Community Event / Creation Buckyball Racing Club presents: The Mischief Mile (5.12 - 13.12)

[Ceska_Zbrojovka]

It's been an exciting weeks of racing Buckyballers, and I am deeply disappointed I could not take part due to my PC in major need of Replacement.
Do, however, expect a Race Report to be scripted, recorded, and set in the broadcast schedule of Radio Sidewinder once Final Results are Officially available.

 

[Stern Winter]

So long and thanks for all the limpets

It's been great fun participating in this race, although I never managed to break the 20 minute barrier when refuelling at stations.

Yesterday, CMDR Kliggson graciously volunteered to become my pit crew for a while. Sadly, because this racer is an idiot, no stellar times were achieved this way either:

First run from Tepech, I forgot to take the screenshot in MCC811, while the good CMDR Kliggson was refuelling me. I made a quick-ish turnaround in Ocampa for a new run, but my fat fingers failed to find the correct key for screenshots - I don't know what I pressed, just that I pressed something twice in quick succession. The outcome was that I had to use my arrival shot as a departure shot, making my return run 1½ minutes slower than it would normally have been. Oh well. Good times were had by all regardless.

Thanks to CMDR Kliggson for letting me try his patience and many thanks to CMDR Rusticulous for hosting this great race.

 

[Alec Turner]

Superb race Rusty ... really enjoyed that one. Terrific competitive racing from all concerned. The whole limpets vs. station thing worked out brilliantly, much hilarity from the ludicrously altruistic refuelling shenanigans, nice to see EZ back in the thick of it, a stirling effort from Ed Lewis, an absolutely brilliant livestream (thanks again to everyone involved for putting so much time and effort into what I thought was an absolutely brilliant episode of Educating Ed) and lastly, personal thanks from me to Cmdr Aitken for sharing my joys and sorrows ... MCC 811 will forever be a special place to me in the game now!

P.S. I'm currently trying to edit together my first attempt at an in-game race film, an interesting change from the over-the-shoulder stop-motion footage I had to resort to in the bad old 12fps days of Buckyball 6 (my first encounter with you guys).

 

[cookiehole]

Yes... and too much fun trying to shave just a few seconds.
I can't believe I'll make the fastest snickers time. Will wait till the roster is posted because I never have so much lucky...

Uh. Ehm. Sorry! Yesterday when I did my Anaconda runs I also thought it'd be nice to haul some Limpets (Fuel Rat Duty and stuff) and one of these attempts was faster than your limpet time that's currently on the board.
Sorry for sneaking in last minute!

I'm currently attempting to edit together my first attempt at an in-game race film, an interesting change from the over-the-shoulder stop-motion footage I had to resort to in the bad old 12fps days of Buckyball 6 (my first encounter with you guys).

The old days of Buckyball 6? Wasn't that the one with the Regulation Sidey where we had to refuel a good few times? I think I got a tad more used to fuel scooping since then.

And to everybody who'll do a film about the race, if you need any footage from other racers I'd have some perfect demonstrations of elegant flying including those calming sounds of metal hitting metal.
I'll probably load a few videos up on youtube, although my editing skills are practically nonexistent and so this will be raw footage rather than a compilation.

 

[Ozric]

A really good race this one, slightly kinder on my ship than the Bump and Grind race, though I did better in this one. A huge congratulations to Furrycat for an amazing time and although he and a few others discovered that Sunday day time/evenings are not the best time to run, I found that actually Sunday morning was the best time for me I started running around 8:30 and got my best time around 9am while it was still nice and peaceful. I honestly thought I may have scraped enough to get the best time for an Asp, but alas no as Drakhyr snuck in ahead of me, it would have been a close run thing if I hadn't of had the "incident" with the docking cage, but I think he still would have pipped me.

Thanks a lot for organising this one Cmdr Rusticulous and to Alec for hanging around refuelling others (and often keeping enough fuel left for himself ) and to everyone else, for just continuing to make this game awesome! I felt when I first joined up with Electric Z in Premium Beta that this just had a great feeling of a small community just having some fun within the limitations we had imposed on us. Now it feels as though the community has grown and the spirit has just gotten better and better. I've learnt new techniques and tips and tricks since coming back, the fact that we can still compete so hard against each other while giving each other hints and a helping hand I think says everything that needs to be said about this community.

