Quoted from chuckwurt:Both immediately validate the playfield so whatever the ball save is set to, hitting the kickback or the drops should start that timer immediately. Nothing extends that or pauses it to my knowledge. If it is longer from hitting the kickback, could be a bug.
On my LE, and I assume all other games, the timer does pause whenever animations that are queued up are played on the screen. This means that house callouts and animation do not pause the timer. Bumpers pause the timer when its rapid hit, but the lose that time when its falling down the orbit. But Lock and the Castle Multiball counter freeze the timer until they have had a chance to play, at which point it resumes. So Targaryen takes longer because the countdown for Castle Multiball has to show the stone rotating. So it freezes the timer until then. It is the same thing with the first ball lock on Tyrell shots. You can extend this quite a bit, if you can keep playing other video clips, as this will be queued up until all else is free. The best combo is to do Targaryen, particularly if you get the long shout out after shot 2, and then Tyrell for the ball locks, its about 10 seconds until the animation plays that resumes the timer.
I have been able to get Targaryen qualified (3 shots), Greyjoy qualified (3 shots), Baratheon (1 shot), and Tyrell (2 shots w/ ball lock) all during a ball save one time. So basically hit Targaryen off the plunge, and then keep hitting shots that queue slides, and then bring back Targaryen and keep going that way. It can extend it to be well over 30 seconds of ball save, so then you have no risk. If I am playing for the end game and know that I have to beat Targaryen, this is 100% the strategy to go with, as you can get a lot of risky shots out of the way with no risk of a quick ball end. Then once its over, I go to the safe shots, or pick off controlled shots.