Adam analyzes...
ST:TNG is an interesting game, but flawed. It has tons to do but suffers from a number of scoring exploits that make it not tournament worthy. There are lots of things to like about it but when it comes to playing for just score there are lots of things not to like. First and foremost, let talk about the modes. The game has 7 modes which are started by the center scoop shot and you don’t have to do anything to qualify a mode because it will always be lit.
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Asteroid Threat
Center scoop is lit for a 20 million count down hurry up, when hit, it then lights all shots at the value it stopped at. It will countdown to 5 million and which point it will then just light all remaining shots. I think you need to destroy 4 – 5 asteroids in order to collect an artifact which I will talk more about later.
Rescue
This is a switch frenzy mode where each one adds a crew member to the shuttle. Shooting the center or right ramp will rescue the current people on the shuttle, you need to get 50 people on the shuttle and then shoot either the center or right ramp to complete the mode. But you will get an artifact after about 30 people have been rescued. You can also shoot the center scoop to transport 5 crew members and get 10 million.
Q’s Challenge
This is an important mode and it is the only mode that will stack with multiball. At the start of the mode there are 3 lit shots with a base value of 10 million, for every shot you make you add 10 million to the next shot. I don’t think there is a maximum value or if there is I’ve never seen it. So as long as you can keep making shots you can keep adding value. The mode will never time out as long as you keep making shots and as long as there is still one lit shot going the mode will continue. You can add lit shots onto the playfield by hitting the Q’s standup target on the right hand side of the scoop. This is a great mode to stack in with MB as it will help you to continually make shots and raise the value of the mode, plus you can risk going after that Q’s standup since you have extra balls in play. I think you get the artifact after the 4th or 5th shot.
Battle Simulation
This is a fun mode for the casual player and death for the competitive player. No competitive player will ever play this mode out. The game loads the cannon, starting with the right cannon to make a shot to the neutral zone.
If you make the shot in the hole it will then load the left canon to make a shot into the center scoop. If you don’t miss you just keep alternating back and forth but as soon as you do you have to plug the ball back into any hole that takes it into the subway (center scoop, right orbit, advance rank hole or neutral zone) to reload the cannon. The points are nowhere near worth the risk as missing usually means you end up draining and you need to make 5 shots in order to get an artifact.
Search the Galaxy
This is another cool mode that wants you to search each quadrant, Alpha (Center Ramp), Beta (Right Ramp), Delta (Warp Ramp).
At the start of the mode you will hear Riker call out, “Search the Alpha quadrant” meaning he wants you to shoot the center ramp. After that shot is made he will call out “Search the Beta quadrant” meaning shoot the right ramp and then he will say “Search the Delta Quardrant” meaning shoot the warp ramp. You can hit these 3 shots in any order to get a single artifact, but if you hit them in the order Riker call’s them out, a 4th shot will light at the neutral zone to collect a second artifact as a reward for doing the shots in the correct order.
Worm Hole
Simple mode, the right ramp and left loop add 5 million to the value of the warp ramp when made and hitting it will collect the artifact.
Time Rift
This mode all shots are lit for a starting value of 10 million with a 30 second timer but you can hit the standup targets on the right of the left loop to add 10 million to each shot and reset the timer. You can do this 3 times for a value of 40 million a shot (or maybe 30 million I can’t remember) for the duration of the timer. Hitting a certain number of shots, I think somewhere are 7 or 8 will give you an artifact.
So I keep mentioning these artifacts which you collect at the end of modes, well what do they do? I’ll tell you but here comes a SPOILER ALERT!
All of these modes and artifacts are for working toward the Final Frontier. There are 4 artifacts:
1. Dilithium Crystal
2. Isolinear Chip
3. Diranium Sphere
4. Singing Stone.
Where you enter the Final Frontier you will get 1 billion points per each set of 4 artifacts. So if you have 8 artifacts that will be 2 sets and you will get 2 billion points just for starting the mode. Then you get a 6 ball multiball where all shots are lit that are worth 25 million x the number of artifacts you have collected to a max value of 250 million a shot! So basically just an insane number of points available in the Final Frontier. You play the mode until you are back to single ball play and you start back all over again but still keep the artifacts you have collected.
