"It's not a big surprise to feel your temperature rise, you got a touch of redline fever.
'Cause there's just one cure that you know for sure, you just become a Heavy Metal believer."
--CMDR Felder
Lakon Spaceways is renown for their T-Series freighters and while ships of all classes have made appearances in BRC events and the Buckyball Run at one time or another, the Lakon transports are often overlooked in favor of faster, longer-range vessels. Heavy Metal is a celebration of these workhorses of the galaxy; the Lakon Type-6, -7 and -9 Heavy. Anyone with half decent reflexes can dance a nimble Eagle or Viper through an asteroid field, but it takes nerves of steel to boost a fully-laden Nine through the slot without requiring a call to the Bank of Zaonce's insurance adjuster after.
Heavy Metal is a bit of an experiment as much as a race, to test the capabilities of the three Lakon Types relative to one another, where range is not as important as delivery speed versus cargo capacity. In a nutshell, pilots will start at the port of their choice in Banapityas and make one trade run, out and back, to U Carinae and Sounti, as quickly as possible, making as much profit as they can through cargo hauling.
Your Flight Plan will look like this:
Banapityas -> U Carinae -> Banapityas -> Sounti -> Banapityas
OR Banapityas -> Sounti -> Banapityas -> U Carinae -> Banapityas
Where to start and finish, and what cargo to haul is entirely up to the judgement of each individual pilot. There is no single starting/finish location, though the Heat Sink Pub at Treschov Ring/Banapityas A5 will be serving round the clock for Buckyballers looking for a place to hang their helmets between runs.
"Time is money."
--CMDR Franklin
Winners will be determined by calculating "Profit Per Second" - that is, the amount of credits earned divided by Total Time in Seconds. The more tonnage your ship can haul, the more profit you will make, but fuel costs and damage to your ship will cut into your profit and reduce your PPS. All ship types will run together, but a winner will be declared for each Type (6,7,9) in addition to the pilot with the greatest PPS.
"Have you got a 27B/6? Sorry, I'm a bit of a stickler for paperwork. Where would we be if we didn't follow the correct procedures?"
--CMDR Lowry
The Rules
- Lakon Types 6, 7, and 9 only in this race.
- Races can be flown in any mode (Open/Solo/Private)
- Pilots start, trade, and finish at any port of their choosing as long as they adhere to the flight plan.
- Type-6's may utilize medium pads on any platfoem as they see fit.
- Engineering and premium resources (jumponium, etc) are legal.
- Use of trade tools like EDDB is legal and encouraged.
- Doing business through the Contact Board is forbidden. (No missions, no bounties, no picking up additional credits outside of trading commodities.)
- Fuel and Repair costs will count against the PPS.
- Time in station screens for loading/unloading cargo, repairs, etc., all count against total time.
- Ships must be refuelled and repaired at the end of the race for proper PPS calculation.
- IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CMDRs: Unlike most races, the dash clock will not be the timekeeper of record as takeoff and landing are secondary to when cargo is loaded/offloaded. The clock on the Commodities Screen should be captured after a ship's hold is full, and the final screenshot of the race will be the Station Services screen showing the time, pilot's location, credit balance and ship status.
"Honey, got no money, I'm all sixes and sevens and nines."
--CMDRs Richards, Jagger
To Enter:
Reply to this thread with your CMDR Name, Ship Name, Ship Type and Cargo Capacity
To Race:
- Research your route, find the one with the best commodities. Remember you can start and finish the race anywhere in Banapityas, and stop at any station when in U Carinae or Sounti.
- Open the Commodities Screen and take Screenshot #1 if not recording video. IMPORTANT: take this screenshot BEFORE you purchase cargo, or it will affect your starting balance/PPS rating in the end. Before purchase is also the start time of record for videographers, so purchase and launch quickly!
- Launch and head to either U Carinae or Sounti.
- Dock at any station and sell your goods. Load up your second haul, take the Second Screenshot of the Commodities screen.
