TX-Sector Strategy Guide When TX-Sector made an appearance at PAPA 13, it surprised many people, with its unusually good music and sound effects. Gottlieb games of this era were known for being rather cheap and mediocre. However, Gottlieb did spend a relatively substantial portion of their budget on their sound quality. Compared to other manufacturers, Gottlieb sound was rather crisp and clean. This might not have been the best business decision, though, because most players in noisy arcades would never get to appreciate this. Gottlieb games thus retained their mediocre reputation. Sales must have been poor, because their games of this era are quite uncommon. They remain unfamiliar to many players. I grew up near the Scandia arcade in Rohnert Park, CA, which had one of these unusual Gottlieb games on location: Robo-War. Like TX-Sector, it has very good sound, so I learned to appreciate these games. TX-Sector uses a clever gimmick: it invisibly "teleports" the ball from one area of the playfield to another. It accomplishes this by using staged balls. If you're unfamiliar with that pinball term, a staged ball is a special kind of ball lock (not part of the regular Multiball lock sequence) that holds the ball into a ready position, to be quickly released when needed by the game, without requiring the player to wait for the ball to be mechanically moved. A typical modern game only uses staged balls to speed up regular gameplay, but TX-Sector takes the idea to its extreme, making it the central focus of the game. A minimum of one ball is kept staged at all times. TX- Sector is a 3-ball game, but because of this, it only has a 2-ball Multiball. When the game is first powered on, it will release all 3 balls to the trough, in order to count them (due to a Gottlieb design limitation, there aren't enough trough switches, so the game must keep count in software). The first time the player enters any teleporter entrance, even if it is not lit, the game will lock the ball for staging. This doesn't count as a regular lock, and the player gets no award, but gets to hear the rare sound effect "Teleport sequence initialized". This should only happen during the very first game played, after the machine is turned on. After that, unless the game malfunctions (by fumbling the staging of a ball), there should never be more than 2 balls loose on the playfield. Typical to Gottlieb games of the era, there are almost no operator- adjustable difficulty settings. Most of the 32 DIP switches are used for coinage. There is only one setting that makes a difference, and that is the memorization of Energy Levels. It can be set to clear after the end of each ball, which makes the game substantially harder. Unfortunately, it does not address a major flaw in the game's rules: subsequent Multiballs are *easier* to get than the first Multiball. So, the game is very unforgiving to new players, but a good player can keep a ball going almost forever. By building Energy Levels back up during a good Multiball, the single-ball workload necessary to reach the next Multiball is dramatically reduced. Unlike other Gottlieb games, I have not encountered any major differences between 3-ball and 5-ball play, other than the fact that some scoring values are lowered for 5-ball play. FIXME: Verify this. Some Gottlieb games of the era are known for making lights toggle during 5-ball that are otherwise solidly lit during 3-ball, such as the carrier landing "jackpot" shot in Gold Wings. The plunger lane design is brilliant. The ball enters a ramp, and is lifted directly over to the top left flipper. Plunge gently, to deliver a slow feed that is easy to control. Do not plunge hard, because the ball can easily take a bad hop off the metal of the ramp exit. The player is given unlimited chances to make a soft plunge (some groups of players may wish to apply the Whitewater house rule here, to make sure games do not take too long). The right drain is unusual. There are three "Play More" posts down there, forming a triangle, that provide the opportunity to get the ball back into the plunger lane, for another shot. The player receives no points for this, but the opportunity to keep playing the ball is already an ample reward. The best way to extricate the ball from this area is to shake the game from left to right. Watch out for sudden tilt. Gottlieb games of this era have zero tilt warnings, and will suddenly tilt out. What's worse, in a multiplayer game they are very prone to also tilting out the next player's ball! This can get you disqualified from a tournament, so be very careful. Definitely sacrifice a ball or two during practice play, in order to feel out the machine and know its limits. The left drain is ordinary. Nothing to do there except