If you want to see the Final Frontier, I made a you tube video a long time ago:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OH-DptbfDvM[/youtube]
Now the main scoring exploit in ST:TNG is the Final Frontier because what happens is most tournament players will start modes, collect a set of artifacts and then time out the rest of the modes to make it to Final Frontier. Since there are just so many points available in the Final Frontier and you keep your artifacts. Once you have a full set there is never a reason to play a mode again as you can just keep starting and timing out modes to keep getting back to Final Frontier for that huge payout. It’s boring to watch, boring to play and is one of the reasons why you’ll never see it in a tournament. But there is still allot more to ST:TNG then just the modes.
Let’s talk the main multiball but before let me take a quick detour and talk about the “Skill Shot” at the start of a ball you get 4 choices on plunge.
1. Start a Mode
2. Launch a Probe
3. Skill shot
4. Light Lock
The only choices you will ever make are to either Start a Mode or Lock a ball. If you are picking the other options it’s because you accidentley missed picking one of the proper ones
Launch a probe feeds a ball into one of the cannons and you have to hit a lit shot to get the award which is something stupidly small like 10 million considering what the game is asking you to do.
The other skill shot feeds the left flipper to make a shot at the right ramp for some award like light kickback or some other thing, again not as valuable as starting a mode or locking a ball.
So with that out of the way, multiball starts the usual way once you lock 3 balls it starts. You can lock 2 balls off the plunge, then the “Skill Shot” will switch over to light video mode or 25 million. You can light lock by shooting the right orbit and then shooting the right orbit again to lock the ball.
There is also a much cooler lock on the warp ramp but it will usually only light if you have less the 2 balls already locked. When you lock a ball this way it stays in the Borg ship and is fired at you for the start of multiball which is a neat little feature most people never see.
There is a base value of 25 million for the jackpots in the multiball that gets built up via the pop bumpers in the upper right.
When the multiball starts the ball will be fed into the left cannon to make the center scoop. If you make the center scoop, you can 2x or 3 x the base value of the jackpot. So if you if you hit the shot the first time you get the base value. Hit it a second time and now the value is 2x, hit it a 3rd time and the value is 3x and normal multiball begins. Now during multiball the same center scoop is lit again for jackpots multiplied by the base value for your cannon shots and then multiplied again for 1x, 2 x and 3x for the super jackpot on the third hit. You can also collect a super jackpot at any time by hitting the warp ramp and getting the ball into the borg ship. There are lots of points in multiball if you can make the cannon shots and it really never gets any harder to start so it’s a good thing to go after.
Now lets move on to the warp ramp, pretty cool little feature that can be worth tons of points. The object of the warp ramp is to get to warp 9, which then starts warp mode where you try to get to warp 9.9. Each warp level gives you an award of some kind, those being:
Warp 2 – 5 million
Warp 3 – Super Jets
Warp 4 – Spinner is lit
Warp 5 – Multiplier is held
Warp 6 – Return lanes (Hurry up on the left inlane and spinner millions on the right)
Warp 7 – Double spinner
Warp 8 – Extra ball or artifact
Warp 9 – Start Warp 9 mode
The warp mode is a lot of fun and just a good hurry up mode where you have 10 seconds to make the warp shot for a base value of 20 million, plus 5 million for every shot made and you get 60 million for 9.9. The main points on the warp are in the spinner, once the in lanes are lit and you get spinner millions and double spinner on warp 7 you really start to rack up a TON of points if you can keep it going. It’s a great flowing shot, shooting the left loop to warp ramp, to right flipper to shoot the left loop again, all very satisfying.
Next feature to talk about would be the neutral zone, when you compete the 3 inserts for the neutral zone, it will then light the neutral zone for an award. There are 3 and they are:
Ferengi Multiball
An add a ball that starts out initially as a 2 ball multiball to a maximum of 4 balls. You need to hit the neutral zone within a certain time frame to add balls in with jackpots being lit on the center scoop. The jackpot will be worth 10million x the number of balls in play. So minimum of 20 million and maxiumum of 40 million.
