Hmm, I'm with LesManley right now, not liking modes finishing so simply. I had previously set options forcing players to completely finish modes (and liked that they would time out and have to be restarted to finish finishing them). Can't find the option to adjust any of this anymore. Only seeing the chaining setting. Any suggestions?

Also not liking the new train sound added to the right loop and right ramp, gets tiresome fast. And I used to be able to adjust audio more intuitively. But, other things are looking good, need more time with it.

I pad the posts with bigger rubbers to make the gap just a hair open enough for the ball to fit through precisely, and that makes the game more fun. The balls still drain out the sides, amazingly, and not infrequently, but this indeed makes a bigger difference than a center post would, especially during multiball.

per3per3 Not sure what the quality is like from other vendors, or if they all come from Stern, but the mirror mod I got from Marco fell apart in 2 weeks, the glue on the screw tabs just came unstuck. I will have to re-glue it myself sometime, but have gotten used to no mirror (maybe the angle is better for me at my specific height). It's a real pain to access that area for mounting, so I'm in no hurry.

The very best and most important mods are the anti-airball tilted stand up target mounting brackets and the clear protector cover for the ecto goggles screen. I learned my lesson on the latter after an expensive screen replacement.

Side drains were killing me too. I had done mods and tweaks to make everything else on the game play well, including raising the lane dividers, but left the out lanes for last. I moved the posts to the minimum gap setting, yet side drains were still too common. I finally added larger, thicker rubber rings to the posts and the out lane gaps are now so tight that there's less than a millimeter of space left measured against the ball. You would think that would make drains all but impossible in action, but no! It's amazing how the ball can still quite regularly find its way out there. But I'm happy with the rate of drain now, definitely maintaining a sense of fun, especially during multi-ball.

In my case, I set the outlane posts to their most narrowly-spaced positions. But that wasn't enough: I also added fatter rubbers on both the movable and fixed posts guarding the outlanes such that the space allowed for the ball to pass through is barely a layer of paint greater than the ball itself.

And you know what? The balls still drain through there very happily. I've perhaps cut down on the amount, but they are definitely not blocked, so it seems like a fair way to keep ball times from being overly disappointing.