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Star Trek: The Next Generation

Williams, 1993 — shot-by-shot rules and strategy guide.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation throws more at you than almost any machine of its era, but nearly all of it funnels through one system: warp factor. Advance it with the spinner and left ramp and you unlock a new toy at every step — bumper values, held multipliers, a countdown hurry-up, double spinner scoring, and a frantic bonus round at warp 9. Chase warp first and the rest — missions, multiball, ranks, artifacts — starts connecting.

The Picard Maneuver

If you learn one shot on this machine, make it this one. Rip the spinner shot on the left orbit, then follow through immediately to the left ramp before the ball settles — that's the Picard Maneuver, worth building real muscle memory around. It advances warp faster than either shot alone, awards a triple jackpot during multiball, and turns Q's Challenge into the highest-scoring mode in the game when you chain it over and over.

Warp Factor And Factor Nine

Every ball starts at Warp 1. Warp 2 is a throwaway 5M, but Warp 3 sets the bumpers to a million a pop, Warp 4 lights the spinner for real scoring, Warp 5 holds your bonus multiplier, Warp 6 unlocks Hurry Up and Super Spinner, Warp 7 doubles the spinner outright, and Warp 8 pays an extra ball the first time you see it. Reach Warp 9 and the game drops you into Factor Nine Mode — the spinner and left ramp push you through 9.1 onward to 9.9 in tenths, each paying more, on a clock that never pauses. A fresh ball resets you to Warp 1, and the left ramp no longer counts toward warp — only the spinner still does.

Seven Missions To The Final Frontier

Start Mission launches whatever's flashing; Command Decision, the small hole by the left ramp, lets you cherry-pick instead. Clear all seven and the eighth, Final Frontier, lights as the actual finish line of the game. Each plays completely differently:

Nearly every mission can hand you an Artifact too — hit enough of a specific shot and the game tells you. Collect full sets of all four types and Final Frontier pays in the billions: roughly 100M per Artifact just for starting, then every shot scales with how many you're carrying. Show up with none and each shot is a flat 10M instead, so stockpile a few first.

Three Ways The Neutral Zone Turns Ugly

Hit the Neutral Zone's three targets to arm it, then hit it again to pick your poison. Ferengi is the friendliest — it stacks up to four balls in play with jackpots at Start Mission worth 10M times however many balls are live. Cardassian is tighter: a 2-ball fight where the jackpot falls as your shields do, so rebuilding shields on the spinner matters as much as the jackpot shot itself. Romulan isn't a multiball at all — it's a race to cloak three ships, one each on the spinner, left ramp and right ramp, before their timers expire and relight them. None of the three are required for anything else, but Ferengi is worth grabbing just to pad time on the Warp and Time Rift shots you're already chasing.

Multiball, Holodeck, And The Rest

The real multiball is the Enterprise against the Borg — lock three balls through the right orbit and left ramp, work the loaded cannon into Start Mission before the third lock for a fatter base jackpot, then chase single, double and triple jackpots while working the spinner to hold your shields up. Let shields hit zero and the jackpot goes dark until raised again. Separately, Holodeck lights from repeated right ramp shots and offers a choice: a flat 25M, or Shuttle Simulation, a hard video mode steered on the flippers with an Artifact and an extra ball hidden in its later caverns. Watch for Advance Rank too — clearing the lanes above the bumpers lights it at Command Decision, and once you're Captain, a lit Advance Rank pays a flat 100M on the spot instead of waiting for bonus.

One more thing worth knowing: when Holodeck reads "Ready" for the third time, pulling the trigger instead of shooting drops you into a hidden Secret Mission, a short frenzy where every switch pays out. It won't win the game on its own, but it's a good reminder of how much this ruleset has buried in it.

How Star Trek: The Next Generation plays

Play the Enterprise through seven missions -- each one banking Artifacts worth real points -- to light the Final Frontier wizard. Climb warp factors on the spinner and left ramp and fight the Borg, Ferengi, Cardassians, and Romulans along the way.

The loop

  1. Start each ball by cycling the plunge to the choice you want -- a flipper tap speeds it -- then pull the gun trigger to launch.
  2. Rip the spinner and follow immediately with the left ramp, the Picard Maneuver, to climb warp factors and unlock a new award at each step.
  3. Pick a mission at Command Decision or start the flashing one at Start Mission, clear it, and pocket the Artifact it hands you.
  4. Load a swing-out cannon at a hole and fire it with the trigger to feed Start Mission and the Neutral Zone.
  5. Clear all seven missions to light Final Frontier, which pays out by your stockpiled Artifact count.

