Strategy for this table.

[Tarek Oberdieck]

The Bonus X EB is repeatable? Are you sure about that?

Thats wrong. May Zaphod77 talk about the wheel EB...

 

[DanBradford]

Right, I've been playing this loads but am still a bit confused on some very basic points. Maybe zaphod or slam or eldar can clarify for me. My main confusion is around wheel awards vs souvenirs vs lighting Bob's.

Does Bob only get lit by lighting the wheel, (by increasing bonusX by shooting bridge out)? What about that lane behind Red, at about 1 o'clock, when does that do it? Sometimes I shoot that lane and hear "let's visit Bob", and other times I shoot it and I hear "let's get a souvenir".

Can I only get a wheel award (at Bob or at Blast hole) by shooting bridge out, ie after increasing bonusX? Are bonusX and the wheel tied together then? And are souvenirs only available from skill shots? No, because sometimes Bob offers them for sale as well.

All very fundamental I know, but I couldn't find the answer in the rules.

Thanks fellas

 

[invitro]

Does Bob only get lit by lighting the wheel, (by increasing bonusX by shooting bridge out)? What about that lane behind Red, at about 1 o'clock, when does that do it? Sometimes I shoot that lane and hear "let's visit Bob", and other times I shoot it and I hear "let's get a souvenir".

Can I only get a wheel award (at Bob or at Blast hole) by shooting bridge out, ie after increasing bonusX? Are bonusX and the wheel tied together then? And are souvenirs only available from skill shots? No, because sometimes Bob offers them for sale as well.

All very fundamental I know, but I couldn't find the answer in the rules.

All of this is in the rules; much of it is in this thread, or the Road Show thread I started, in the RS forum.

You collect souvenirs by shooting Bob's when it's lit (for a souvenir, there's a yellow light for it). If Bob's is lit for a Wheel award, that blocks collecting a souvenir... you have to collect the Wheel award first, then Bob's will relight for the souvenir.

The lane behind Red lights Bob to collect a souvenir when its orange arrow is lit, and I think during modes also... which is any time Bob's is not lit (?). The two quotes you mention refer to the same thing.

Besides Bob's and the skill shot, you get a souvenir from the Wheel award, Bob's Freebie.

Bridge Out / Bonus X does light Bob's and the Blast hole for a Wheel award... this is how they're tied together. If you have 6X then you can't light Wheel awards this way.

Bob's and the Blast hole are always lit for Wheel awards during Las Vegas mode, and during Super Payday.

Corrections welcome...

 

[DanBradford]

Thank you. What confuses me is that sometimes I shoot the orange light and light up Bob's but then I hit Bob and don't get either a souvenir or a wheel award.

 

[Tarek Oberdieck]

The lane behind Red lights Bob to collect a souvenir when its orange arrow is lit, and I think during modes also... which is any time Bob's is not lit (?)

During modes the arrow does not lit, the shot relights Bob even so. I always use the mode time to relight the Bunker.

Thank you. What confuses me is that sometimes I shoot the orange light and light up Bob's but then I hit Bob and don't get either a souvenir or a wheel award.

This cannot be true. If no lock is lit, no wheel award is lit and you're not in a mode or multiball, Bob is lit after the orange arrow shot.

 

[DanBradford]

This cannot be true. If no lock is lit, no wheel award is lit and you're not in a mode or multiball, Bob is lit after the orange arrow shot.[/QUOTE]

It is true. The Bob light was lit but I think a city may have started when the ball fell in the blast hole and so the Bob light went out

 

[Zaphod77]

Souvenirs can only be collected when nothing else is lit at the bunker (no wheel, no lock), no mode is in progress, not in multiball, and Ted is awake (he's asleep before multiball start).

the right right inlane also lights bobs.

 

[invitro]

Thanks, Tarek and Zaphod77.

 

[DanBradford]

Yes thanks Tarek and Zaphod and invitro. This table certainly has very deep rules and not everything is transparent in the 800+ page rules.

