Community Event / Creation Buckyball Racing Club Presents: Heavy Metal

[Jhyrryl]

Testing new trading approaches is worth it
One thing I haven't seen mentioned, how did people buy things at the station? I originally tried to land, hit "enter hangar" and complete buying before I got to the bottom so I could launch again immediately. I wasn't ever able to pull this off, so I ended up going all the way into the hangar, and then launching from there, which is a roundtrip of 45-50 seconds. However after some testing, I discovered if I traded while sitting on the pad, and then hit "launch" directly from the pad, I could get finished in as little as 30-35 seconds.

I normally navigate station UIs with mouse clicks, but after a few runs I re-familiarized myself with joystick-hat controls as a secondary mapping to the keyboard ones. That shaved at least 5 to 10 seconds off each station visit.

edit: specifically, a single-button BACK/EXIT command was tremendously more accurate and faster than moving focus around

 

[Alec Turner]

But, just for funzies, here's what the leaderboard would have looked like, taking cargo capacity into account by dividing Profit Per Second by cargo capacity:

Interesting, let's see ... instead of coming 13th I would have come .... hmmm, 13th. Brilliant! See, I told you that you should have weighted the scores!

I passed it along, Raiko, and he asked me to post this specially recorded video response!

http://i.imgur.com/dUem1TL.gif

I tell ya, it gets you right here, doesn't it?

This reminds me of Vinnie Jones in Lock Stock ... Bucky clearly found it an "emotional" experience.

Fly safe EZ, and thanks again ... for everything!

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

Interesting analysis and thoughts from @Bruski . [up]
I learned long ago from regular trading in my T9 that it was quicker to do my trading on the pad without entering the hangar and to just hit launch when done. I am faster with the mouse than using keypresses to navigate the menu but still clearly much slower than other people. Out of habit, on one or two runs I took screenshots of my arrival times on the pad and it was taking me 30-40 seconds just to get to the commodities screen and select the goods I wanted to sell. I think my new graphics drivers added a few seconds to that later in the race but I suspect that it is just that my laptop is slow that is causing me to have long loading times. This is one of the reasons I am thinking about getting a PS4 Pro this year - I know I'll be on a level playing field. In my T9 I tended to get pads 2 and 17 but occasionally 10 and 25 iirc during my runs but boosting out of the slot was not something I did because of traffic (the T6 was a different matter!). Hitting a small ship coming the other way would be fatal - you'd destroy it and get blown up by the station. I had a collision with an Asp on one run but was thankfully not doing 100m/s at the time - with the thrusters on the Extra Zero, her cruising speed is just over 90 m/s fully laden with 4 pips in ENG.
It was fun racing with you and I'll see you at the next race! o7

 

[furrycat]

For people who aren't so quick on the UI as the Bruskis of this world, selling while the ship enters the hangar and buying as it returns to the surface may work out quicker than trying to do the whole song and dance in one go then launching.

The latter is the absolute quickest if you physically can do it, of course.

For my own part my method was as soon as the station menu animation starts it was left hand off the throttle on to the stalwart Nostromo n52 pad, right hand off the joystick on to the mouse. Click on the market button, move mouse into the commodities listing, scroll down using the wheel on the pad (I hate and do not have a scrollwheel on my mouse) to the bottom keeping an eye out for something in the cargo column which I can sell. Mouse over to the sell button and keep the button down while moving over the submit icon ready to click as soon as all the widgets are unloaded. Then scroll to buy and repeat.

Military-grade fabrics were always at the bottom of the list so giving the scroll wheel a damn good thrashing would reach them with minimum effort or thinking required. The metals were a bit higher up so a sharp eye is needed to spot them and stop scrolling at the appropriate moment.

Finally while the right hand is prepping the click to confirm the transaction the left hand is back on the throttle ready to hit the back key out through the station menus and launch. Right hand back on the joystick and we're away.

The Warthog throttle has toggle switches at the bottom which are perfect for landing gear and cargo scoop. Perfect for immersion, that is. Having to take a hand off one of the controls to reach them isn't ideal for a fast takeoff or landing if I'm honest. I usually use the joystick hand for that since the throttle hand can be accelerating up and forward while the landing gear switch is switched.

 

[Bruski]

Sorry I was out this whole weekend at NewMexicon (local gaming convention)

Money's been your big booster, Polly... Bruski's been beating you on the clock. Leaving streaks of hull plating in the slot and on the pad are cutting into his profit. Suffice to say you two have the closest PPS of anybody this race after your last run.

We obviously use a different tactic. The interesting thing is that we get quite similar results in the end.
Still, I would think twice before buying a previously owned ship from him.
o7 Bruski!

