you need to hit the lit loops to collect friends. collect them all and you can get a friends jackpot.

http://www.ipdb.org/rulesheets/1267/indiana.htm

Unless mine is really weird, you collect friends when you collect INDY rollovers; I don't think at any other time. One is blinking, rest are either lit or off.

The loop thing is something extra you can do with collected friends. Which I didn't know existed till now so thanks!

Sorry, our terminology is just different.

You light friends with the rollovers and collect them with loops, if that makes sense.

So the game always starts with one blinking friend.

You collect more friends by completing the I-N-D-Y rollovers. One friend per INDY's completed.

When you complete a flashing loop one of the blinking friends turns solid.

Collect all the friends and complete all the loops lights the POA jackpot for 60,000,000 points?

Forgot the exact number. I do wish there was a call out when you collected though. A little anti-climactic.

Ok.. I think of collect when I get their quite and go from blinking to solid. I didn't even know they also effected loop values (beyond the multiplier bonus).

Though I think despite semantics:
"Are any of the friends supposed to stop blinking and stay lit? "
- yes, when you finish a INDY set, whoever was blinking goes solid, and hand of fate should light too.

I take the point part back:

"Scoring is the total of all lit loops collected before the Jackpot is collected, to a maximum of 200M. The base at the start of the game is 5M. If you fail to collect the Loop Jackpot before the end of the ball when you light it, both the Friends and the Loop Jackpot value are reset (value becomes 0M)."

Ok I'm going to have to go look at mine.. I swear blinking friend goes solid when INDY collected. Then again, I guess I should read the rules and know there was a friend jackpot for doing loops.