Making the camera more responsive *re-stated on last post*

Now I know how to make a camera move and rotate according to where my little ball goes in a maze game i’m working on. But the problem is it’s not very responsive, the camera turns real slowly. I’d like to know if there’s a way for the camera to quickly snap to the direction the ball’s going while maintaining it’s distance that it starts with, I tried vertex parenting but that made the camera go crazy like there was no tommorow.
For more info if you need it I have the camera follow the ball through the camera actuator in the camera object.

Also, I would also like to know how you can get things set up so the up and down arrow makes the ball go in the direction on the x,y axis that the camera’s pointing, basically making the left and right arrows turn arrows.

Tried to make the camera work the way I was planning it to work using an empty as a focal point and parenting it vertex-wise to the ball, no luck what-so-ever. I still need help for both questions here.

Sorry for this but I still need an answer, to help out with the info you need here’s the topic about the game i’m making that this question is pertaining to

https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29998

Okay, let me clear things up a little,

basically I want the camera to rotate around the ball on the x,y axis without going up and down the Z axis except when the ball itself as in the center of the object goes up and down the z axis