Table of the Week Club...Week 51: SPACE SHUTTLE

Blast off with this week's table, Space Shuttle. This was the table that saved Williams back in the day, so there's that. With the sheer amount of drains it has, no doubt it gobbled a lot of quarters.

This table is responsible for my love of pinball, it helps me understand anyone else who loves a machine from pure nostalgia

I just want to say how much I utterly despise the 7000 point spinner wizard goal. I have spent hours trying to get this, only occasionally reaching 5000 points per, maybe once or twice getting to 6000, but usually only 3000. I backhand from the right flipper to the lane hoping to knock down a drop target, but am only successful maybe 30% of the time. Mostly the ball cleanly hits the spinner and into the multiplier lanes. I just loathe having progress reset upon ball drains. This is why I hated City of Gold, and it's spilling over to this table now.

I'm not judging the table on the ease or difficulty of the wizard, but it certainly isn't helping things!

if I ever saw this table in the wild and the ball kept draining into the right outlane, id secetly keep kicking the left front leg of the table into submission until the table was level.

hehe just kidding. this would be a nice table for farsight to retune.

Haha Neglectoid I agree though this one could use some tuning love

Finally got that last damn wizard goal, I'm kicking this table to the curb now.

I don't hate the table at all. It falls into that category of pins like Pin*Bot though, where it takes so much work to get so little a score. There is no building on anything ball to ball, each ball is it's own scoring entity. I have a hard time enjoying that. So it's a fun table to bash around on for a quickie, but something I loathe come tournament time.

one of those i know i saw "live" way back when, alonside "black hole" and "centaur" and all that stuff... too cool a table to dismiss too easily. (those "williams" sound fx were just tooo *****in'!) i don't like to play it much cuz it busts my butt too easily... but i love trying and getting a let up on it! gotta love the theme; god bless our astronauts...

The key to this table and prolonged games is mastering the ricochet shot to the TLE targets into the drop targets from the left flipper. This either drops targets in the lane and returns to the left or right flipper, nudging required in about 10-20% imstances I would say, or shoot through the lanes toward the USA rollovers. Shooting the lane from the right is also useful but produces less dropped targets on average. This is especially dangerous with an open gate ("airlock") in the right outlane because when the ball leaves the bumper area, you want that gate closed. If played very controlled you can get 2 EB's per played ball, one from 7x bonus, and one from a completely lit 7K spinner. So in theory this table can be infinite. It's very hard to get those 2 EB's without draining in between though, the table let's you work very hard for those which is actually quite satisfying.
I'm currently at 24M for 13th place overall, up from my previous high of 17M. It feels like more is possible and that's exactly the lure of this table...

Slam23 said:

The key to this table and prolonged games is mastering the ricochet shot to the TLE targets into the drop targets from the left flipper. This either drops targets in the lane and returns to the left or right flipper, nudging required in about 10-20% imstances I would say, or shoot through the lanes toward the USA rollovers. Shooting the lane from the right is also useful but produces less dropped targets on average. This is especially dangerous with an open gate ("airlock") in the right outlane because when the ball leaves the bumper area, you want that gate closed. If played very controlled you can get 2 EB's per played ball, one from 7x bonus, and one from a completely lit 7K spinner. So in theory this table can be infinite. It's very hard to get those 2 EB's without draining in between though, the table let's you work very hard for those which is actually quite satisfying.
I'm currently at 24M for 13th place overall, up from my previous high of 17M. It feels like more is possible and that's exactly the lure of this table...

Click to expand...

Holy smokes, that's crazy sauce!

I remember this being in the arcade I worked at and having a super extended games (while working). Extra balls just seemed to come with ease, but I've never been able to reproduce that in TPA. Makes me wonder what the settings were like on that thing. Frustrated me that I had to walk away with so many balls left, but I couldn't ignore the people needing me to break dollars into quarters!

Airlock closed.....several milliseconds later....ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Slam23 said:

The key to this table and prolonged games is mastering the ricochet shot to the TLE targets into the drop targets from the left flipper. This either drops targets in the lane and returns to the left or right flipper, nudging required in about 10-20% imstances I would say, or shoot through the lanes toward the USA rollovers. Shooting the lane from the right is also useful but produces less dropped targets on average. This is especially dangerous with an open gate ("airlock") in the right outlane because when the ball leaves the bumper area, you want that gate closed. If played very controlled you can get 2 EB's per played ball, one from 7x bonus, and one from a completely lit 7K spinner. So in theory this table can be infinite. It's very hard to get those 2 EB's without draining in between though, the table let's you work very hard for those which is actually quite satisfying.
I'm currently at 24M for 13th place overall, up from my previous high of 17M. It feels like more is possible and that's exactly the lure of this table...