listen to the cheesy 1980's computer voice say "Power drain". There are left and right kicking targets, just above each outlane entrance. They add additional speed and randomness to the game. Watch out, because similar to how the slingshots raise the ball slightly and aim it at the outlane, these kicking targets will lower the ball slightly and aim it at the outlane. There are basically two things to do in TX-Sector: build your Energy Level, and teleport for points. Your Energy Level begins at zero, and goes up to 10. At Energy Level 10, Lock is lit. This begins a two- ball Multiball, and lights Extra Ball (and possibly Special). At the start of this Multiball, your Energy Level is reset to zero again, but you can build it up during your Multiball. As mentioned above, this makes subsequent Multiballs much easier to achieve than the first Multiball. There are 3 shots on the game which can be lit for teleport: side ramp, left ramp, and a tunnel passage behind the side ramp. The left ramp is the easiest shot to make, but it is obstructed by a drop target that must be knocked down first. The tunnel passage is buried back in the rear, on the right side of the game, behind the side ramp. Despite its location, the tunnel passage is fairly easy to enter, as it can be reached from either a flipper shot or a lucky bounce from the jet bumpers. The side ramp, however, requires a clean flipper shot, and if you miss this ramp, it will most likely provide a dangerous feed into the left kicking target. The left ramp is easy to shoot, but its entrance is blocked by a drop target, which is unusually wide. It is easy to knock down, but the rebound from the target can be dangerous. This exposes the left ramp for a limited period of time. If there is a teleport available on the left ramp, a hurryup multiplier will be shown on the display. Nailing this can be worth big points. The game will give plenty of "Warning, warning, warning" just before the time expires. The game will then raise the drop target, announcing "Interlink disabled". There is no grace period, so the player will then receive no award, even if a ball was already on the ramp. Hitting the left ramp, when not lit for teleport, only awards a lousy 10K, and multipliers don't apply. Since the left ramp feeds the right dead-end lane, which is more dangerous than the left dead-end lane, this is not a wise use of a shot. The teleport shots tie into where the staged ball is currently staged at. Although it seems random at first, they are completely deterministic. After accomplishing a teleport, a good player should always know what teleport shots will next be lit. If the ball is staged on the right side, the side ramp will be lit for teleport. The left ramp will *not* light for teleport in this case. However, since the resulting Teleport Multiplier is good for any teleport, not just the left ramp, it can still be worth it to knock down the left ramp's drop target. If the ball is staged on the left side, however, the tunnel passage will be lit for teleport. The left ramp *will* be lit for teleport in this case, so go ahead and knock down that drop target. Whenever you're thinking about hitting the drop target to light the left ramp for teleport, first take a look at where the other teleport is: if it's the tunnel passage, you're good to go, but if it's the side ramp, it won't work. Don't bother teleporting early in the game. Since the point award is only 10K plus an additional 10K per lit Energy Level, your efforts are best spent building up Energy Levels. To score from teleporting, Energy Levels must be currently lit. Previously saved sets of 10 Energy Levels only count towards end-of-ball bonus, and don't count towards teleport points. So, at the start of Multiball, after your lit Energy Levels are saved and then cleared, try to build up some more Energy Levels. Depending on the speed of your game, though, you may want to play it safe and defensively park the balls into the bumpers or a teleport, so that they don't insta-drain at the start of your Multiball (something that is distressingly common on TX-Sector). There are 5 shots that increase Energy Level: left dead-end when lit, right dead-end when lit, left and right drop target banks (always available), and the rear target behind the bumpers (always available). The left and right dead-end shots alternate being lit. The game alternates the lights whenever they are hit, and also whenever a powered rebound activates (jet bumper, slingshot, or kicking target). This also applies to the Extra Ball and Special lights that are on the dead-end shots. If the operator has disabled Extra Ball and/or Special, the compensatory point value for each is a flat 500K, a pretty good award, making them worth shooting