I totally get what you’re saying about this, but in the real world it was never going to get to that severe point, no one would have played it that bad for anywhere near as long. There were probably dozens if not hundreds that could go behind if played badly on purpose long enough.
As you mentioned later games did force jackpots in if they got too far behind.
This sort of thing was fundamentally the problem for most coders they just didn’t see the point coding for each senario or they just weren’t up to the job. Let’s be honest here they would have been far more focused on protecting the compensator being manipulated to pay too much rather than forced to not pay enough.
Even compensated machines have/ had decisions that were still random given some parameters, which is why even tho it’s so far behind can still kill you off etc.
Compensators often had several “pots” or controls, and didn’t just look at overall % or drift, which is a big problem in this particular case.
As you also state another problem, most likely the biggest was there wasn’t really any standard for how the compensators had to work, so many coders had there own style and some were better than others.
If you think big wheel was bad you should see how far some clubbers could go behind if forced badly, they can go in well excess of £10k drift behind. “Money to burn club” is a good example.
Yes we did a really deep dive into a machine called Super Blackjack Club by Barcrest (one I'm sure you remember as it was one of your original MPU3/4 classic layouts that Wizard supplied me with on CD back in 2001!), using autoplay and manual play we eventually sussed out that it basically locked 20% of RTP into feature ladder wins that were below the block, if you constantly forced it for the jackpot, or through the block wins, it would pay out 20% below target, permanently.
Getting it back to percentage was as simple as letting 'G FOR GEORGE' take the strain
(Albeit for a very long time....) It turned into a really interesting deep dive and a great group effort over at Desert Island Fruits.
So yes, I totally get what you're saying in your post there, the compensation of UK fruit and club machines was a total wild west. It was ostensibly regulated but in reality, you had small teams of coders, or indeed just individuals at all the different companies, writing their own versions of 'the truth' that worked, or more often didn't work, in all kinds of ridiculous ways. I mean, the evidence of that is right there on my channel with all the emptier and method videos, these things have been
fundamentally broken for decades.
Even speaking as someone who was able to consistently win out of compensated machines from the year 2001 forward, I can't even remotely defend them and I'm glad they're basically extinct, the simple truth of the matter is that random machines are a far fairer proposition. (Although even there, especially in the online space, we see many providers trying to stretch the limits of the definition with things like stored value and suchlike.)