TAF Tactics & Strategies

[Epsilon]

You get lots of skill shots during a long game. they add up. and they are SAFE to attempt and make, which is rare in a lawlor table.

they also collect extra balls and T-H-I-N-G, as well as locks for the first multiball. and give you a chance to hit the train wreck, or the ramp, or dead bounce to lower left flipper to shoot the chair.

and you can do all of these after a missed skill shot too, which works when you wanna start multiball without interference from the power. plunging the bumpers can get you a right outlane power drain if you are unlucky. much safer to get into the bumpers from the bonusx shot.

T-H-I-N-G seems to be 5 million PLUS. I don't know what it maxes out at.

I don't know if this is unique to me or my controller or if it's something related to the PC version, but I have a HELL of a hard time getting any kind of consistent behavior off of the manual plungers, especially on this table. I'm lucky if I get one or maybe two skill shots in a long game with probably 30+ plunges.

Is plunging easier/more accurate on iOS? I use a PS4 controller with an Xinput wrapper on my PC, but I don't think it really matters because I had the same issue with a wired 360 controller. Am I the only one who finds the plunging maddening? Maybe there's some trick to it that I just haven't grasped.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

I don't know if this is unique to me or my controller or if it's something related to the PC version, but I have a HELL of a hard time getting any kind of consistent behavior off of the manual plungers, especially on this table. I'm lucky if I get one or maybe two skill shots in a long game with probably 30+ plunges.

Is plunging easier/more accurate on iOS? I use a PS4 controller with an Xinput wrapper on my PC, but I don't think it really matters because I had the same issue with a wired 360 controller. Am I the only one who finds the plunging maddening? Maybe there's some trick to it that I just haven't grasped.

Accurate plunging is a crapshoot on any platform. Whether it's using a keyboard, my X360 controller on PC, or my finger on my Android tablet. Some games you can easily find a "sweet spot" (e.g. Earthshaker - 100Ks are easy to repeat), others, it's pretty random.

That said - the TAF plunger behaves very nicely. Like with a real table, some games you get on a roll and can hit that skill shot almost every time. And some games, you're either in the swamp or in the bumpers on every plunge it seems.

 

[Slam23]

Skill shot on iOS is very repeatable, now I know where the sweet spot is (just a tad under the middle indicator), I can't miss it.
Been in a festive TPA mood today, scored a nigh 4.7B on the regular TAF and that propelled me just over a combined 34.000 HOF points for 3rd place overall!

 

[DA5ID]

In general iOS plunger for me is super accurate and as slam said repeatable. My ps3 however is a total crap shoot because you have to pull the plunge back with the right analog stick and it power is dependent on how quickly the stick flicks back which always varies - age/ wear and tear on controller is a factor too.

I some times learn to do skill shots on ps3 by the feel of pulling back the stick and not looking at the meter (muscle memory) faster a less frustrating than having un unreliable plunger.

 

[Epsilon]

In general iOS plunger for me is super accurate and as slam said repeatable. My ps3 however is a total crap shoot because you have to pull the plunge back with the right analog stick and it power is dependent on how quickly the stick flicks back which always varies - age/ wear and tear on controller is a factor too.

I some times learn to do skill shots on ps3 by the feel of pulling back the stick and not looking at the meter (muscle memory) faster a less frustrating than having un unreliable plunger.

Yeah, I think you touch on exactly what my issue is. I think it's to do with the way the game handles plunger release. On Zen's Pinball FX2, for instance, I can get pretty good repeatable behavior simply by pulling the plunger back to a certain point and releasing. On TPA, it seems totally random what happens if I just release the stick. I'd imagine that Zen's approach is to just detect when the stick is released and then make the strength calculation based on the furthest point the stick was pulled to, while Farsight apparently is following the stick movement through the entire duration, which could create the kind of disjointed unpredictable results given common wear and tear and different behavior of the stick. In experimenting around, I've found that I almost have to physically move the stick forward myself to get any kind of "touch" on the plunge, which is completely antithetical to how a plunger actually behaves.

Needless to say, I vastly prefer Zen's method, even if I find Farsight's product superior in almost every other facet of the actual pinball experience. It's just really frustrating to have to rely basically on luck for what should be at least a fairly consistent action with respect to a plunger.

