I believe there is a setting in the adjustments (or feature adjustments) that allows you to adjust the timing. Haven't played with it myself, but remember seeing a setting like this. Also make sure your pitch is good (6.5-6.6 deg ). STLE us one of those games that doesn't need it's butt raised into the heavens.

When I was playing Robert's last night I had a ball fly past the kickback and drain, definitely frustrating. It happened so fast that I couldn't tell if it fired too early like you said, or if it just never fired at all.

If nothing else would love to see a ball save ala MB's phantom flip where if it misses for any reason you at least get your ball back.

On games with these kickbacks I usually have to adjust the rollover after a teardown, you are on the right track.
Put the screw back in and tweak the switch arm.
These are just assembled at the factory and these little tweaks are up to the owner/operator.

I had a thread on this, and ST is the only game out there that uses a rounded actuator for a kickback. Should've used a triangle style like in the shooter lane. It's impossible to make this work for both slow and fast balls in the outlane.

That's good to hear. I'll try moving it down.

The kicker is not aligned properly out of the box
Adjust it in test mode and will be super sharp

I was doing other work on my playfield today and thought I'd take a look at moving the kickback sensor (outlane sensor). I didn't do anything because I wasn't exactly clear on what you did here and wanted to take pics and ask for confirmation. (Sorry the one picture is a bit out of focus.)

So, is this what you did?

1. Unscrewed the two red screws holding in the outlane/kickback sensor switch

2. Moved the switch toward the kickback coil

3. Screwed back in just ONE red screw to hold it in place

If so, how do you deal with the fact that, at least on mine, it looks like the front edge of the outlane switch "wire" (that the ball rolls over) will probably hit the end of the channel?

Thanks!

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I just took the switch off and bent the part of the switch that sticks up above the playfield so that it is activated later (closer to the kickback), using some long-nose pliers. I had to play around with it a little to get it right and keep it from catching on the edge of the slot in the playfield. Once I got it right, it works virtually every time now.

I just thought I would toss my 2 cents in here. My buddy bought a STLE this past friday. We played it that night for a while before calling it a night and doing all the tweaks Saturday.

The kickback was working perfectly Friday night on the 1.3 software.

After updating to 1.4 Saturday evening it started acting like you describe above where the timing seems to be not quite right, sometimes it would miss the ball entirely, others it would just barely get it and slow-motion lob it back out. The patch notes even mention adjustments to the kick-back.

Maybe they will re-fix it in another update?

Check the comment on http://www.pinballnews.com/games/startrek/index4.html

A fix is coming.

Dragging up this thread to document my fix for balls being missed sporadically and a more common lazy / weak return.

I found no need to try to reposition, but like dphelps, bending the switch directly over the actuator w pliers to form a slight arc activates the switch a micro second later than before - solving my issues.

Rod