- Return to Banapityas, dock at the station of your choice, sell your goods.
- Pick up your next order and take Screenshot #3 in the Commodities screen showing your payload.
- Fly to whichever system you have not visited and dock at the station of choice to sell your cargo. Pick up your final payload and take Screenshot #4 of the Commodities screen.
- Return to Banapityas and dock at the port of your choice. Land, and sell your final payload. Return to the station screen, Repair/Refuel/Restock All and take Screenshot #5, showing the time, location, and your credit balance.
- Use the SUBMIT TIME button to open the Official BRC Heavy Metal Submission Form (Link below the leaderboard) to enter your race details including the location of your screenshots. (Note if you take video but don't want to wait to encode and post it, play it back and take screenshots at the appropriate points.)
- Sit back, relax, and wait for the next Leaderboard Update. Or, if you think you can do better, run it again!
Another Note: Times/PPS will not be posted until the final day. A daily race report will indicate how close competitors are, and if a CMDR is particularly curious, he or she may PM ElectricZ on the forum for an exact number after submitting a time.
Ladies and Gentlemen, start your FSD's! And heavens help oncoming traffic in the slot...
How did we get here? The story behind Heavy Metal:
"The best ideas come out of bar bets. Who wants another drink?"
-- CMDR ElectricZ
Gather 'round, CMDRs, and listen to the tale of a little system called Banapityas where one of the most widely traded commodities is bad decisions. A thriving Agricultural/Refinery system with 1.5 billion people and a dozen ports of call, Banapityas is a hub for commerce in its sector. The refineries of nearby systems U Carinae and Sounti are hungry for metals from Banapityas as well as foodstuffs from Banapityas A5. In orbit of A5, Treshchov Ring is home to Mercurial Spirits, whose marketing strategy of churning out booze so corrosive it had to be bottled in recycled reactor shielding makes it the #2 export of the system. Incidentally, When serving drinks mixed with Mercurial Spirits, it is highly recommended to use official Buckyball Beer Mats, now available at the BRC home station of Rebuy Prospect, now open for business in the Fullerene C-60 system. (Rebuy Prospect - "Crash Here Anytime.")
Our story begins 12 April, 3303 with a Lakon Type-9 named Patience and her master, one CMDR Vikram Rando. Rando is your typical heavy hauler, more interested in a fat paycheck than fancy flying, who stopped in for a quick stop at a spacer pub called The Heat Sink while on turnaround at Treshchov. While alcohol is the catalyst for many unwise decisions throughout history, it's most potent when mixed with a splash of ego.
After CMDR Rando's 7th drink in his self-imposed 2-drink limit, his love of Patience proved too great to keep to himself. In an epic ten minute, alcohol infused soliloquy to his beloved Type-9, he proclaimed pilots of all other Lakons at the pub to be "no more significant than the ZP Haulers I scrape from my windscreen after every landing." Rando's loud proclamations caught the attention of CMDR Suze "The Fuze" Garber, master of the Lakon Type-6 Busted Flat II. Garber, herself fueled by equal parts pride, Mercurial Vodka, and the inherent jealousy of a freighter jock who can't afford a Type-9, accused Rando of hauling weapons-grade biowaste and stated that credit per credit, ton per ton, the ship with the best Commander at the helm would make the most profit, regardless of capacity, be it a Lakon Type Six, a Nine or a Tweleven. (Garber's speech had become somewhat slurred by this time.)
Rando focused on the leftmost of the three Garbers he could see and uttered those magic words any Buckyballer loves to hear. "Wanna bet?"
Bookies in Banapityas are giving odds on whether Rando or Garber even make it out of port, so to increase the betting action, they sent a collective invitation to the pilots of the BRC and anyone else interested in denting some landing pads.
And just to get this Buckyball rolling...
CMDR ElectricZ
"Magnum Errat"
Type 9
490t capacity
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(Yes, this is just an excuse because I've not got a name for my T6 yet!)