 

[Zaphod77]

I can make the skillshot with mouse on PC reliably.you just pull it back to the exact spot and release.

but as i said, even missed skillshots are pretty darn safe. so i always try for it.

you can also help the ball in by nudging just as the ball start to drop off the ramp. this works in real life too.

Note that in real life simply pulling back and looking at the marker is NOT enough. you have to have a consistent release technique as well. this is what TPA (and hall of fame before it) tried to simulate. it is too difficult though.

 

[Mark Miwurdz]

Skill shot should be ignored. You want a strategy...? Ask me and I'll stream one for you. Another table I can play indefinitely.

 

[Dumahim]

How about you provide your reasoning here. I can’t see a reason why. Skill shot worth 2-5 each plunge, 1+ million per left ramp shot, then 5+ million for hitting swamp off of the left flipper.

 

[Mark Miwurdz]

Means nothing when you score 2-3 billion end of ball bonus by racking up mansion visits. My best is 5 billion. I can do a tour in just under 5 minutes.

http://i.imgur.com/bztHHck.jpg

 

[TomL]

Means nothing when you score 2-3 billion end of ball bonus by racking up mansion visits. My best is 5 billion. I can do a tour in just under 5 minutes.

http://i.imgur.com/bztHHck.jpg

Yowsers, I'm convinced. Do you soft plunge new balls and catch them from the Swamp kickout?

 

[Mark Miwurdz]

Yowsers, I'm convinced. Do you soft plunge new balls and catch them from the Swamp kickout?

Yes. It's zero risk.

 

[vikingerik]

Surprised nobody found this yet: On any release from the Thing saucer, leave the right flippers down, and you get a bounce to a catch on the left flipper 100%. Just like dropping past STTNG's upper flipper.

That answers what to do with a ball returning from the bear kick ramp after lighting the chair. Shoot the Thing ramp. Upthread it was suggested to shoot for the Bonus X shot into the combo sequence. Tarek mentioned elsewhere he just shoots the chair directly on the fly. Hold passing is another option. But I think the safest and best choice is the Thing ramp, on the fly. I hit that more consistently than any other option, and misses are also much safer up high on the playfield with time and space to recover. The Thing ramp doesn't do or score anything, but does yield a guaranteed catch on the left flipper to shoot the chair again.

It seems that on the high end, the big point of strategy is going to be the glitchy billion bonuses. Miwurdz mentioned that in another thread. I got it last night and paid attention to how it works. It happens when your mansion room total is between 200 and 255. 199 rooms is 99M bonus, but after that the millions digits always stay at 99, while each additional mansion room mostly (it's not quite consistent) increments the hundred-millions digit. So the bonus goes from 99M to 199M to 299M and so on up into multiple billions, and the max at 255 would be 5599M. The party ends at 256 mansion rooms, when the count rolls over back to 0.

The right way to exploit that strategically is to drain as many balls as you can in that window between 200 and 255 rooms. You can't do this forever since more EBs require collecting more mansion rooms which will eventually overflow the room count. But you would want to have 4 EBs stacked on getting to 200 rooms (or around 210 to let the glitch develop a bit into a billion), then allow some of them to bleed away to collect more instances of the glitchy bonus.

Of course, and unfortunately, as we know from Creature, TPA fails to recognize 10B rollovers caused by single massive scores. My game last night would have been 44B if all the glitchy bonuses counted, but registered on the leaderboard as 14B. Kind of funny how two wrongs sort of make a right as one bug undoes another. (But that's not really true, since you can lose credit for 8 billion legit points if the glitch kicks in and sabotages the rollover.) At best, you'll need to carefully manipulate the bonus multiplier to avoid an undetected rollover. At least the game shows you your entire bonus total in the status report so you can correctly gauge that.

 

[Slam23]

Excellent post, dealing with all those glitches is evolving into some sort of metagame for the big whales around here. I do wonder though if it could be fixed by Farsight. Or is it so thoroughly ROM-based that this is impossible?