See you all (hopefully) for The Buckyball Run 9 live!

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

Thanks to CMDR Rusticolus for staging this event and to everyone who took part in racing and refuelling. It was quite a demanding event and needed more careful preparation and route planning than anything else I have tried (I made a nice profit from exploration data after scanning quite a few systems along the course). I'm glad I got to spend some time in my Adder and my Imperial Eagle, both of which have really good handling in bother supercruise and normal space, as I don't tend to fly them outside of races, which is a shame. The crazies board was a good idea, especially as some ships have obvious advantages, and the interaction with other players to refuel en-route was pure genius. Well done! (Looking forward to the next one but I need to practise my planetary landings and hopefully not wake up anything too dangerous on Merope this week!)

 

[mw_aurora]

Final update...sniff

Regulars

Crazies

Wow! What a week! Thank you all so much for making this race event what it was. I am still mildly amazed that some of you carried limpets and entered the Crazies class...although I have been around here long enough to know better

We had a few new entries on the final day, including a new CMDR joining in the fun - CMDR ZX Spectrum with a Hauler that made it to not quite last place. CMDRs Aken Bosch and Stern Winter both posted improved times with Stern switching to Limpets to get a boost up the table, despite a mishap with data recording adding over a minute to his time.

CMDR Kliggson made a last minute change to his Asp for one last run around the course, also switching to Solo mode to help overcome the Sunday night, galaxy slowdown. This change paid off earning him a top 3 spot on the board.

CMDR Cookiehole must have been taking lessons from CMDR Alot and posted 3 new entries on the last day - a Bonus Snickers run with the DBX and 2 runs in his Anaconda, one with and one without Snickers. You can see on the board how well this worked.

So, to the class winners:

Regulars:
1st CMDR Cookiehole
2nd CMDR Furrycat
3rd CMDR Kliggson

Crazies:
1st CMDR Timothy Knight
2nd CMDR Escapac
3rd CMDR Alot

Bonus Snickers:
1st CMDR Cookiehole
2nd CMDR Inodoro Pereyra
3rd CMDR Cookiehole

Special Mentions:
CMDR Kronek for carrying 528 Limpets. The Fuel Rats salute you!
CMDR Timothy Knight for picking one of the craziest of the crazy ships and getting it home at the top of the table!
CMDRs Aitken and Alec Turner for selflessly throwing fuel at anyone who flew nearby, sometimes even refuelling racers

Once again, thank you all for taking part - I never dreamed I would get nearly 50 entries and it was a real pleasure reading and watching your entries along with the often hilarious mishaps!

See you all at the next race!

 

[Inodoro Pereyra]

Uh. Ehm. Sorry! Yesterday when I did my Anaconda runs I also thought it'd be nice to haul some Limpets (Fuel Rat Duty and stuff) and one of these attempts was faster than your limpet time that's currently on the board.
Sorry for sneaking in last minute!

I'm very happy with that! I was wondering why some of the more proficient Cmdrs haven't brought some snickers to Mirateje... Congrats! (for the many 1st! you do)

...And thanks again to CMDR Rusticolus for the time and dedication!

 

[cookiehole]

Final update...sniff

First of all: Thank you Rusticulous for organizing this awesome event! It was just the right length to try it over and over again, the Fuel Restrictions were an interesting addition and made this race very unique and all the action on the track and in the Forum was really great fun!
Thank you to all the racers who participated, made this forum thread a collection of great stories and jokes and made trying to stay in the upper region of that board a thrilling experience to the very end !
And thank you to the refuellers, although I didn't occur to make use of your great service!

I feel a little bad to occupy so much space especially on the Bonus Snickers board, which wasn't completely intended.
Though honestly I've wanted that place on the Regulars podium for a certain time now and am happy that it has worked out. The Cookiebots will always win!
Congratulations to Timothy Knight and all of the CMDRs on the Crazies Board to have accomplished great times in ships that were never meant to be raced over interstellar distances!

It has been a great event with lots of funny mishaps, crashes, insurance claims and typical Buckyball moments, a wonderful Forum thread, a very good stream and a lot of limpets. Looking forward to the next ones.

