Table of the Week Club...Week 52: TAXI

This week we shall be playing the the very popular table Uber. This table featured flexible pricing depending on demand. What's that? I've got that all wrong? Okay fine, Taxi it is! This is the precursor machine to Diner, with very similar elements, while having a completely different layout and theme.

This is our 4th and final table for February. It also is our 52nd table played, which makes a years worth of machines played even though it took us longer! Here's a reminder of the 4 tables being played this coming Saturday, the 27th...

Starship Troopers
Cactus Canyon
Space Shuttle
Taxi

Make sure to sign up starting this Wednesday for the start of an abbreviated season.

The skill shot may still need working on.

Yeah, a full pull skill shot should cycle past the 100k with ease. In TPA a full pull lands you right on it 9 times out of 10.

That crossover wizard goal is a real treat. Finally beat it when the ball was shot into the Drac kicker and as it launched I shot the right ramp from the left flipper. The instructions FarSight wrote up, I just don't see how it's possible. If you trap a ball on each flipper and then shoot them at the same time, they collide with each other!

shutyertrap said:

If you trap a ball on each flipper and then shoot them at the same time, they collide with each other!

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Wait, what? You know they're separate tracks right? One goes over the other, you know this right?

Getting them to the tracks though, as soon as you flip both ball they collide with each other, never making it to the ramps. Or at least that's what kept happening to me.

One after the other will suffice, there's a small window. Their instructions taken literally can lead to confusion like that, I thought at one time Gottliebs drop targets if shot out of order reset the progress.

That's not how you do it. Not the exact same time. First shoot Drac from the right, then a half-second later the right ramp from the left. It takes a half-second for the ball to enter and eject from Drac, so they'll cross over up top at the same time.

The crossover bonus is fun, but not worth doing in actual gameplay. The 250k is tempting, but the problem is you can't control or make shots with both balls when they come back down at the same time. Stagger shots with the two balls instead for the 100k airport loops. Like Scared Stiff.

Actually, I found it best not to lock the balls for the express lane at all. 1) not doing that means the right saucer stays enabled to lock a ball for ~10 seconds and keep it out of the way. 2) enabling the 100k airport loops means the shots no longer count towards lighting the airport million. So you actually get less per shot at 100k without the million advancement.

Hello Pinball-Fans,

I want to take part at the competition on saturday. I don`t have "Starship Troopers" in my collection. The rest is existing. I guess I´m missing about 10 tables out of the whole TPA. Cu on saturday. Just for fun! I guess, I´m having no chance against pinballwiz45b

shutyertrap said:

Getting them to the tracks though, as soon as you flip both ball they collide with each other, never making it to the ramps. Or at least that's what kept happening to me.

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Ahhhh. I get ya now. Yeah, I do it by shooting one right after the other.

Axlsgolden said:

Hello Pinball-Fans,

I want to take part at the competition on saturday. I don`t have "Starship Troopers" in my collection. The rest is existing. I guess I´m missing about 10 tables out of the whole TPA. Cu on saturday. Just for fun! I guess, I´m having no chance against pinballwiz45b

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That's fine if you don't have all the tables. You just won't get any points for it is all. And it is possible to beat Pinballwiz45b or any of these top tier guys, you just have to hope they have a really bad 2 games!

Nice intro.....really its just millions over and over right?

JustinCamp said:

Nice intro.....really its just millions over and over right?

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I try to make the intros somewhat entertaining. Thanks for noticing.

i only recently made my best (i think) at taxi - 6.5 or so mil! and frankly i felt proud for that... it's a TOUGH BOARD! gotta -really- keep trigger-happy at the nudge-control to keep it out of the outlanes... NASTY TABLE! but i LOVE IT! i know it was at the student union when i first got to campus; don't think i ever played it much, but it was a memorable one. gotta conquor 'diner' too; it's even nastier!

Oh man, I'm on a ToTW roll for sure! Aside from Star Ship Troopers which I still don't get, I nearly doubled my Space Shuttle score and now reached 97M on Taxi for 4th place on the leaderboards! My previous best was 54M so I nearly doubled that too. I had the luck of scoring the special while playing with two balls (only draining one), so that netted me an extra extra ball so to speak.

The main strategy I used was essentially always working towards a lock for MB by shooting for lit Passengers. Then activating MB with a left ramp and as soon as possible park one ball back into the lock and with the other build up towards the Million shot (or CAB rollovers if I was close to an extra ball). Don't go for the Express Lane (that's shooting Drac after locking the first ball, shot "2" in MB) because you will get locked out of the Million shot as Viking already pointed out above. It's very fun trying to control both balls in play and I had my share of cool moments in that 97M game but in the end a double-drain is a real risk so I always try to control one ball and keep that safe. The choke point in this strategy is when you only can shoot for Pin-Bot to lock. This happens if you collect Jackpot and the passengers light in a different order and one-by-one. I tend to go for the Jackpot anyway because it's good points especially over a long game and with only Pin-Bot lit I just go for the Million and hope that the Joyride will pick "spot passenger". I felt comfortable enough with the ramp shots and Million shot to wait for Pin-Bot to be spotted. That took a while in some cases, and I now can say for sure that I never got an extra ball or special directly from Joyride in this game or any other Taxi game I played. I must have activated it more than 50 times in this game alone and in 95% of the time it gave out 10.000 or Mystery Shot (which can top out at 200.000 which is no chump change). I did get 4 EB's from CAB rollovers and that was quite some work (I think I had to light CAB 7 times for that last one). I don't know if more is possible, I didn't get to find out. I more or less concentrated on scoring the Million shot at the end of the game, not trusting the risk/reward ratio for that 5th EB. But I'm real happy with the result!

I was feeling good about my 27 mil game until Slam posted...

Sorry about that.... I know the feeling though: new table comes out, I post a very decent score that took me three hours to get, I briefly take the #1 position and then Tarek comes along and triples my score....

Slam23 said:

Sorry about that.... I know the feeling though: new table comes out, I post a very decent score that took me three hours to get, I briefly take the #1 position and then Tarek comes along and triples my score....

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(mimicks the titanic's captain exclaiming) "3 HOURS?!?"

heh! you should drop the mic, sir... you've earned it!!

Fungi said:

Ahhhh. I get ya now. Yeah, I do it by shooting one right after the other.

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Hey man, if you wanna talk about Cactus Canyon showdown, that's in another thread. Jk. "You couldn't shoot the broad side of a burrito"

Slam23 said:

Sorry about that.... I know the feeling though: new table comes out, I post a very decent score that took me three hours to get, I briefly take the #1 position and then Tarek comes along and triples my score....

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Funny, I feel pretty good about myself if I get more than 20% of Tarek's first-week score...

Example: I have 510M on Hurricane (was #3 when I made it, already down to #5), Tarek has 2587M. I suppose I need to give Hurry another run, but I'll be playing it in the tournament in twelve hours. What to do?!