for. The left dead-end shot is a safer shot to aim for, as it cleanly feeds the upper left flipper, much like the "H" shot in Doctor Who. Because of the rear target that advances Energy Level, the bumper garden on this game can be huge. If you're good at keeping the ball in the bumpers, you can score multiple hits on this target, because the ball will often deflect into it. Since every hit advances your Energy Level, and it's always available, this can be the fastest way in the game to build your Energy Level. Plus, TX-Sector has some of the all-time best bumper sound effects of any game, especially when combined with the spinner sound effects. There are 2 center loop shots that enter the bumpers. The right shot has the greatest chance of hitting that rear target, as it is aimed more accurately at it, but the left shot also has a good chance of rebounding off the jets into it. There are 2 spinners, one at the entrance to each center loop shot. Each is lit by opposite inlane, for 10K per spin. Early in the game, these spinner points can be big, but later on, your time is best spent trying to farm teleports and keep your Energy Levels high. Also, keep in mind that Gottlieb spinners often don't spin as well as the Williams spinners you might be more accustomed to, so even though 10K per spin sounds huge, it isn't. FIXME: Check this. Is this really opposite inlane, or same? The 1X, 2X, 3X lights, near both 4-banks of drop targets, might look like bonus multipliers, but they are not. Instead, they tell you how many Energy Level advances you will earn, by completing the respective bank. Once lit at 3X, getting three Energy Levels by knocking down a bank of 4 drop targets provides good shot efficiency, especially if you are able to aim a shot so that the rebound from a drop target bank hits the targets in the other drop target bank. FIXME: Do these lights hold over from ball to ball? Both lights will always indicate the same value. Knocking down all 8 drop targets will increase that value. The lights tell you which target bank(s) you need in order to complete all 8: if the light by a 4-bank is flashing, it's telling you that knocking down that bank will make progress towards completing all 8. If the light by a 4-bank is steady, though, it means that you have already knocked down that bank. Completing a bank that is lit steady is still worthwhile, though, as it will award the lit value, even though it won't advance the value. Even though they provide ample opportunity to advance Energy Levels, the drop targets are generally to be avoided. The rebound from them can be risky. It's rarely necessary to deliberately shoot the drop targets, because they will be hit often enough by random rebounds from other missed shots. If only a single drop target is remaining in a bank, though, especially if the light is flashing for that bank, take a chance and shoot it. Once the lights reach 3X, completing all 8 drop targets apparently won't do anything more, but after doing this at least once, the next Multiball you start will also include a lit Special (in addition to the usual lit Extra Ball). Unless your machine is on coin play, trying to build up to this Special generally isn't worth it. FIXME: What causes the lights to reset from 3X to 1X? Draining a ball often times holds the value over. It might be like Blackout, and only reset once the player drains with the maximum value lit. The game keeps continuous count of how many Energy Levels you have obtained, including earlier sets of 10. It seems to increase without limit, and holds over from ball to ball, so end-of-ball bonus can be rather substantial. (Point to ponder: as with many video games of the era, it's an 8-bit computer, and the register might max out internally at 255. Is it possible to eventually roll over the bonus? I saw somebody do this on Robo-War, when the game was broken, having a jumpy switch, causing bonus to freely increase randomly throughout the game.) The point award for doing a teleport is a base value of 10K, plus an additional 10K for each lit Energy Level. So, if Lock is currently lit (Energy Level 10), the point award is 110K. This is multiplied by the current value of the "Teleport Multiplier" hurryup countdown, as indicated on the display. When the drop target blocking the left ramp is first knocked down, the Teleport Multiplier is initialized to 9X. The maximum possible award for doing a teleport is thus 990K. The Teleport Multiplier quickly counts down, though, resetting the drop target once it lowers all the way back down to 1X. This takes only about 15 seconds, so once you knock down the target, immediately shoot for a lit teleport (it doesn't necessarily have to be the exposed left ramp shot). The multiplier only lasts for