If you aren't crashing you aren't trying, right?

o7 Polly

Speaking of which:


Type-9 for sale!
10 days old, <2000 LY
Overpowered 7A Thrusters
532 ton cargo capacity
Authentic "distressed" paint job!
Display your credibility and experience with the sexiest T-9 on the block, grooves carved into her hull from years of hard space-trucking experience.
No one will question your reputation as a real hauler when they see you lurch up in this ride!

Please Contact CMDR Bruski 505-050-5500
130m credits OBO

All I have to say is I think Big Haul Like That is my favorite ship name of the race and it's pained me to see it languishing in dock when every two-bit scurvy pirate has been calling it's name. Good luck, Cookie!

WHY?! WHY WOULD YOU EVER SAY THAT?!

But then, as the racing day came to a close... (dun dun DUN) Cookiehole happened. "Speak his name, and he appears," as the saying goes. Yesterday I offhandedly mentioned that the Cookiehole hysteria thing might have been bovine biowaste, but nope. Here he is, in the awesomely named Big Haul Like That, with a PPS of 115 over Furrycat's epic 500-ton run. He did it without a single cookiebot in sight, too. Huh, sorry I doubted everybody. I apparently made Cookiehole feel like he needed to prove something. My bad, y'all.

SEE?!

Racing T-9's was the favorite by far. You people are nuts.

He's so nice to us! Thanks ElectricZ.

Buckyballers roll overwhelmingly in open.

It's required for many of the races, and it's way more fun to see (and run into) other racers on the course, loading times be damned!

Congrat's to the winners and yeah, congrat's to the losers ... 'cos there are no losers in Buckyball right? just racers.

Exactly, just super cool racers.

Was hoping to manage another run yesterday but was exhausted after a day of 4 wheel buckyball like activities in RL - in which I faired similarly poorly lol.

Ah, I hope it was fun though! My race-related activity this weekend was a heavy metal LARP

Spoiler

(spot the spacebear)

I must confess that I still haven't memorized the landing pad positions so I tend to take whatever I'm assigned but I'm curious, did anyone who does know their pads favour those at the back of the station for this race (I say this having just watched a Darkfyre video that illustrates the classic overshoot and swing back around manoeuvre commonly associated with the Lakon traders).

I don't have most of the pads memorized (yet) but I ALWAYS keep Drakhyr's handy chart on my second monitor:

At this point I should really print it out and laminate it, maybe get a nice frame. It's so damn useful.

I've also made versions with only small pads:

Spoiler

And only large pads:

Spoiler

Reading a little would have prevented the loss of time and resources... As the names implies when you analyzes the name "Fast Boot Sequence"... means it start faster when disabled... not enhancing the charge time...
(As Cmdr furrycat posted in The Buckyballer's guide to Engineering....) [yesnod]
So that's why "I feel more or less the same"; because it is. [blah]

Yeah, that engineer upgrade needs to come with a big disclaimer "MOST USELESS MOD EVER". I feel its title is very misleading. Even though I should know better, I heavily considered it when planning out the mods for this race, then remembered what it actually did.

Thanks EZ for arranging this great race! o7

I'll only make a very short post-race report, partly because I'm on a secret mission until thursday, but mainly because furrycat just wrote everything worth writing.

The T9:
I hated this ship right from the start. But it kind of grows on you. Like a yeast infection.
I decided to use shields. It's quite common for me to bump into other things (including, but not limited to: belugas, stations, planets and other racers) when flying.
I am uncertain why I used a 5D shield when I could have used a 5A without any significant effect on speed and range. Spinal reflex, perhaps?
Since I got interdicted a lot (felt like that anyway) I used shock mines and heat sinks to avoid the rebuy screen.
Like furry, I checked the prices manually and found the military grade fabrics. This was my usual route:
Marshburn (Au) -> Teng (mil. grade fab.) -> Marshburn (Pd) -> Carpenter (crop harvesters) -> Treschov

Yeast infection is the best analogy. I loathed it the first few times I tried it, and now even though I still detest it's handling, I'm considering doing a Black Riband run just for the hell of it. Everyone should come bring theirs! It'll be FUN*!

*Dwarf Fortress style

After reading post #232 I spaced and shot (yes, in exactly that order) my freeloading crewmember.

Sounds like a reasonable course of action to me.

I'm picturing something like this:
[video=youtube;PP9eiXMPLcQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP9eiXMPLcQ[/video]

If a better pilot than myself could have shaved 5 minutes off my time (easily doable) with better profit (again, easily doable) they still wouldn't have threatened any of the top T-9 positions.