Reading the lights

  • Plunger Choice (status) — lit: Five choices cycle in the display before launch -- Start Mission, a Flipper Skill Shot, Launch Probe, a Light Lock, or Warp Factor 4 -- and only the one showing is what you get. · then: Take a lit Q's Challenge shot if one shows, since it is the game's richest single mode, and if not, Warp Factor 4 makes a reliable pick that turns on genuine spinner scoring early without burning a mission attempt. · control: Either flipper button: the choices scroll on their own, but tapping a flipper button runs them past faster so you can pull the gun trigger on the one you want (before you fire the launch)
  • Warp Factors (ladder) — lit: The spinner and the left ramp both climb warp from 1 to 9, and each factor turns on something new -- 5M, richer bumpers, live spinner payouts, a locked multiplier, then Hurry Up and Super Spinner at warp 6, a doubled spinner at warp 7, and an extra ball at warp 8. · then: Run the Picard Maneuver -- a hard spinner shot followed straight into the left ramp -- to climb fastest, since the ramp opens up right after a hard spinner rip. Reaching warp 9 launches Factor Nine mode, and afterward the left ramp drops out of warp scoring for the rest of the game, leaving the spinner as the only way up.
  • Mission Select (mode) — lit: Start Mission launches whatever mission is flashing, while the Command Decision sinkhole beside the left ramp instead lets you hand-pick which of the open missions starts next. · then: Finish every one of the seven missions and the eighth, Final Frontier, lights, and nearly every mission also drops an Artifact that scores 50M by itself and a great deal more at the end. You can re-collect the same Artifact, since the wizard pays a bonus for each full set of all four Artifact types in your stockpile.
  • Neutral Zone (mode) — lit: Hitting the three Neutral Zone targets sets them flashing, and hitting it again chooses one of the modes waiting there. · flashing: All three Neutral Zone lights flash once the targets are hit, meaning it is armed to select a mode. · then: Choose Ferengi to add up to four balls with jackpots at Start Mission, or Cardassian for a two-ball fight where the 50M jackpot drops as the Borg lower your shields. Rebuild shields on the spinner before committing to a Cardassian jackpot shot.
  • Swing-Out Cannons (status) — lit: A ball that lands in either slingshot cannon loads it automatically, and the mission clock stops dead the whole time a cannon sits loaded. · then: In Battle Simulation each cannon hit climbs a level worth ten million times its number, up to 100M and often an extra ball at level six. At the start of Borg Multiball, three trigger shots at Start Mission build up the base jackpot and score single, then double, then triple along the way. · control: Action button: the gun-trigger pistol grip fires the loaded cannon at Start Mission or the Neutral Zone, so you can take your time lining up the shot, but sit on a loaded cannon too long and the game launches it on its own and you lose the aim (whenever a cannon is loaded)
  • Enterprise vs. Borg Locks (shot arrows) — lit: Lock three balls at the right orbit and the left ramp, since either shot works toward the same locks, but the third lock has to come from the right orbit. · then: Chase jackpots at Start Mission as they roll from single to double to triple, and take the triple on the left ramp, which then kicks the ball back at you out of the Borg ship. Keep the shields up with a hard spinner shot, because if they hit zero the jackpot switches off until you build them back up.
  • 2x Shuttle Targets (multiplier) — lit: Clipping one red target beside the right ramp entrance doubles the next ramp shot, and clipping both quadruples it, for about a ten-second window. · then: Take the right ramp inside the window for the doubled or quadrupled value, and note the right ramp also feeds extra balls, lights Command Decision and Holodeck, and shares the Explosive Millions ramp ladder with the center ramp.
  • Bonus Multiplier Lanes (lanes) — lit: The three lanes above the bumpers build the end-of-ball bonus multiplier one full pass at a time, and a lit kickback target can spot one lane on its own. · then: Walk the multiplier up through 2x, 4x, 8x and on to 10x, and reaching 10x also lights an extra ball, after which each further pass pays a flat, climbing 10M instead. Completing the lanes also lights Advance Rank at Command Decision.
  • Q Target (status) — lit: The single Q standup below the bumpers advances whichever mode is currently lit, and adds a fresh lit shot during Q's Challenge. · then: During Q's Challenge, hit Q to pile on more lit shots -- each expires on its own short fuse -- and chain the Picard Maneuver through them, where shots climb from 10M to a 100M cap for the biggest single-mode scores on the machine.

Lane change: not verified for this machine yet.

Start scoring

  • Ball one — Cycle the plunge to Warp Factor 4 for early spinner money, or take a lit Q's Challenge shot if one shows -- the most lucrative mode on the machine. Then work the Picard Maneuver to climb warp and keep the kickback lit off the yellow side targets. — Plunger Choice, The Picard Maneuver, Climbing Warp Factors
  • Building — Pick missions at Command Decision and clear them for Artifacts, and load and fire the cannons in Battle Simulation for up to 100M a level. Lock three balls for the Enterprise vs. Borg multiball, building its base jackpot with the loaded cannon first. — Missions & Artifacts, Battle Simulation, Multiball: Enterprise vs. Borg
  • The big one — Clear all seven missions to light Final Frontier, a six-ball multiball that pays roughly 100M per Artifact just to start and about 25M times your Artifact count on every lit shot. Carrying one of every Artifact type at once is worth a billion by itself, and extra full sets stack on top, so bank a few Artifacts first. — Final Frontier, Missions & Artifacts

The Gun Trigger on Star Trek: The Next Generation

A pistol grip on the front right of the cabinet, in the shooter-rod position.

Instead of a rod you get a gun handle with a trigger. Pulling it launches your ball, and once either swing-out cannon on the slingshots has swallowed a ball, that same trigger is what fires it back into the playfield. Learning when to squeeze it is a real part of playing this game well.

Goals in Star Trek: The Next Generation

Every goal below is tracked step-by-step, with shot paths drawn on the playfield map, inside the app.

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