- description
- A ball permanently trapped behind a target or within a channel on the playfield, struck indirectly by the player's ball to register hits or advance scoring. The captive ball never drains — it lives in its enclosure for the life of the machine, absorbing impacts and transferring momentum to switches behind it. The mechanism creates a distinctive heavy, satisfying hit feel unlike any other target on the playfield. Captive balls appear in hundreds of machines across the [[technology-generation:solid-state]] and [[display-type:dot-matrix]] eras, often positioned as a high-value repeated shot.