Cardasion Multiball
This is kind of a crappy 2 ball multiball where hitting the neutral zone will award the jackpot, shoot the standup targets on the right hand side raises the value.
Romulan Mode
This is the worst of the 3 neutral zone modes. There are 3 shots lit that correspond to each Romulan on the screen and you need to make all 3 romulans disappear by hitting each shot before they reappear. You can make them not re-appear by hitting the standups that light kickback to put a Klingon in the place of the disappeared Romulan. You get some paltry amount of points nothing even worth mentioning.
The last and final thing to talk about is what I consider to be the biggest exploit in this game, the video mode. The video mode can be lit off the skill shot plunge after you lock 2 balls or can be lit by hitting X number of right ramp shots. I forget the actual number but it’s not allot and it’s not a lot to keep lighting it. Especially since you can hit the right and left stand ups on the right ramp to add extra shots to advance the right ramp.
There is a pattern for the video mode and people ask me for it all the time but I honestly don’t know it and just do it from muscle memory. For the purpose of this analysis I checked the ST:TNG rule sheet and it gave me: L-L-R-R-L-L-R-L-L-L- (L= Left, R= Right)
The video mode when completed to the end is worth 209 Million! (159 million for the video mode + 50 million for the artifact at the end) it’s an insane amount of points given that it is 100% zero risk. It’s not uncommon that players will do nothing but shoot right ramp all day as it’s usually pretty easy to pass the ball from the right flipper to the left on the return feed and you get millions for shooting the ramps over and over again (10 million – 20 million etc to a max of 50 million a shot) So not only are you getting potentially 50 million a shot and working toward your free 209 million of video mode, it is also started on the right orbit so you are also light locks and locking balls for multiball. So the overall value compared to everything else the game offers is just insane.
At the end of the day ST:TNG has a lot to do as you can tell by the WALL of text in front of you but the scoring exploits really ruin what could be an awesomely balanced game. Really to it I’d say all you would need to do would be remove video mode, take the No Fear approach and stop timers if you try and time modes out and clear artifacts at the end of the final frontier. But ST:TNG is a lot of pinball for the casual player if you just want to play the game for what it has to offer.
ST:TNG is an interesting game, but flawed. It has tons to do but suffers from a number of scoring exploits that make it not tournament worthy. There are lots of things to like about it but when it comes to playing for just score there are lots of things not to like. First and foremost, let talk about the modes. The game has 7 modes which are started by the center scoop shot and you don’t have to do anything to qualify a mode because it will always be lit.
Asteroid Threat
Center scoop is lit for a 20 million count down hurry up, when hit, it then lights all shots at the value it stopped at. It will countdown to 5 million and which point it will then just light all remaining shots. I think you need to destroy 4 – 5 asteroids in order to collect an artifact which I will talk more about later.
Rescue
This is a switch frenzy mode where each one adds a crew member to the shuttle. Shooting the center or right ramp will rescue the current people on the shuttle, you need to get 50 people on the shuttle and then shoot either the center or right ramp to complete the mode. But you will get an artifact after about 30 people have been rescued. You can also shoot the center scoop to transport 5 crew members and get 10 million.
Q’s Challenge
This is an important mode and it is the only mode that will stack with multiball. At the start of the mode there are 3 lit shots with a base value of 10 million, for every shot you make you add 10 million to the next shot. I don’t think there is a maximum value or if there is I’ve never seen it. So as long as you can keep making shots you can keep adding value. The mode will never time out as long as you keep making shots and as long as there is still one lit shot going the mode will continue. You can add lit shots onto the playfield by hitting the Q’s standup target on the right hand side of the scoop. This is a great mode to stack in with MB as it will help you to continually make shots and raise the value of the mode, plus you can risk going after that Q’s standup since you have extra balls in play. I think you get the artifact after the 4th or 5th shot.
Battle Simulation
This is a fun mode for the casual player and death for the competitive player. No competitive player will ever play this mode out. The game loads the cannon, starting with the right cannon to make a shot to the neutral zone.
If you make the shot in the hole it will then load the left canon to make a shot into the center scoop. If you don’t miss you just keep alternating back and forth but as soon as you do you have to plug the ball back into any hole that takes it into the subway (center scoop, right orbit, advance rank hole or neutral zone) to reload the cannon. The points are nowhere near worth the risk as missing usually means you end up draining and you need to make 5 shots in order to get an artifact.