Click to expand...

Fantastic breakdown. Much easier said than done in TPA though. That greedy right outlane is making me grouchy, had to take a break

I have a growing suspicion that Farsight put something in this table's script along the lines of: "IF Airlock=closed AND ball=in bumper area THEN steer ball towards right outlane".
I've been thinking about how to deal with the situation in which you have the ball on your right flipper, all the drop targets are up and the right outlane is open. Shooting the drop target lane from the right flipper is dangerous, because you will not drop them all and the ball invariably goes to the rollovers and pop bumpers, increasing the right outlane drain risk. So getting the ball to the left flipper is the goal here. Post transfer is not easy and/or very safe (haven't used it much on this table yet). I'm gonna experiment with hitting the drop target at the ramp to see if this leads to a safe transfer to the left flipper.

I really love this table. but I rarely play it, see above.
@SYT speaking of wizard goals. I often wondered why shooting the middle drop target last (to spell shuttle) wasn't a goal. you do get a bonus is you accomplish it and its very tough to do.
I kinda like that this table has no progress from ball to ball (except the bonus hold). makes every ball count.

Started game, described the fact that I need to keep airlock open always, for 3m+ I keep airlock open.
This is a very dangerous table imo for tournament. I feel anything can happen so keep the ball alive and keep the airlock open!

Slam23 said:

The key to this table and prolonged games is mastering the ricochet shot to the TLE targets into the drop targets from the left flipper.

Click to expand...

This is absolutely correct. This is so so so important. This is how you enable that airlock gate without the risk of losing the ball from the bumpers into the outlane.

Although it doesn't really need mastering, the shot happens easily. It just takes the discipline to remember to do that instead of shooting up the lane instead or from the right flipper.

Two refinements to the tactic:

1. I seem to remember that that ricochet shot doesn't reliably hit the top drop target if it's the last one remaining. For that, I'll shoot it directly from the right flipper. If you're accurate, then that enables the airlock and it's OK if the ball continues up into the bumpers.

2. After hitting a target, the ball will often float or rattle around in the lane for a second or two before coming back down. If you're sharp, you can nudge the table to whack another target *into the ball* to get an extra hit. (And this is why I hate TPA's default nudge direction. Reverse nudge makes this correct to a real table and a million times more intuitive.)

Slam23 said:

If played very controlled you can get 2 EB's per played ball, one from 7x bonus, and one from a completely lit 7K spinner. So in theory this table can be infinite. It's very hard to get those 2 EB's without draining in between though, the table let's you work very hard for those which is actually quite satisfying.

Click to expand...

This is also absolutely correct. I can go infinite, but it takes long stretches of tight play, and it's very satisfying.

One big warning: the two lit EBs don't stack! If you light one, collect it before lighting the other! I even have to avoid completing U-S-A sometimes to make sure 7x bonus and 7k spinner don't occur at the same time.

I believe you guys when you say ricocheting the TLE targets to get the drops is key, but I'll be damned if I can find the sweet spot. Instead, my trying resulted in more drains than anything! I will mention it's possible to sweep all 3 drops from the right flipper, but it's really rare. I did it twice in a row one time and thought I'd cracked this nut, but nope. High score is still only 4+ million, not even enough to bump the preset high.

shutyertrap said:

I believe you guys when you say ricocheting the TLE targets to get the drops is key, but I'll be damned if I can find the sweet spot. Instead, my trying resulted in more drains than anything! I will mention it's possible to sweep all 3 drops from the right flipper, but it's really rare. I did it twice in a row one time and thought I'd cracked this nut, but nope. High score is still only 4+ million, not even enough to bump the preset high.

Click to expand...

Same for me. I would say it's safer to shoot from the right only...

Well, it worked for me, what can I say? I will add that it is a bit more complex than just hitting any target. I find that I try to hit the L the most because this will return the ball often to the left flipper. But it also matters which targets are still up or down. So results may vary I guess and by playing a lot I just developed a feel for the angles. It took me quite some time to break the 10M barrier consistently though.

Edit: got 11th place with 27M game!