Community Event / Creation Buckyball Run A*: What do you do when a mountain is there? Move it.

[Alec Turner]

Well that was a weird journey for me. Manually plotting made me insane in last 1.500ly to the core and took way too much time.

I had only two accidents when I bumped around in a trinary system by mistake and crashed into a coronal mass ejection later. It brought my hull and power plant down to 94%.

It's very useful just to undisplay all the not scoopable stars on the galaxy map, but I didn't expect it's still possible to meet a unscoopable star though. There was a T Tauri star which counts to the M star class but it's not scoopable and I was lucky that I had enough fuel left to proceed to another star. After this situation I only traveled 80 of max range 90ly per full fuel for safety issues. I met no souls in or next to the core so far.

Travelling with max jump range of 25ly was not that comfortable and so my total time isn't very nice either but I still had fun. Now there is the way back and I expect this will take forever.

Here some screenshots and I took the liberty to add advertisement for the race in my video description too, hopefully it will attract some more challenge maniacs

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[video]https://youtu.be/bg0HOpH182E[/url]

Edit: Hey why are neither pictures nor video displayed here, in preview they are

Brilliant, and again, well done. I don't know about the pictures but your video begins with a video tag and ends with a url tag, probably not right!

T minus 13 days for me now.

I've just started looking into route plotting for this and have one immediate question which, given this is a race, I quite understand if nobody answers. What's the best way of plotting my initial 1000ly hops? Did you just use the grid on the galaxy map, find the 1000 line, pick a fairly random star just before that line and plot route?

 

[Symbiont]

And the plotter will still take you to systems you have turned off, though it seems to prefer ones that are on

Thats true I've been aware of unscoopables but it's still great comfort to turn useless stars off hehe

Brilliant, and again, well done. I don't know about the pictures but your video begins with a video tag and ends with a url tag, probably not right!

I already edited the video link

I've just started looking into route plotting for this and have one immediate question which, given this is a race, I quite understand if nobody answers. What's the best way of plotting my initial 1000ly hops? Did you just use the grid on the galaxy map, find the 1000 line, pick a fairly random star just before that line and plot route?

I just picked a random 999ly distant star aligned with the route to Sag. What is your way to plot different to this then?

 

[Gauntlet]

Brilliant, and again, well done. I don't know about the pictures but your video begins with a video tag and ends with a url tag, probably not right!

T minus 13 days for me now.

I've just started looking into route plotting for this and have one immediate question which, given this is a race, I quite understand if nobody answers. What's the best way of plotting my initial 1000ly hops? Did you just use the grid on the galaxy map, find the 1000 line, pick a fairly random star just before that line and plot route?

I did pretty much this, I'd zoom out on the galaxy map to see increments of 1000 ly, zoom in there and pick a star at around 990ly. I also filtered out unscoopables so a quick glance at the galaxy map between jumps would warn me if I was jumping to an unscoopable. I flew an Eagle and could only manage 1 unscoopable at a time.

Oh I also climbed 100ly up straight away as I'd heard there was better chance of avoiding the aucocks going higher

 

[Alec Turner]

I just picked a random 999ly distant star aligned with the route to Sag. What is your way to plot different to this then?

I don't have a different way (yet), I just wondered if anyone else did

I did pretty much this, I'd zoom out on the galaxy map to see increments of 1000 ly, zoom in there and pick a star at around 990ly. I also filtered out unscoopables so a quick glance at the galaxy map between jumps would warn me if I was jumping to an unscoopable. I flew an Eagle and could only manage 1 unscoopable at a time.

Oh I also climbed 100ly up straight away as I'd heard there was better chance of avoiding the aucocks going higher

OK, so another question - this going up 100ly thing, I get that but ... surely, when you then start randomly picking the next 25 x 1000ly route destinations, you're just likely to angle back down by 100ly (or more) than not, aren't you?

 

[Gauntlet]

just keep an eye on the co-ordinates and adjust if needed, I didn't worry too much to be honest because I wasn't going for a blistering time and your route will meander quite a lot anyway depending how the route planner plots for you

 

[Alec Turner]

just keep an eye on the co-ordinates and adjust if needed, I didn't worry too much to be honest because I wasn't going for a blistering time and your route will meander quite a lot anyway depending how the route planner plots for you

Cool cool cool ... before anyone else on the leaderboard gets worried I hasten to add that I came 2nd from last in Buckyball 6 I really just want to try and do it all in a day (without having to play until 4am the next morning).

 

[TunaMage]

OK, so another question - this going up 100ly thing, I get that but ... surely, when you then start randomly picking the next 25 x 1000ly route destinations, you're just likely to angle back down by 100ly (or more) than not, aren't you?

Going up 100ly is just to get away from aucoks which is near the beginning of the run. Once you're up there, keep on that plane for a while (like half the trip).

I had a piece of paper with the sag A coordinates (25, -21, 25899) written on it. For most of the way I didn't pay too much attention to my coords as long as I was going more or less straight 'North' and keeping to the plane I was on. As I got closer (like from 5k out) I started fine tuning the jumps in the direction of sag A coords.

I found it reassuring to look at the final coords on paper as my target rather than fiddling back and forth on the galmap (and while the coords are very easy to remember, after so many hours of jumping your mind messes with you - numbers on paper then become better than in your head )

 

[FoxTwo]

I don't have a different way (yet), I just wondered if anyone else did



OK, so another question - this going up 100ly thing, I get that but ... surely, when you then start randomly picking the next 25 x 1000ly route destinations, you're just likely to angle back down by 100ly (or more) than not, aren't you?

I didn't. Actually I went even further up the galactic plane (got distracted by shinies!) until about 10,000 LY out from Sol... then I started "aiming down the sights" at Sag A*. Meaning every few thousand Light years, I'll select Sag A and line up my blue and orange pointers. Then I zoom out to do my next route-plot, taking into account the plane and bearing of Sag A* from current location.

 

[Delvan]

Here on Earth my daily commuter is a mere Adder, but its certainly looking a might bit spazzier now. Many kudos to ElectricZ!

Spoiler

P.S. The guy at my car wash says he used to clean starship canopies, but he didn't fit in there, too much of an overachiever.

 

[IronLIch]

I am halfway home! I hope I survive long enough to turn in all this scan data.

I have some questions:

-Is anybody here DEFINITELY buying a Diamondback, sight unseen, based on the limited data we have on the ship thus far?
-What are your hopes and dreams for the ship?

 

[Esvandiary]

-Is anybody here DEFINITELY buying a Diamondback, sight unseen, based on the limited data we have on the ship thus far?
-What are your hopes and dreams for the ship?

Pretty much yeah, I will be. Beyond its stated "thargoid investigator" "combat explorer" role it sounds to me like it could be a very good "rapid response" ship for quickly getting to combat-related activities elsewhere in inhabited space.

 

[FoxTwo]

Pffft... I'm gonna buy it just to race it to Sag A*

 

[Esvandiary]

Pffft... I'm gonna buy it just to race it to Sag A*

Haha... Assuming its jump range is good enough to do it in one go (which I'd hope it is given its stated role!) maybe we should gather a bunch of CMDRs to do the Second Great Buckyball A* Convoy after 1.3 comes out

 

[IronLIch]

Haha... Assuming its jump range is good enough to do it in one go (which I'd hope it is given its stated role!) maybe we should gather a bunch of CMDRs to do the Second Great Buckyball A* Convoy after 1.3 comes out

If we spread out we may even get lucky enough discover some [REDACTED]... mysterious scenarios in which we must engage in mysterious combat.

 

[Rankaze]

I am halfway home! I hope I survive long enough to turn in all this scan data.

I have some questions:

-Is anybody here DEFINITELY buying a Diamondback, sight unseen, based on the limited data we have on the ship thus far?
-What are your hopes and dreams for the ship?

Not I. But I will absolutely positively buy a Courier.

The sad thing is, I think I am really going to want the Courier on my Alliance CMDR. I suspect it will be just about perfect for the armed rares trader role. Which, since I am finding that I actually really enjoy rares trading, and I prefer to kill pirates rather than run from them, would suit him perfectly.

 

[Symbiont]

Is there any interesting location around Sadge, I don't want to łeave already

 

[Gauntlet]

Is there any interesting location around Sadge, I don't want to łeave already

Definitely check out the Great Annihilator, its an interesting system

 

[Ekol Tieja]

Where exactly is the Annihilator? I wanted to visit it, but all I could find was this:

Spoiler

[and I'll definetly get the Diamondback, if I return to inhabitated space.

 

[Esvandiary]

Where exactly is the Annihilator? I wanted to visit it, but all I could find was this:

Spoiler

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[and I'll definetly get the Diamondback, if I return to inhabitated space.

I believe you can just search for "Great Annihilator" in the galaxy map - at least, that's what I did, so I'm now heading towards something... Hopefully not a particularly tough Thargoid who has that as a nickname.

 

[Symbiont]

According to Google, this is another kind of black hole but even much more massive than Sadge... thanks for the tip, will make a stop there