Now I'll only have to find a time where uploading the videos of my runs and mishaps won't kill the bandwith for everyone in the house.

 

[Orange Sheets]

Thanks again people for great event! Again learned a ton about going fast (and about consumption/refueling too). The color clearly helps.

Special thanks to the best pitcrew there is: commanders Bold Mole and Fentia. Right on!

**
Am heading back to Tepech with Vulture to pay a little visit to those couple Sidewinder flying pirates who were so eager for loot near the station...

 

[Alec Turner]

I'm currently attempting to edit together my first attempt at an in-game race film

Uploading now ... eta 95 minutes.

 

[robinjb]

Great race Rusti, well done for hosting, I had a blast trying hard to get a good dbx time, and then when the guys got out the condas.. thought I could have a good bash with the asp.
id have preferred to do it in open, but I was getting 2 minute jumptimes at the point I posted skelator.

heres another scrappy montage of moments I had from the last few days.. attempting the twoball screwball into ocampo but hitting the planet. stop giving me pad 15 pls.
missing safe engage at hooke and ending up 50km from the station. fuelling stern.. furrycat photobomb. and a few of the racers I caught coming out of the slot. again sorry if I missed you.

 

[ElectricZ]

Congrats to the winners and kudos to Rusti for putting together a fun event! From what the board shows, the in-flight refueling mechanism really proved itself. If regular trade routes were a thing and payments could easily be made between CMDRs, buddy refueling could be a profitable service for those inclined... Take a ship with a scoop, a couple extra fuel tanks and a bunch of limpets and park it in the middle, and offer up refuels, accepting payment in the form of dropped cargo. Basically, you could become your own little portable outpost.

Again, great event. Chalk up another one for the BRC!

 

[Alec Turner]

Uploading now ... eta 95 minutes.

From the video description (and you'll have to pretend you're watching this at Sunday lunch for added suspense) ...

Buckyball Racing: Take the Dream

Date: Sunday 13th December 3301
Time: 6:57am
Place: Ocampo Station, Mirateje system
Ship class: Diamondback Explorer
Ship name: The Bananery Fandango
Race: The Mischief Mile

After a week of racing, less than 18hrs remain before the event closes. After a brief spell in the number one spot, I've been officially knocked into 2nd place and in practice I know I've slipped a lot further down the leader-board. With instancing problems causing me to abandon limpet refueling techniques I've been forced to attempt one last desperate station refueling run in order to try and regain my winning position...

[video=youtube;Ll2SRskj65E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll2SRskj65E[/video]

 

[Rankaze]

Wow. I actually won an event. Didn't see that coming, at least not before CMDR Aitken and I put together our first run and I realized just how much faster it was actually going to be.

Of course, there were a lot of things I didn't see coming in this event. I've said before that my favorite part of the Buckyball events has always been the speed docking... and yet in this one, I wound up mostly skipping out on that part and ended up having more fun than I've ever had in a Buckyball event. Funny how that worked out.

CMDR Aitken, I salute you! Not only did you make this victory possible, not only did you pull this off working with a racer who had never used the wing functionality before, much less been on either end of an in-flight refueling, and not only did you do an absolutely great job, you were one of the most fun people to work with I've ever encountered in an online game. Thanks for having the patience to work with me through hours of route plotting, test runs, and a couple of actual failed attempts before I finally managed to execute my part of the task at a comparable skill level to yours. Mostly, thanks for being willing to do something this crazy at all!

Thanks, CMDR Rusticolus, for setting this up, thanks to the BRC for keeping the racing alive... and thanks to ElectricZ and Bucky for starting all of this.

EDIT: Oh, I knew I forgot something. For those interested in seeing it, the video of our winning run: BRC Mischief Mile: Fuelaconda II - Running on Empty
[video=youtube;ML1_vrPbSuY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML1_vrPbSuY[/video]

 

[Ozric]

heres another scrappy montage of moments I had from the last few days.. attempting the twoball screwball into ocampo but hitting the planet. stop giving me pad 15 pls.
missing safe engage at hooke and ending up 50km from the station. fuelling stern.. furrycat photobomb. and a few of the racers I caught coming out of the slot. again sorry if I missed you.