a single teleport, and the drop target will be reset immediately afterwards. The drop target never needs to be qualified, so it's immediately available to be knocked down again. Experiment with the rebound from hitting the drop target, to see if you can get it under control to a flipper that can quickly shoot into a teleport. The ability to reliably collect teleports at 9X will do wonders for your score! End of ball bonus is simply 10K per Energy Level. No multiplier. If you drain early in your game, before you can collect a single Energy Level, you will be awarded a whopping bonus count of zero! Keep this in mind, and nudge aggressively early on, because you have nothing to lose if you tilt out. Achieving the Lock (Energy Level 10) is the highest point value teleport that is possible. After this is done, all lit energy levels will be collected as if they were bonus, giving you 100K and the pretty light show. They will then be cleared, so by the time you shoot the second ball to begin Multiball, your energy level will start over at 0. The 10 previous Energy Levels you had will still count towards your end of ball bonus (scoring 100K with a loud "static" sound effect), but they will no longer count towards any teleportation you do. So, when you are at a high Energy Level, try to farm some teleports with a high Teleport Multiplier, before completing the advance to Lock. If Lock is collected under Teleport Multiplier 9X, that's a total award of 990K! I believe this is the highest-scoring shot in the game. If you have the ball caught on a flipper, shooting for the left dead- end lane can be safer than the right dead-end lane. The left lane guarantees a return feed to the upper flipper, but the right lane has no such guarantee. On some machines, the right lane rebound can be quite dangerous, as it can graze the top of the right slingshot and bounce out of control (as with the TAF Swamp kickout). Doing teleports from the left ramp and tunnel passage will also "reintegrate" the ball to the right dead-end lane, so be careful with the feed out of there. Teleporting via the side ramp is safer, as it will reintegrate the ball into the left dead-end lane, feeding the upper flipper again (sometimes the ramp can be looped, on a machine that is extra generous, but this is unreliable). When you begin Multiball, the first thing you should do is check the dead-end lanes, for lit Extra Balls or Specials. If any were to light, they would do so at this time. In tournament settings, they are worth 500K each, so they are still worth shooting for. The game does not announce them or anything like that, it just quietly turns on their lights, so pay attention. The lights will alternate with the bumpers. Since Extra Ball and Special light so rarely, if their bulbs burn out, it will be hard to tell if they're lit. Before playing, watch the attract mode carefully, to see if the bulbs are working. If you're unsure, just shoot the lane blindly. This is a reasonable strategy in Multiball, since the other ball is probably bouncing around randomly, so it could help you by bouncing into a bumper and alternating the lights so that the lane becomes lit by the time the first ball hits it. Plus, taking the shot frees up the flippers, which will most likely be needed soon for saving that other ball that's randomly bouncing around. The "Shoot Again" lights are doubled-up on this game, for whatever reason. As is typical of Gottlieb games, they are hot pink, and flash in a rather distracting way when earned. If you already have Shoot Again lit, Extra Ball will not light. So, you can't stack more than one Extra Ball at a time. FIXME: Is this correct? The player might have the additional limitation of only having one Extra Ball per ball in play, not just one Extra Ball at a time. This might be an operator setting. In Multiball, watch out, if you relight the entire sequence of 10 Energy Levels, they will simply be reset to zero! There is no award for doing this. The 10 Energy Levels you had, though, will still be remembered by the game for your end-of-ball bonus count. To avoid losing your lit Energy Levels, it might be worth sacrificing a ball during Multiball, especially to avoid the risk of "double drain" during Multiball. FIXME: Verify they are still remembered for end-of- ball bonus. Having a single ball in play, under control, can often be more valuable than having two balls that are out of control. It's possible to get the best of both worlds in TX-Sector, though: in Multiball, if you are lucky enough to get a save via the right outlane, you can leave the ball parked on the plunger lane while you play the remaining ball. As in Firepower, this is among the best possible situations a player can get into, during the course of the