So, if you shoot the right inner loop, nothing happens, but left inner loop works fine?

Impossible to Finish: Hoth MB (final shot), Tatooine MB, Endor MB, Endor III, Lightsaber Duel

Death Star II (?) will be much harder as you'll need to shoot Death Star three times. Death Star I,III,MB will be fine.

No Supers in Tie Fighter, no Video Mode

if you light hoth off the plunge you could play Hoth I video mode via another mode start shot. If you get the multiplier up high first that could still be worth good points, and depending on character selected it could light Hoth MB, which could be nice (especially if stacking MBs is enabled), even though you can't finish it to start victory MB.

R2D2 may still be a good option, but just avoid ever playing Endor III. Can still get to Death Star MB and possibly complete it for Victory MB.

You mean, you can complete the hurry-up by shooting Hoth?

If so, that could be a viable strategy (if taking advantage of that is legal). You can light your Hurry-Ups by just backhanding the left ramp over and over to complete your inlanes. Hoth is much easier to hit, so you can complete the hurry-ups and get to Hyperspace MB easier. It can be worth a lot of points if you can keep it going

Isn't that just shooting any purple shot and then the tie fighter?

Stern needs to do a better job with switch compensation. Is a common and maddening oversight which you never saw on Williams games.

We had a Star Trek with a bad right orbit switch. So you just couldn’t complete certain modes or jackpots. Really silly.

yeah, its kind of crazy that much of star wars is out of comish with a single switch failure.

at least on the hobbit when the stupid trolls dont pop up and work it lets you hit the shot behind it to count it. never really realized modern sterns dont have any compensation rules set up.

How would you compensate in either of these cases?

If a switch hasn't been hit in like X amount of games the game should know it doesn't work and could either not light that shot for the mode and light a different shot instead maybe?

Quite simply by moving that shot somewhere else, or requiring you to hit a different shot twice instead of once when the game figures out a switch isn't working. Stern games already have operator error alerts for switches, so the game obviously knows when there's a problem.

90s Williams games did this stuff all the time.

You ask for specific examples - on Star Trek, if the right orbit switch isn't working, stop lighting it. Move the jackpot shot there elsewhere, move the mode shots elsewhere. Same thing on Star Wars. There's tons of different shots in these games to use and switch compensation is the difference between smart and dumb when it comes to keeping a location game working.