And I thought you were just hanging out there to try and pick up entry tips and laugh at people's misfortune

From the video description (and you'll have to pretend you're watching this at Sunday lunch for added suspense) ...

a movie with a great (though not for you ) ending. Got to spread the rep around first, so have some virtual hehe.

 

[Alec Turner]

EDIT: Oh, I knew I forgot something. For those interested in seeing it, the video of our winning run: BRC Mischief Mile: Fuelaconda II - Running on Empty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML1_vrPbSuY

Superb stuff! Still watching but thus far it's an object lesson in how to run a two man in-flight refueling race. Good job guys, your win is well-deserved.

Edit: when you got destination obscured how did you manage to jump to SC so easily to correct that? Have you got engage hyperdrive and engage supercruise on separate bindings (he says, presumably answering his own question)? Whenever I get in that situation I have to target the star, then jump (into SC)m, then re-target my next route stop, then jump (into hyperspace).

Edit 2: were you navlocked to each other so either of you could drop and drag the other in with you?

Jesus guys, this is stunning! Hope you don't mind but I'm gonna cross post this in the Fuel Rats thread. They really need to see this!

 

[Rankaze]

http://www.3drjb.com/bbra/mischeif_smallmont.jpg
heres another scrappy montage of moments I had from the last few days.. attempting the twoball screwball into ocampo but hitting the planet. stop giving me pad 15 pls.
missing safe engage at hooke and ending up 50km from the station. fuelling stern.. furrycat photobomb. and a few of the racers I caught coming out of the slot. again sorry if I missed you.

Something about the Imperial Eagle at that size/distance reminds me of the Galaga player ship sprite. That suits me just fine, always loved that game...

 

[Rankaze]

Superb stuff! Still watching but thus far it's an object lesson in how to run a two man in-flight refueling race. Good job guys, your win is well-deserved.

All credit to CMDR Aitken there, he had to teach me how to do all this stuff. I'm just good at following instructions!

Edit: when you got destination obscured how did you manage to jump to SC so easily to correct that? Have you got engage hyperdrive and engage supercruise on separate bindings (he says, presumably answering his own question)?

Exactly this, yes. The bottom-right three-position toggle on my Warthog throttle quadrant is set so that up=SC, down=hyperspace... for exactly this reason. "Destination target obscured" is the kiss of death if you have both on the same binding. Learned that the hard way in BBR5, back before we had the option of separate bindings.

Edit 2: were you navlocked to each other so either of you could drop and drag the other in with you?

Yep. We both realized in our first run that we couldn't predict which of us would be in position to grab the other, so while the plan was always for him to drop and bring me down, he kept his lock enabled as well so that if I had the better positioning I could grab him instead (as you see on the first stop, when I had to emergency drop to do it)

Jesus guys, this is stunning! Hope you don't mind but I'm gonna cross post this in the Fuel Rats thread. They really need to see this!

I'm honored, seriously. I'm also glad the video captured the teamwork required to pull this off. As I noted before, CMDR Aitken put at least as much effort into this as I did. He helped me plot the route, we did practice refuelings to get the positioning down ( and teach me to use the wing functions)... it was a total team effort all the way through.

In fact, I really think the best example of that was how quickly we responded to the instancing failure, getting back up into SC and down again. That could have cost us a lot more time than it did if we hadn't been on the same wavelength.

 

[cookiehole]

For those interested in seeing it, the video of our winning run: BRC Mischief Mile: Fuelaconda II - Running on Empty

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML1_vrPbSuY

What a great run!
To elaborate a bit on the chat at the end of the video: Yeah, that was a pretty perfect run, all good Hyperspace times and good dropout locations at the main star too. Also I managed to do it pretty much without mistakes (was the 4th attempt I guess).
The time between the FSD cooldown being complete at the star (so the point when you start charging your next jump if you don't refuel) and leaving the masslock of the outpost was around 1:40, so 50-70s longer than a good limpet refueling.
Which is pretty much the exact same time furrycat was faster in the DBX.

While the station approaches were way slower in the Anaconda compared to the DBX (around 45s more at Wollheim Vision, so 90s in total) having one jump less to do and no dedicated refueling stops made it a little bit faster again.
"Speeding" towards a station with 180m/s didn't feel like racing at all though.