I'm enjoying it a whole lot more than the real table. My average game I get 1-3B, a couple of times I got 5 or more, once 9B that didn't register .... but it means I know a decent score is in me so I'll carry on chopping wood until I can get an 11-digit score on record.

Cities, blasts, souvenirs, wheel awards, multipliers ..... but it's all about the EBs and the end of ball bonus on those last few balls.

Oh, and one more thing - can someone playing on iOS confirm that Construction Mania is working please, as I swear I've hit both flippers a dozen times immediately that I saw the 'uranium ore $3 a chunk' and I've not triggered it yet ..... does it have to be after I achieve something else like Super Payday or something like that, am I missing something here?

Edit: got me a 10.8B score (and left an EB on the table), biggest bonus was 1.3B

 

[Slam23]

Hi Dan, it works, I have activated it a couple of times on iOS. To me it seems you actually have to activate it quite late to get it to start, even on the souvenir page if I correctly remember it

 

[DanBradford]

Thanks Joris, next time i see it, I will just double chimp flip until it registers. How is your collection these days?

 

[vikingerik]

Edit: This post had some inaccuracies, look down for a better version.

 

[invitro]

Thanks, v.e.! So you've started RS... I'm curious what you come up with.

 

[vikingerik]

The previous post had some inaccuracies, I'm removing it to post a corrected version here.

The pinball.org rulesheet for Road Show spells out the rules for city traveling, better than the in-game instructions.

Going from right to left, the colors always rotate in the same order: white, orange, yellow. ... The currently flashing mode is always one of the next two cities on the map (going from right to left), so your first mode is either New York (white) or Miami (orange) -- the rightmost 2 cities on the map. This means that you can never play two modes of the same color in a row. The exception to this rule is the West Coast cities - you can reach any of the three cities on the coast.

This rulesheet lists the cities, but gets the order incorrect (Vegas and SLC are swapped; LA and SF are swapped.) This is the correct order:

New York
Miami
Atlanta
Ohio
New Orleans
Nashville
Chicago
Dallas
Kansas City
Minnesota
Albuquerque
Denver
Butte
Las Vegas
Salt Lake City
Seattle
Los Angeles
San Francisco

The movement rules above hold with only one exception: From Las Vegas, all three West Coast cities are accessible.

I observed all of the following firsthand and wrote them down as soon as they happened: Denver-Butte, Denver-Vegas, (Denver-SLC looked not possible), Butte-Vegas, Butte-SLC (after hitting white target, so Butte-Seattle is not possible despite my earlier claim), Vegas-Seattle, Vegas-SF, SLC-LA, (SLC-SF looked not possible; hitting the yellow target stayed on SLC-LA).

Important emergent properties:

Las Vegas can be reached from either Denver or Butte.

SLC can only be reached from Butte. Vegas-SLC is not possible despite being sequential because of the exception for Vegas, depriving SLC of one of its entry points. Therefore SLC and Vegas are mutually exclusive on the same run.

SF can only be reached from Vegas. SLC-SF appears not to be possible because only Vegas gets the west coast exception, depriving SF of one of its entry points.

SLC does NOT get any west coast exception, so it follows the normal rule of choosing either Seattle or LA next but not SF.

 

[vikingerik]

Thanks, v.e.! So you've started RS... I'm curious what you come up with.

Well, I've come up with going infinite.

This is the key: grind Super Payday for dozens of wheel spins to replenish your extra ball stock every time. Here's how. Start with a ball on each flipper. Step 0: shoot Fire-in-the-Hole and pin the ball with the blast flipper. Step 1: post pass left-to-right with the other ball; you can do this without dropping the pinned ball. Step 2: with the pinned ball, shoot the blast hole for the wheel spin. Step 3: while the wheel is spinning, shoot Fire-in-the-Hole again and pin it. Step 4: hold both flippers to catch the ejected ball on the left. Goto step 1.