Dang, finding something like that is commendable for the effort alone. I'm really not sure 5 minutes could be saved. (although I think it's usually faster to supercruise away from planet for eclipse problems than add another jump, but that only would save like 10-20 seconds. I love the enterprising spirit though, no wonder I couldn't find any nerve agents!

 

[furrycat]

I don't have most of the pads memorized (yet)

Just remember my rule of paw:

SMALL pad you want the last digit to be 3, 4, 8 or 9.
LARGE pad you want 10, 25 or 40.
MEDIUM pad why are you flying a medium ship?

 

[Alec Turner]

I don't have most of the pads memorized (yet) but I ALWAYS keep Drakhyr's handy chart on my second monitor:

http://www.buckyballracing.org.uk/images/starport landing pads.jpg

At this point I should really print it out and laminate it, maybe get a nice frame. It's so damn useful.

I have it printed out, laminated and safely stored away on the shelf above my computer - where it does me no good whatsoever. One of the other problems I have is finding the number of the pad I've been given on the diagram in time to make a decision, cancel, re-apply and re-check without flying straight past (or into) the station. I had hoped that over time I would develop an innate sense of where all the pads were. Thus far this hasn't happened.

I've also been meaning to try out EDDI. I believe that it's possible to get it configured so that when you get assigned your pad number it will then say the pad's position out loud (i.e. "landing pad 38 is on the right, at the back of the station"). I have to say that would be absolutely awesome.

 

[superflyguy]

First up thanks to EZ for a great race and a few credits to boot! Pity i didn't get chance to try in anything other than T9. Congrats to everyone for having a whole truck load of fun, loved the videos and the post race analysis.

Yeast infection is the best analogy. I loathed it the first few times I tried it, and now even though I still detest it's handling, I'm considering doing a Black Riband run just for the hell of it. Everyone should come bring theirs! It'll be FUN*!

I've had the same lingering thought for a while now, but have never had the 'right' engineered modules. Maybe now is the time.


The pad alloaction chart is pinned up next to my monitor.

I've also been meaning to try out EDDI. I believe that it's possible to get it configured so that when you get assigned your pad number it will then say the pad's position out loud (i.e. "landing pad 38 is on the right, at the back of the station"). I have to say that would be absolutely awesome.

I can confirm this is possible. I, however, get terribly confused between being told that "landing pad 10 is at 4 o'clock as you enter with the green lights on your right". having navigated the toast rack i'm then left wondering did EDDI say 10 oclock or 4 oclock. Never let it be said that my attention span is short

<-lightspeed->

 

[AkenBosch]

At last, my T9 run (featuring my blazing fast starting maneuver, where I hit launch and immediately after that I open the map because curse me, right?):

[video=youtube_share;KCQD3InPjZk]https://youtu.be/KCQD3InPjZk[/video]

and my T7 run:

[video=youtube_share;dQXhBxQLU5c]https://youtu.be/dQXhBxQLU5c[/video]

No T6 run because I'm lazy.

 

[Rankaze]

Just remember my rule of paw:

SMALL pad you want the last digit to be 3, 4, 8 or 9.
LARGE pad you want 10, 25 or 40.
MEDIUM pad why are you flying a medium ship?

No one expects the racing Fer-de-Lance!

 

[Stern Winter]

[video=youtube_share;Nfg7Bs7GNSs]https://youtu.be/Nfg7Bs7GNSs[/video]

...after having been hampered by Belugas so many times in this race

- - - Updated - - -

[video=youtube_share;yMIw34mTXv0]https://youtu.be/yMIw34mTXv0[/video]
Hitching a ride in Edelgard von Rhein's T9 during one of her runs. Still haven't set up the Camera Suite properly due to borked keybinds.

 

[Stern Winter]

No one expects the racing Fer-de-Lance!

No-one expects the racing T9 either

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

https://youtu.be/Nfg7Bs7GNSs

...after having been hampered by Belugas so many times in this race

- - - Updated - - -

https://youtu.be/yMIw34mTXv0
Hitching a ride in Edelgard von Rhein's T9 during one of her runs. Still haven't set up the Camera Suite properly due to borked keybinds.

An interesting change of perspective to see one of my runs from the gunnery chair, thanks for posting this!
I did not get the 'bounce' that you saw when leaving supercruise arriving at a station but otherwise it was pretty similar (although that encounter with the Asp Explorer seemed closer from my perspective - I thought I had actually hit it). The ranks in the multicrew summary screen were off for both of us: yours showed Elite in combat and trade and mine showed Dangerous in combat and Elite in trade... I don't think it affected your trading bonds, though - those should be a flat 5% regardless of rank, which from the credits shown you received correctly.

