all (on steam at least) or some people would have gotten it by now.

 

[fromduc]

So either it can rollover on mobile devices only, or the top score is glitched...

 

[Mark Miwurdz]

My jackpots towards the end of my Xbox One trillion plus score.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk1WyLOzw2U