Search the Galaxy
This is another cool mode that wants you to search each quadrant, Alpha (Center Ramp), Beta (Right Ramp), Delta (Warp Ramp).
At the start of the mode you will hear Riker call out, “Search the Alpha quadrant” meaning he wants you to shoot the center ramp. After that shot is made he will call out “Search the Beta quadrant” meaning shoot the right ramp and then he will say “Search the Delta Quardrant” meaning shoot the warp ramp. You can hit these 3 shots in any order to get a single artifact, but if you hit them in the order Riker call’s them out, a 4th shot will light at the neutral zone to collect a second artifact as a reward for doing the shots in the correct order.
Worm Hole
Simple mode, the right ramp and left loop add 5 million to the value of the warp ramp when made and hitting it will collect the artifact.
Time Rift
This mode all shots are lit for a starting value of 10 million with a 30 second timer but you can hit the standup targets on the right of the left loop to add 10 million to each shot and reset the timer. You can do this 3 times for a value of 40 million a shot (or maybe 30 million I can’t remember) for the duration of the timer. Hitting a certain number of shots, I think somewhere are 7 or 8 will give you an artifact.
So I keep mentioning these artifacts which you collect at the end of modes, well what do they do? I’ll tell you but here comes a SPOILER ALERT!
All of these modes and artifacts are for working toward the Final Frontier. There are 4 artifacts:
1. Dilithium Crystal
2. Isolinear Chip
3. Diranium Sphere
4. Singing Stone.
Where you enter the Final Frontier you will get 1 billion points per each set of 4 artifacts. So if you have 8 artifacts that will be 2 sets and you will get 2 billion points just for starting the mode. Then you get a 6 ball multiball where all shots are lit that are worth 25 million x the number of artifacts you have collected to a max value of 250 million a shot! So basically just an insane number of points available in the Final Frontier. You play the mode until you are back to single ball play and you start back all over again but still keep the artifacts you have collected.
If you want to see the Final Frontier, I made a you tube video a long time ago:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OH-DptbfDvM[/youtube]
Now the main scoring exploit in ST:TNG is the Final Frontier because what happens is most tournament players will start modes, collect a set of artifacts and then time out the rest of the modes to make it to Final Frontier. Since there are just so many points available in the Final Frontier and you keep your artifacts. Once you have a full set there is never a reason to play a mode again as you can just keep starting and timing out modes to keep getting back to Final Frontier for that huge payout. It’s boring to watch, boring to play and is one of the reasons why you’ll never see it in a tournament. But there is still allot more to ST:TNG then just the modes.
Let’s talk the main multiball but before let me take a quick detour and talk about the “Skill Shot” at the start of a ball you get 4 choices on plunge.
1. Start a Mode
2. Launch a Probe
3. Skill shot
4. Light Lock
The only choices you will ever make are to either Start a Mode or Lock a ball. If you are picking the other options it’s because you accidentley missed picking one of the proper ones
Launch a probe feeds a ball into one of the cannons and you have to hit a lit shot to get the award which is something stupidly small like 10 million considering what the game is asking you to do.
The other skill shot feeds the left flipper to make a shot at the right ramp for some award like light kickback or some other thing, again not as valuable as starting a mode or locking a ball.
So with that out of the way, multiball starts the usual way once you lock 3 balls it starts. You can lock 2 balls off the plunge, then the “Skill Shot” will switch over to light video mode or 25 million. You can light lock by shooting the right orbit and then shooting the right orbit again to lock the ball.
There is also a much cooler lock on the warp ramp but it will usually only light if you have less the 2 balls already locked. When you lock a ball this way it stays in the Borg ship and is fired at you for the start of multiball which is a neat little feature most people never see.
There is a base value of 25 million for the jackpots in the multiball that gets built up via the pop bumpers in the upper right.
