Community Event / Creation Buckyball Racing Club presents: Escape Velocity

[cookiehole]

Hm. Got distracted by this landing of an ancient chemical spaceship precursor that happened 1286 years ago. Seems I've spent the biggest part of yesterday trying to get some more footage of that. Why didn't they holotrack these things?
That was a very elegant landing though, and that with these powerless uncontrollable chemical motors.

I probably won't do any further attempts, although there are probably a few things to improve. Maybe we should bookmark the videos of this run and rewatch them in a few months or so when fast OC approaches have become easy

 

[Jhyrryl]

Flubbed my last attempt, too. No more time for me today. Excellent race! Good job, everyone.

 

[Alec Turner]

Made one final attempt in the Breakfast Tequila this afternoon and have shaved some time off (I'll leave it for the final board update to reveal whether some time was enough time to make any difference).

I think I could have gone significantly faster if I'd ..

a) abandoned the Breakfast Tequila for something with a 30+ jump range
b) abandoned the fast orbital cruise from Banach to Whitelaw in favour of jumping out to another system and back in again
c) done more runs rather than getting distracted by shinies

The problem is ...

a) I like the Breakfast Tequila
b) that blue zone, zero inclination, fast Orbital Cruise feels (and sounds) sooooo right, even if it can be a tad slow
c) it's very hard to tear myself away from stuff like this ...

Spoiler

Thanks for another great race Drakhyr and apologies for coming across slightly grumpy following the livestream.

That's probably me done until after christmas now (off to see the Force awakening tomorrow).

Merry Christmas everyone and a very happy New Year!

 

[furrycat]

b) abandoned the fast orbital cruise from Banach to Whitelaw in favour of jumping out to another system and back in again

Looking back at my videos I think that the best option is to cruise out at 90 degrees to leave orbital cruise height then supercruise round the planet and approach again. Leaving the system then jumping back in is best for swapping between planets 6 and 4. My time to cruise around was slightly less than the jump in/out for 6 to 4 which in turn was less than my first run's cruise between them.

 

[cookiehole]

I think I could have gone significantly faster if I'd ...
a) abandoned the Breakfast Tequila for something with a 30+ jump range
b) abandoned the fast orbital cruise from Banach to Whitelaw in favour of jumping out to another system and back in again

a) While the Cobra was certainly not really a wrong choice for this race (straight line speed is always good), this one 30.6 ly jump saves 45s which is probably hard to make up for by flying a very fast ship compared to a fast ship.
b) I thought about this one too, but I needed 2:30 for the OC between Banach and Whitelaw and 1:00-1:30 for the SC approach and OC to Banach Legacy (between the SC timer going down to 0:05 and dropping to glide). After adding 1:30 for two jumps (it would be possible to save one of these jumps, but only with a 30.6+ range) and a few seconds for SC between the star and the planet it is not really faster. But I was really surprised how long that OC between these two ports took. It felt shorter than it is

Edit:

Looking back at my videos I think that the best option is to cruise out at 90 degrees to leave orbital cruise height then supercruise round the planet and approach again. Leaving the system then jumping back in is best for swapping between planets 6 and 4. My time to cruise around was slightly less than the jump in/out for 6 to 4 which in turn was less than my first run's cruise between them.

Did think about leaving OC too, but is SC really faster?
And that thing between 6 and 4. Hm. Why did I think about all sorts of related things but not about that one? I even stopped the time for that cruise to compare it to the cruise between 4 and 6 (obviously 6->4 is way faster than 4->6). This part of the run really reminds me about BBR7.

 

[Ozric]

I'm afraid this one is a DNF for me After losing Isil 3 times on SPOCS 900 4 (it's so hard to convince myself to approach slowly ) I have run out of time to try and compete again.

Thanks Drakhyr though for setting up this great race, it's certainly put a whole new twist on the races. Hopefully see you all for Buckyball Live

 

[furrycat]

Orca Courier bomb is definitely the way to land. With an A3 shield and four boosters I can boost into the ground and not lose shields. My problem is getting out of OC in the first place.