I can keep this going accurately without missing the fire lane and blast hole shots for two or more complete wheel circuits, restocking any missing EBs. A quirk of Road Show also offers an advantage: unlike pretty much every other Williams game with the 4 EB limit, Road Show still allows lighting more EBs even while you're at the limit. So I go up to 4 EBs via the Super Payday wheel, then light one more, then just drain intentionally in order to collect the bonus, with the lit EB still available to come back up to max.

I don't see stages of gameplay like Maggie says. Why light all the cities, does that or the "Wow" screen do anything? I don't see it; visited cities are not enough bonus to matter compared to the souvenirs. Really the only reason to progress through cities is to reach Super Payday for the wheel EBs. I pretty much play as stage 1: get cities towards Super Payday when at 2 or fewer EBs; or stage 1A: when flush on EBs, get bonus X when necessary or souvenirs otherwise.

In my stratosphere, only bonus matters. Not any city modes, not regular multiball, not anything else, not even Super Payday's own scoring. Definitely don't shoot Red from a bunker eject, that's risky compared to a 100% guaranteed catch by not flipping.

Las Vegas isn't all that important in light of Super Payday wheel grinding, but it's still worth picking up a few wheel spins. Notice that you can actually aim for the EB spot on the spinning wheel. I do it by releasing the right flipper when the light is at 3 o'clock. The timing comes out right to land on the EB a decent portion of the time, maybe 1/3. If I get an EB or two here, I'll drain them for more bonus collection before entering Super Payday with 2 EBs in stock.

Yes, the Bridge-Out combos for bonus X are important. I'm much more consistent going right-left than left-right, which is dangerous if you miss the rolling shot towards the bumpers.

I currently have a game paused overnight, with 200B scored and the fully multiplied bonus at 9B. I stopped collecting souvenirs as I wasn't sure if RS can handle bonus over 10B, but looking back through Tarek's comments here, it looks like it can, so will push more tonight after work. I think I'll stop at 900B rather than try to challenge Tarek at 993B and risk rolling over past the trillion.

 

[Tarek Oberdieck]

I don't see stages of gameplay like Maggie says. Why light all the cities, does that or the "Wow" screen do anything? I don't see it; visited cities are not enough bonus to matter compared to the souvenirs. Really the only reason to progress through cities is to reach Super Payday for the wheel EBs.

I agree, cities are unimportant after the first "WOW" . There´s an easter egg in very long games after "WOW". I haven´t figured out how many cities are needed for this "Super WOW". In this mode you have 1-3 seconds (?) to hit the bulldozer. Don´t ask me for what, I´ve missed...

I currently have a game paused overnight, with 200B scored and the fully multiplied bonus at 9B. I stopped collecting souvenirs as I wasn't sure if RS can handle bonus over 10B, but looking back through Tarek's comments here, it looks like it can, so will push more tonight after work.

RS can handle over 10B. I´ve had 31B bonus during my last balls in the 1,6 trillion game.

I think I'll stop at 900B rather than try to challenge Tarek at 993B and risk rolling over past the trillion.

Good idea.

 

[switch3flip]

The biggest challenge is to keep track of the score. The DMD only shows scores up to 9.9B I figured I'll just quit when it felt right. I was abut 200B past the trillion
I pretty much used the same strategy, lighting extra balls during payday by circulating two balls at the fire in the hole and blast shot. I do it in just a slightly different way;

I trap one ball on each flipper, then shoot from the left flipper into start city hole and then fast shoot the ball from the right flipper to the fire in the hole and then hold/trap that ball on the left little upper flipper. I hold up the right flipper and when the ball that was shot into start city hole drops down to right flipper, I nudge the table to the left while ball is rolling towards the right flipper and that will make the ball safely be trapped on the right flipper by just holding it up. I then shoot the ball that was trapped on the little upper left flipper into the blast hole and then shoot the ball that's trapped on right flipper into fire in the hole and hold the ball with that little flipper and the other ball will again drop to the right flipper from start city hole and again nudge to the left before it lands on the right flipper and so on and so on.