game. Unlike modern Gottlieb games, TX-Sector does not penalize the player in any way for leaving the ball on the plunger switch, so it's like having a free Extra Ball. FIXME: Better also verify this. The most difficult thing in TX-Sector to do, is to get the music out of your head once you are done playing :) Additional Notes, 8/29/10 The left and right dead-end targets can be alternately lit for an Energy Level advance. Hitting the slingshots or kicking targets (but *not* the jet bumpers) will toggle which target is lit. Hitting a lit target will *not* cause the light to toggle away from it. So, it's possible to repeatedly hammer on a target, scoring many advances. I recommend feeling out both dead-end target shots, and the rebound feeds from each, at the start of your game. If you can find a rebound feed that's controllable, and repeatable, you're golden. It might be easiest to start with the left dead-end target, since the rebound from that will always feed the upper left flipper. That might lead you into thinking that the side ramp is a repeatable shot, as on Doctor Who. While it's certainly possible to loop the side ramp on TX- Sector, it's not worth it, because it awards very few points when not lit, and it's risky. If you go halfway up that ramp and miss, it's an almost sure feed to the left outlane area. It might be worth experimenting to see what the rebound feed from the left dead-end target lane is, when you don't use the upper left flipper at all, and let it roll back to the lower area of your game. If you don't get into too much trouble with the left slingshot, this might be a better alternative than trying to use the upper left flipper. Alternatively, evaluate the difficulty of shooting for the tunnel passage if it's lit, and also, try shooting for the left ramp drop target from the upper left flipper (the angle on this shot can be tough, but it's worth it, as the rebound will usually be easier to control than if you had taken the shot from a lower flipper). When in Multiball, immediately shoot for any lit Extra Ball and/or Special. As soon as your Multiball ends, these will be turned off, no grace period. Collect the awards as quickly as possible, to avoid losing them in the event of a bad Multiball. Other than that, there's no real objective to Multiball. There's no jackpot, or anything else that's not in the single-ball game. A good strategy, once you get control of both balls during Multiball, is to use one ball to knock down the left ramp drop target, then at the same time send the other ball towards a lit teleport. Once the drop target is knocked down, hopefully the other ball will be in position for you to immediately make the teleport shot. That will give you the best chance of collecting a teleport when the Teleport Multiplier is at 9X, which is only possible during the first few seconds after the drop target is knocked down (this time constraint makes it almost impossible to achieve during single-ball play). On easier operator settings, it's possible to light the Special as soon as the 3X advance is lit at both drop target banks. It might not be necessary to knock down both drop target banks again after lighting 3X. The game still resets the advance value of both drop target banks to 1X. This makes it rather unrewarding to shoot for the drop target banks, as all progress will be lost at end of ball. If you overdo your Energy Levels during Multiball, you will get the familiar sound and light show as they are collected, earning a total of 100K points. This is rather disappointing, because this consumes all of your Energy Levels, at a time when you would much rather have them still lit. FIXME: Is there any other award that the game gives, for doing this during Multiball? There are 2 spinners, and 2 inlanes. Each inlane will light the spinner on the opposite side of the game, for 10K per spin, when lit. If the spinners haven't been lit yet, there will always be one inlane lit at a time. The lit inlane is toggled back and forth whenever the slingshots or kicking targets (but *not* the jet bumpers) are hit. Hitting the lit inlane, in addition to lighting the spinner, will immediately move the light to the opposite inlane. The spinner will stay lit for a while, but after being hit by the player when lit, it will only stay lit for a short time more. FIXME: I'm pretty sure this is how it works, but I'm not sure of the exact timing of the spinner lights, or what happens when you try to light both spinners at once. Unlike most other Gottlieb games, I was unable to find any gameplay difference on TX-Sector between 3-ball and 5-ball play. If you own a TX-Sector, good for you, as I'm pretty sure there was a decent upward spike in the value of this game right after PAPA 13 :)