Quoted from Snailman:

Thanks.
True... to get the maximum values, your'e not flailing. But even flailing, I see many people getting Combo 2x JP's during Orb unintentionally. I would argue that for many Orb MB's played "on the fly" or flailing, most players will be able to get at least three of the JP shots, and if they had bounced around enough during a prior Groot MB and Quills Quest MB, they could easily have two sets of Hadrons going into Orb MB. So if people know to save their HE for Orb MB, then after 3 Orb JP's, smack the action button 6 times to take you all the way to the Orb SJP being lit. If executed this way, I think most players will end Orb MB with over 100M from Orb MB alone.

Yes, it took me a few times of Orb MB to realize that the first shot back to the Orb drop target to release the captive ball locked in your base JP for the remainder of the MB. I think this is a nice rule. And with the latest code, they fixed the 2nd ball plunge to both (1) go all the way around the orbit instead of feeding into the pops, and (2) the timer is paused for a brief period following the plunge (vs the prior code where the hurry-up started counting down immediately after auto-plunging and kept ticking while your ball was in the pops).

Hehehe. Yeah, I know. I enjoy new games / new code, and discovering the nuance tips and tricks to maximize your progress toward wizard modes or maximize score.

By "that," do you mean executing the Orb sequence I described? Yes. Most of the time I play Orb, I get at least one SJP by using Hadrons. Granted, I have bad games where I'm on ball three with a pathetic score, so I go into my Orb MB without enough Hadrons to give me a shot at getting the replay -- I only have GOTG on location, so initial goal is always to make my next game free. And sometimes I fail miserably at Orb when I don't have Hadrons.

Quoted from twenty84:

I don’t think this a bug, you get the bonus for completing a mode with every ball after that not just the EB. I think this was done to encourage mode completion as in earlier versions a lot of people were only playing Groot MB and later just focusing on Orb.