Another way to go about payday is to start the last city with one ball in lock for regular multiball. Then shoot a ball into lock when the last city mode starts to lock a ball for payday. Then when next ball is in plunger, don't make the skill shot to start payday, instead shoot this ball into lock also. There is a bug and now only one ball will be in play during payday so you can just shoot this ball round the fire in the hole to blast zone hole. Takes longer time though but some might find it easier. But if you drain this ball, multiball ends.

Personally I try to go for most of the modes because it's more fun, and some modes will end faster and you have to drain anyway.

Also I thought that extra ball won't light if you already have 4 extra balls so I try to keep it at 2 or three extra balls but I guess it's also good to keep your extra balls at 2 or 3 if you would collect an extra ball by accident which you won't get rewarded if you already have 4.

 

[invitro]

Why light all the cities, does that or the "Wow" screen do anything? I don't see it; visited cities are not enough bonus to matter compared to the souvenirs.

Please pardon me if I misunderstand, but you need a city to get bonus points for its souvenir. Your comment reads like you're saying that the first WOW is not worthwhile, when it certainly is... after that, it's worthless other than the possible easter egg Tarek mentions (which I didn't know about, so thanks Tarek).

Your bonus of 9B at 200B score seems low to me... I maxed around 6.7B at 61B. Not getting all cities would explain it (or just choosing to do more Super Payday and less souvenir-buying).

Give your strategy for going for souvenirs vs. Super Payday, please? And when you go for Bonus X? Or do you constantly have Hold Bonus... it seems like you would have well over a wheel per ball (I was at about 0.4 wheels / ball in my high game.)

I didn't know you could aim for the wheel EB, though I don't think that matters at my skill level. I'm not at all surprised you can go infinite as I think I can (one of these days I'm gonna tie you "infinite" guys down and make you give an actual definition of that term ).

 

[vikingerik]

switch3flip, yes that method works too, but I'd rather avoid any on-the-fly shots and nudges when a safe perfectly railroaded method is available.

Please pardon me if I misunderstand, but you need a city to get bonus points for its souvenir.

That's the part I didn't know, thanks.

Your bonus of 9B at 200B score seems low to me... I maxed around 6.7B at 61B.

You're looking at it the wrong way round. The right gauge is that I have a higher score relative to the bonus. Because I've had more EBs to drain and collect the bonus more times, of course.

Give your strategy for going for souvenirs vs. Super Payday, please?

I don't have much here. Of course it depends on how reliably you can grind the Super Payday wheel for more EBs. I've just been going towards Super Payday when low on EBs (2 or less), or collecting souvenirs when stocked at 3-4. I don't really know if that's optimal but it feels good enough. I do use the souvenir shots to light the next city.

And when you go for Bonus X? Or do you constantly have Hold Bonus... it seems like you would have well over a wheel per ball (I was at about 0.4 wheels / ball in my high game.)

I do get a wheel or more per ball, but the distribution is clumped at Super Payday, so sometimes the Hold Bonus is wasted and I don't constantly have it every ball. I've been going for Bonus X ahead of both cities and souvenirs, which seems to work fine as it's fairly low risk. Also, the Nashville and Kansas City multiballs are good times to pick up bonus X if you need some.

(one of these days I'm gonna tie you "infinite" guys down and make you give an actual definition of that term ).

It's just gaining a long-term average of more than one repeatable extra ball per drain. That good enough? We could talk about variance and the 4 EB limit that could see enough clumped drains to irrevocably lose a ball (advance to ball 2), but that practically never comes into play for me.

 

[wizard33]

In the teaser of RS, Lawlor is saying that this table is different, that it's impossible to finish it with just 1 coin.
Since TPA doesn't allow to insert coins, is it really possible to finish the game in TPA ?