When the multiball starts the ball will be fed into the left cannon to make the center scoop. If you make the center scoop, you can 2x or 3 x the base value of the jackpot. So if you if you hit the shot the first time you get the base value. Hit it a second time and now the value is 2x, hit it a 3rd time and the value is 3x and normal multiball begins. Now during multiball the same center scoop is lit again for jackpots multiplied by the base value for your cannon shots and then multiplied again for 1x, 2 x and 3x for the super jackpot on the third hit. You can also collect a super jackpot at any time by hitting the warp ramp and getting the ball into the borg ship. There are lots of points in multiball if you can make the cannon shots and it really never gets any harder to start so it’s a good thing to go after.
Now lets move on to the warp ramp, pretty cool little feature that can be worth tons of points. The object of the warp ramp is to get to warp 9, which then starts warp mode where you try to get to warp 9.9. Each warp level gives you an award of some kind, those being:
Warp 2 – 5 million
Warp 3 – Super Jets
Warp 4 – Spinner is lit
Warp 5 – Multiplier is held
Warp 6 – Return lanes (Hurry up on the left inlane and spinner millions on the right)
Warp 7 – Double spinner
Warp 8 – Extra ball or artifact
Warp 9 – Start Warp 9 mode
The warp mode is a lot of fun and just a good hurry up mode where you have 10 seconds to make the warp shot for a base value of 20 million, plus 5 million for every shot made and you get 60 million for 9.9. The main points on the warp are in the spinner, once the in lanes are lit and you get spinner millions and double spinner on warp 7 you really start to rack up a TON of points if you can keep it going. It’s a great flowing shot, shooting the left loop to warp ramp, to right flipper to shoot the left loop again, all very satisfying.
Next feature to talk about would be the neutral zone, when you compete the 3 inserts for the neutral zone, it will then light the neutral zone for an award. There are 3 and they are:
Ferengi Multiball
An add a ball that starts out initially as a 2 ball multiball to a maximum of 4 balls. You need to hit the neutral zone within a certain time frame to add balls in with jackpots being lit on the center scoop. The jackpot will be worth 10million x the number of balls in play. So minimum of 20 million and maxiumum of 40 million.
Cardasion Multiball
This is kind of a crappy 2 ball multiball where hitting the neutral zone will award the jackpot, shoot the standup targets on the right hand side raises the value.
Romulan Mode
This is the worst of the 3 neutral zone modes. There are 3 shots lit that correspond to each Romulan on the screen and you need to make all 3 romulans disappear by hitting each shot before they reappear. You can make them not re-appear by hitting the standups that light kickback to put a Klingon in the place of the disappeared Romulan. You get some paltry amount of points nothing even worth mentioning.
The last and final thing to talk about is what I consider to be the biggest exploit in this game, the video mode. The video mode can be lit off the skill shot plunge after you lock 2 balls or can be lit by hitting X number of right ramp shots. I forget the actual number but it’s not allot and it’s not a lot to keep lighting it. Especially since you can hit the right and left stand ups on the right ramp to add extra shots to advance the right ramp.
There is a pattern for the video mode and people ask me for it all the time but I honestly don’t know it and just do it from muscle memory. For the purpose of this analysis I checked the ST:TNG rule sheet and it gave me: L-L-R-R-L-L-R-L-L-L- (L= Left, R= Right)
The video mode when completed to the end is worth 209 Million! (159 million for the video mode + 50 million for the artifact at the end) it’s an insane amount of points given that it is 100% zero risk. It’s not uncommon that players will do nothing but shoot right ramp all day as it’s usually pretty easy to pass the ball from the right flipper to the left on the return feed and you get millions for shooting the ramps over and over again (10 million – 20 million etc to a max of 50 million a shot) So not only are you getting potentially 50 million a shot and working toward your free 209 million of video mode, it is also started on the right orbit so you are also light locks and locking balls for multiball. So the overall value compared to everything else the game offers is just insane.
At the end of the day ST:TNG has a lot to do as you can tell by the WALL of text in front of you but the scoring exploits really ruin what could be an awesomely balanced game. Really to it I’d say all you would need to do would be remove video mode, take the No Fear approach and stop timers if you try and time modes out and clear artifacts at the end of the final frontier. But ST:TNG is a lot of pinball for the casual player if you just want to play the game for what it has to offer.