Just done 27:07 but there's time for another try.

 

[superflyguy]

finally managed to string a complete run together! after three abysmal 'landings' the beer finally took affect and I successfully docked at each station. Route choice and surface landing technique require a modicum of practice!

anywho, really enjoyed charging around like a loon. this time with PLANETARY LANDINGS! i went for the CobraIV (because that's what FD advertised Horiszons with) and named it 'Pushing up daisies' after my many abortive attempts and my dearly departed Gran. (95, liked a Campari & soda or two)

see all you crazy flighters after the family funfest that is ChristyYuletideFestiveWinterMas. I'm off to drink, eat and and play with kids toys (hope the big FC brings me a HOTAS).

fly like reindeer
<-lightspeed->

 

[drakhyr]

As the race comes to the end, I'm pleased to welcome a couple of new racers to the board. Cmdr Terrorsidic returned for his first race since Buckyball Run 6 way back in January, in the self-named Asp Explorer Asp. A couple of very heavy landings on SPOCS 900 4 (and teh repairs required from them!) no doubt slowed Terrorsidic down, leading to a final time of 43 minutes 37.

A little further ahead, a special welcome goes to Cmdr Admiral Spoon. This commander turned up to his first ever buckyball race in style, bringing a Type 9 to race. No, that's not a typo, I really do mean a Type 9 Heavy. Sailfish's heavy landing at Whitelaw Prospect must have been a sight to see, although preferably from a good distance. Admiral Spoon pulled his giant ship round the course in just under 40 minutes. We salute you, commander! o7

Cmdr <-Lightspeed-> did submit an entry that would have been in a similar area, but there are some questions outstanding from the stewards over the legality of the run, so there may be a later update to add <-Lightspeed-> to the board.

In the mid-pack, Edelgard von Rhein switched ships to the Cobra mkIII. While Null Geodesic was able to improve on the time set by Edelgard's Imperial Eagle, it wasn't enough to move him up the board. He was still a bit behind Cmdr Black Rat, who finally managed to make an appearance in the Hauler Zealot to slide in only very slightly behind Orange Sheets' Viper. Alec Turner also managed an improved run in his Cobra mkIV, shaving three minutes off his time to nudge past Orange Sheets into 9th place.

Towards the front, Cmdr furrycat kept pushing until the very end, completing his final run with a whole six and a half minutes of the race window to spare. In the end this paid off with an improvement of just over four minutes, propelling him into third place.

It appears that nobody else has been able to challenge the very front runners, so congratulations to furrycat for third place, Alot for second place, and especially to Cookiehole for a stunning first place time. We look forward to the videos!

Next race coming very soon (I just need to write out the blurb and rules)!

 

[Alec Turner]

A little further ahead, a special welcome goes to Cmdr Admiral Spoon. This commander turned up to his first ever buckyball race in style, bringing a Type 9 to race. No, that's not a typo, I really do mean a Type 9 Heavy. Sailfish's heavy landing at Whitelaw Prospect must have been a sight to see, although preferably from a good distance. Admiral Spoon pulled his giant ship round the course in just under 40 minutes. We salute you, commander! o7

A T9? Landing on SPOCS 900 4! Under racing conditions?!?!

Dude! Welcome to the Buckyball Racing Club ... I do believe you may have found your spiritual home.

 

[furrycat]

A T9? Landing on SPOCS 900 4! Under racing conditions?!?!

Dude! Welcome to the Buckyball Racing Club ... I do believe you may have found your spiritual home.

I saw the good Admiral on the course a few times, including on the pad area at one of the planet 4 bases. I assumed he was trading. How very awesome to be wrong.

 

[ZX Spectrum]

Massive thanks to Cmdr Terrorsidic for enabling me to finish in my preferred slot; second to last.
Aiming for the hat trick in the next Buckyball race!

 

[drakhyr]

Thanks to all for taking part.