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

I suspect the rollover detection might possibly be fixed, though it would be difficult. I mean say you build the Creature Super Jackpot to > 10B. It's not impossible, I've managed to get it to around 8B. How on earth do you build rollover detection to know that you've scored a 10.xB jackpot and not a 0.xB jackpot?

The ROM bugs are a no-no, that would be breach of contract, I think.

 

[Zaphod77]

Surprised nobody found this yet: On any release from the Thing saucer, leave the right flippers down, and you get a bounce to a catch on the left flipper 100%. Just like dropping past STTNG's upper flipper.

I thought i did mention that. i've known it since the beginning.

 

[Zaphod77]

You get lots of skill shots during a long game. they add up. and they are SAFE to attempt and make, which is rare in a lawlor table.

they also collect extra balls and T-H-I-N-G, as well as locks for the first multiball. and give you a chance to hit the train wreck, or the ramp, or dead bounce to lower left flipper to shoot the chair.

yeah i did say it.

 

[vikingerik]

But you just said it about a skill shot, not for any time you're in the Thing saucer.

Anyway, I got into bonus glitch zone again, and managed the rollovers correctly to put up 33B on the leaderboard this time. Took only 3 hours, two to accumulate the mansion rooms and one to cash in. I deliberately stopped going for rooms and EBs to pay precise attention to the bonus. I had 9B legit points before the glitchfest and the rest was essentially all ooky bonus.

One adjustment to the previous description: The status report does NOT show the correct bonus total that will actually be awarded! It erroneously includes an extra 1 billion (which is then multiplied.) Actually it adds 1 billion minus 10 million - so it looks like some factor that is supposed to go into the ten-millions digit instead goes into the billions digit. After taking into consideration this extra bug, it does seem that the fundamental glitch of 100M bonus per mansion room past 200 is consistent and predictable, so rollover management can be precisely planned from there. Just mentally subtract 1B times the multiplier from what the status report says for bonus, and then you know how far you can push the bonus X on each ball without going past 9.9B for a rollover that will be missed.

The glitch could be fixed by disassembling and patching the ROM, and the expertise does exist in the world (there's been homebrew ROM hacks for several machines for various reasons), but I rather doubt Farsight would care to try even if Williams agreed to let them.

 

[Paul Petrissans]

Nice write-up, really nothing much to add here! Couple of stray points:
- When dealing with return balls from the Bear ramp that feed the right flipper, I always do a flipper pass over to the left to get control or a good shot up the ramp or a bookcase hit. On iOS this gives different results depending on the speed of the ball, but all can be saved, even those that require somewhat of an alleypass back to the right.

Maybe its because I'm on iOS, but I can't see how you achieve a flipper pass in this situation, please elaborate? Is it like in White Water, where the left flipper is fed from the upper playfield and simply holding up the left flipper will feed the ball over to the right one?

 

[Slam23]

Maybe its because I'm on iOS, but I can't see how you achieve a flipper pass in this situation, please elaborate? Is it like in White Water, where the left flipper is fed from the upper playfield and simply holding up the left flipper will feed the ball over to the right one?

Yes, exactly! Now sometimes the ball doesn't have the right speed to make it and where you may make a tap pass in real life (and with the new 3.0 flipper physics in place, also now in TPA, although on iOS it's only yet tables from Xenon on up), here I would nudge or calmly make an alley pass back to the right inlane with the tip of the left flipper. With more recent insight I also would use a Bear ramp return to make a bonus X shot up the left orbit from the right flipper, not easy but with practice you can learn to judge that shot. An early miss is a bit risky but often controllable, if the ball goes into the bumpers, the risk gets a bit bigger. It's the key though to high scoring later on in the game when bonus gets very high with all those mansions as mentioned above.

Edit: and I only play iOS despite having season 1 on PC, so this applies to your platform too

 

[Annorax]

My new plan: wail on the Bookcase until GREED is spelled & the Vault opens, start It, Mamushka, or (preferably) both, then lock balls and start Multiball as quickly as possible. If the modes are still running when multiball starts, plant a ball in the bumpers & keep tossing the others into the Chair, Swamp, Thing, anywhere to stop the clock for a few seconds. 2+ minutes of Cousin It do things like this: