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

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Raiko

Raiko
ElectricZ said:
Ummm yeah... Hate to throw a wet blanket on the whole wing thing, but Freedom's not the first to try it, and worse...

Flying in a wing is a no-no. It lets a pilot get away with not doing his/her own flying/course plotting/etc. ("All right, I've plotted for this last hour, it's your turn now.") Given the Galmap Insanity prone at the core, this could make a huge difference in a pilot's time if another pilot were doing all the plotting.

Gonna have to ponder this.
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For what it's worth, here are my thoughts on wings in the race (I'd never argue with Bucky's decision obviously):

I honestly think it would actually be more of a hindrance than a benefit to make this run in a wing. Quite a few of the problems that penalise your time are network/server-side problems and throwing instancing into the mix will just make things worse.

If I made a run in a wing with Alot I'd drag his jump range down to mine, and I think that my time would suffer because of instancing problems. It might be a boost to the shorter ranged ship, but I think it would probably only ever be an advantage if you had matching jump ranges. I've not played much in wings though, so I might be wrong. :)
 
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freedom4556

freedom4556
ElectricZ said:
Ummm yeah... Hate to throw a wet blanket on the whole wing thing, but Freedom's not the first to try it, and worse...

Flying in a wing is a no-no. It lets a pilot get away with not doing his/her own flying/course plotting/etc. ("All right, I've plotted for this last hour, it's your turn now.") Given the Galmap Insanity prone at the core, this could make a huge difference in a pilot's time if another pilot were doing all the plotting.

Gonna have to ponder this.
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I gotta admit, we did share replotting duties. It was usually whoever got to the end first that replotted, but we always waited to rendezvous before setting off on the next leg. Sarrdis usually was a little faster than me, even though we had identically equipped ships. Sarrdis uses mouse and keyboard whereas I have a TFlight X HOTAS, so maybe that had something to do with it (Racing driver excuses, lol). The time spent coordinating really slows you down, but we weren't really in a big hurry. I was honestly expecting something more like 12-14hrs, but we came in at 18...so, yeah. Anyhow, if you do prohibit wings, you should probably put that on the top post, just for future runners to know. I had fun regardless. :D
 
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mw_aurora

mw_aurora
Raiko said:
I'm really, really tempted to have a go on Saturday though, I've got a feeling that there'll be a few runners over the US holiday weekend, so I might well join them...

...especially if you're having another go this weekend as you mentioned in our chat. :D
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I am seriously considering Saturday - I have the house to myself for the weekend, so can set-up near the kettle and bathroom again ;)

Just don't know whether to go again with the Asp or re-run the Hauler as I am pretty sure I can knock a fair bit of time off both now that I have overcome my GalMap demons. And then I can stop...until I can afford a 'conda :D
 

johnUK

J
I've used wings a bit, fighting, exploration and trade. In general a good thing for the game I think, but buggy - though that might be due to instancing. It took 30+ minutes to get in the same instance as my friend at Sag A.
If jumping in wings the shorter range ship trumps the longer range and everything is messed up if either commander has technical issues. Advantage is either can plot the jump and it adds something to the game.
I think it's a bit like open verses solo, theoretically in open plot times could be longer because of greater bandwidth needed in open. So, that explains (I think) why Bucky A must be done in open, so everyone is equal.
So, you could say that someone else plotting your route is similar to doing the run in solo instead of open.

On the other hand, we all have different CPUs, GPUs, RAM, monitors, internet connections, locations.... and so probably not on an equal footing anyway.

I'm new and just looking forward to my name entering the list.. "Working" from home with the new StarTrek on the laptop next to the desktop.

Fly safe Commanders!
 

freedom4556

freedom4556
ElectricZ said:
Ummm yeah... Hate to throw a wet blanket on the whole wing thing, but Freedom's not the first to try it, and worse...



Flying in a wing is a no-no. It lets a pilot get away with not doing his/her own flying/course plotting/etc. ("All right, I've plotted for this last hour, it's your turn now.") Given the Galmap Insanity prone at the core, this could make a huge difference in a pilot's time if another pilot were doing all the plotting.

Gonna have to ponder this.
Click to expand...

We didn't use nav-lock, though I think that'd make us even slower, and I have no way to prove it either way. What we did do was to have the person who got to the end of the plot first start looking for a candidate system, unless they needed a leak or something. When we agreed on a good one and got it plotted, we both punched it in. To tell the truth, the only reason we were winged up was for the voice chat and the map marker. I didn't even think about the instancing penalizing us. Oh, well. You live and learn.

EDIT: On that note, we wound up taking different routes from time to time. This would suggest that the route plotter is non-deterministic. We had equivalent ships and were plotting routes from the same place to the same place with the same galaxy map filters on. I'd lose sight of Sarrdis for dozens of jumps at a time, no wake or nothing. Weird, eh?

--
"Why else? For the money... for the glory... and for the fun!"
Two out of three ain't bad.
 
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johnUK

J
freedom4556 said:
We didn't use nav-lock
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I don't think there's any advantage of being in a wing without navlock in terms of racing or route plotting.. Just two folk looking at the map at the same time. Like any other group or even two people going at different times having shared notes.
 

mw_aurora

mw_aurora
So, I have completed my return passage across the plotting nightmare and haven't really drawn any concrete conclusions except - its complicated ;)

Main finding - I could have used the same magic number for the entire core region, with the exception of the 'transition zone' (i.e. the plot that takes you into the core). For me it was 983 ly (36.9 jump range) and this is 2 LY shorter than my calculation gives back here. However, this took a bit of trial and error to find, so not very useful on a buckyball run.

I was expecting to get a 'band' of distances that would plot quickly, about 4-5 ly wide. However, in reality the layout of the stars seemed to have a huge impact on plotting efficiency. For example, on a couple of occasions I could not plot my magic number where there were a cluster of stars 'just in front' but a plot to 987 ly worked instantly where the star was sat 'on its own' (as much as that is possible in the core). 987 hadn't worked for a couple of kylies at this point...

So, avoid picking stars that are in a tight cluster or a tight cluster is on the route line, near the target star.

Then there is the transition into the core region. With hindsight, this is what knocked me off balance in my last two runs - I thought I had a good magic number then it suddenly won't plot at all. I found that 974 ly worked for me on that one segment, then back to 983 again.

Also CPU did make a big difference for me. I have upgraded mine and can now navigate to another star and replot if the first choice is a bad one. This makes life much easier!
 

Raiko

Raiko
mjmw said:
Then there is the transition into the core region. With hindsight, this is what knocked me off balance in my last two runs - I thought I had a good magic number then it suddenly won't plot at all. I found that 974 ly worked for me on that one segment, then back to 983 again.
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If it's any consulation, that's exactly when I lost time as well. The first two legs that needed a 'magic number' didn't work with my existing number!

I went straight from being optimistic of getting a time of just over 10h, to thinking I'd "be lucky to make it in 12h" while staring at the 98% indicator.
 

mw_aurora

mw_aurora
Raiko said:
Hmm... Curse you Rusticolus, this might make me miss BB-8! ;)
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Hey! What could go wrong? It's only a 10 hr journey, that's what? 5 days at 2 hours a day coming back... ;)

And, we may see CMDR Metta out at Sag A* - he popped into Fuel Rat HQ the other day, before heading out himself, to find out what he needed to kit out his 'conda for rat duty as well as defense :)

See? Its gonna be fun! :D
 

Orange Sheets

Orange Sheets
Let it be known here now, that T6-Explorer, 'Kirsty', with its pilot (yours truly), will enter the race either July 17th or 18th, once its commander has carried out some vacational duties.

The blame for this madness lies heavily on the shoulders of one Cmdr Rusticolus.
 

Peteman

P
Hi all

I intend to make the journey - never been out this far before (3k was my limit so this is a huge step!)

Commander Peter Witney
Ship type - Asp Explorer
Name: "Sun Star"
 

Hanekura Shizuka

Hanekura Shizuka
Peteman said:
Hi all

I intend to make the journey - never been out this far before (3k was my limit so this is a huge step!)

Commander Peter Witney
Ship type - Asp Explorer
Name: "Sun Star"
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Travel safe, Commander. And, from another person whose first major sojourn from known space was the Sadge run, a bit of advice. The hot stars are unforgiving, the cold mathematics doubly so, but we are better for the fire, and better for the ice.
 

Sarrdis

S
CMDR: SARRDIS
Ship Name: The Razorback
Ship Type: Asp Explorer

Made it to the Sag Sunday morning.

Total Time: 18 hours, 16 minutes, and 46 seconds

Victory Quote: "Ad astra per aspera"
 

Jack Tripper

Jack Tripper
Setting off from Galileo after this morning's server update, and a final marmite on toast... the food replicator in my ageing T6 isn't up to the task anymore. Given real-world commitments back on Sol system this won't be a speed run, but I will aim to get there and back in time for Buckyball 8 later in July!

If anyone is running over the next few weeks, I'll hopefully com across you on the intergalactic spaceways. See you at Sadge!

Lucky
 
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