Detailed of the next race are available now.

 

[mw_aurora]

Cracking race Drakhyr, thanks for organising and looking forward to some more planet-battering fun in the future

 

[cookiehole]

First of all, thanks to drakhyr for organising this fantastic race! It has been great fun.
Kudos to Admiral Spoon for racing a T9! It is the ship you wouldn't expect to see at all at a race course (except maybe for the after party supplies) and it must have been very challenging even to land it on SPOCS 400 without smashing itself and the whole planetary base to pieces, not to speak about that great time!
Also kudos to Alot who managed to fly into second place with style, in a ship that may be better suited for racing than a T9 but certainly worse than these "easy-mode" small ships.

The video of my run is uploading now and I'm working on a small wall of text and have already created a beauuuuuutiful paint outline for the whole planetary approach thingy.

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

Thanks to @drakhyr for staging this race! I'm already a bit more comfortable about landing in 2g gravity, although landing fast in 2g gravity is a different matter (though my Imperial Eagle did make good use of the crash barrier at the front of the pad in one case - very handy!).
I'm looking forward to the next one, now (I'm really surprised that there are no rare commodities on surface bases - maybe we just haven't found them yet?).

 

[cookiehole]

Video is online:
[video=youtube_share;iaBUIwbeJNI]https://youtu.be/iaBUIwbeJNI[/video]

Some of the techniques, choices, etc.:

1. Loadout: Imperial Courier, optimized for having >30,6ly jump range. Rest obviously for maximum speed, although I could only use D grade thrusters and Power Distributor. 2D shields for weight saving while being able to survive the landings at SPOCS 900 4. I would have gone with a better Power Distributor and then better Thrusters if possible, but it was still a pretty fast ship.
Maybe an A grade Imperial Eagle could have made up for the 45s lost in the one jump more by being faster, but I found the Courier to be more manageable in gravity. Biggest disadvantage of the Courier was the slowly deploying (10s) landing gear.

2. Route: pretty interchangeable in this race. I went for Nariansan - Arevakimos - SPOCS 900 - Nariansan but would have interchanged Arevakimos and SPOCS 900 if necessary (obscured jump targets). In the systems it was always Orbiting Station -> landing as getting out to SC from a planet is obviously extremely slow. As furrycat pointed out earlier jumping out of SPOCS 900 and back in to get from Celsius Market to SPOCS 900 4 faster would have been a good option I forgot to consider. In this case the optimal route would probably have been Nariansan - SPOCS 900 (Celsius) - Arevakimos - SPOCS 900 (4) - Nariansan. One jump more, but a lot of SC time saved. Getting from Banach Landing to Whitelaw Prospect via OC was probably a bit faster than jumping out and back in again as the planetary approach takes some time anyway.

3. Classic Buckyball tricks like gravity braking, re-requesting docking permission until you get a good pad (little time for that in fast ships though; 12, 13, 36 would be optimal for small ships), late gear deployment and early retraction, boosting out of the station, lithobraking/pad-braking (slamming into something makes decelerating an easy thing, but it may come at some cost )

4. The big thing in this race: Planetary approach. I threw together a beautiful, hand made and probably 1000% optimal guidance on how to (maybe) optimally do this, based on the experiences in this race. The Banach Legacy approach in the video was relatively good, although I had to do some corrections.



5. Have I forgotten anything? Anything incorrect?

 

[mw_aurora]

Awesome work Cookiehole

 

[superflyguy]

I have had to remove my entry after discovering that I visited Whitelaw twice and didn't bother with Banach!

seems the festive spirit took hold a couple of days early.

cheers!
<-lightspeed->

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

Thanks for the guide @cookiehole !
The only thing I might have missed from your video that might be an improvement was selecting your next system and station destination before starting the race and switching to having Faber Works selected on the pad. The route finder now seems to usually remember your final destination station/planet even though you select another object, so you don't then need to plot another route whilst at Faber Works - you can just hit the key for the next destination in your route.