Can anyone tell me how they are supposed to work? When I play on Novice difficulty and the Ballsaver is gone, the VEST outlanes don't work - whenever a ball hits the outlane, icon flickers until it's off and the ball dies.

Is this intentional or a bug? I've always thought it's supposed to light the Ballsaver icon on the bottom until the ball drops and respawns, but I'm clearly missing something. Or the game is missing something. Please explain and point me to a fix, if any is available.

A small update, I have noticed that this only occurs on Novice difficulty, which I almost always play. Is there any fix available?

I own the original (non-GOG) version of the game, so I don't know if the manual provided by GOG is identical to that of the game as it was published by 3D Realms, but you might want to check it out via the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090520110009/http://www.3drealms.com/tech/manuals/Balls%20of%20Steel.pdf

Some manual excerpts:

Novice: The same as Regular play except the ball saver is active for several minutes.
Ballsaver: Complete BOMB targets to relight Kevlar vest at outlanes.