 

[Rankaze]

No-one expects the racing T9 either

Especially not the poor NPC's in the mail slot.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, that engineer upgrade needs to come with a big disclaimer "MOST USELESS MOD EVER". I feel its title is very misleading. Even though I should know better, I heavily considered it when planning out the mods for this race, then remembered what it actually did.

It actually does have a use! It's for Vipers and Eagles who don't have enough power to keep the FSD running while their hardpoints are deployed but still need to bug out in a hurry if things turn ugly (like, oh, accidentally shooting the cops at a RES). Would have saved my skin a couple of times if it had been available back when I was a Viper jockey.

 

[Alec Turner]

https://youtu.be/yMIw34mTXv0
Hitching a ride in Edelgard von Rhein's T9 during one of her runs. Still haven't set up the Camera Suite properly due to borked keybinds.

This is something I really wanted to do (and still do so don't be surprised in the next race if I start asking people if I can tag along with my camera). Couple of quick questions ... do you think those appalling drop from SC times were caused by your multi-crewing? I was curious why you didn't seem to use the external camera at all while in supercruise ... is it not possible?

 

[Stern Winter]

This is something I really wanted to do (and still do so don't be surprised in the next race if I start asking people if I can tag along with my camera). Couple of quick questions ... do you think those appalling drop from SC times were caused by your multi-crewing? I was curious why you didn't seem to use the external camera at all while in supercruise ... is it not possible?

1. Perhaps.
2. It is, but as I was assigned gunnery duty, I thought it best to only use it while docking/undocking.

 

[AkenBosch]

This is something I really wanted to do (and still do so don't be surprised in the next race if I start asking people if I can tag along with my camera).

And this was also one amongst the reasons why you see an Adder as the signature ship (and of course "regulation" class) on my upcoming race banner...pity I then discovered that SRV deploying is disabled in multicrew (I planned this waaay before 2.3 was even in beta), so if you plan on doing camerawork, just remember to disband the crew before landing on the planet!

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

This is something I really wanted to do (and still do so don't be surprised in the next race if I start asking people if I can tag along with my camera). Couple of quick questions ... do you think those appalling drop from SC times were caused by your multi-crewing? I was curious why you didn't seem to use the external camera at all while in supercruise ... is it not possible?

The SC drop times for this run were slightly worse than was typical for me in this race. Anything on the order of ten seconds is common for me but it can often be much longer, whilst drop times of 5 secs or less are unusual (although more common at times of low network traffic). They are loading screens, so I guess that it just takes my machine longer to load in most cases. I have been able to get near-instant drops, notably for one of the stations in Advanced Options, and time of day and network traffic have a part to play as well. I would think that if I joined someone else's ship, then it would slow them down as I suspect the helm's ship would not be dropped into the instance until synchronised with the other crew members, so the loading speed will be that of the slowest crewman, with a bit extra for the network to co-ordinate everything.

 

[cookiehole]

Wall of Comments

Well, finally I've got some time again to finally do that final post. Better very late than never, right?
Considering my somewhat underwhelming performance in this event it's also going to be more of a reply/commentary post than a solid race analysis (especially since pretty much everything has already been said)

http://www.stevietee.co.uk/images/headsmack.jpg
Ditto ... I can't even remember her name, some free-loader I felt sorry for because she'd competed in the Mischief Mile. Been on my pay role for months, don't even know where she is at the moment. I may have to let her go if she doesn't start pulling her weight soon.

Same here, I even got two of these Crewmembers (at least they're both harmless). I had already wondered why my profits were a couple of thousands lower than what eddb suggested, despite the profit per ton values being the same...

Excellent race analysis

I agree on all of the flying-aspects and now have learned a lot about trading (shame on me, I used to do a lot of that back in the days).

It was frustrating to realise I missed out on victory because of an interdiction but that's racing. It's happened to all of us before and will happen to all of us again.

I feel really bad about this! First because I didn't have one single interdiction in this race (ok, I did only 4 attempts, but still) and second because your more sophisticated route-planning and especially that blazingly fast T9-time (hats off!) make you deserve this win much more than my relatively standart run!

[...]
Load from BANAPITYAS/Marshburn Dock, 532 x Gold
Load from SOUNTI/Teng Station, 532 x Mineral Extractors
Load from BANAPITYAS/Marshburn Dock, 532 x Palladium
Load from U CARINAE/Carpenter Gateway, 532 x Crop Harvesters
Unload at BANAPITYAS/Treshchov Ring
[...]

I did exactly the same route with all ships, except for starting at Tuan Port (which didn't make any difference to Marshburn in this case). When I planned my T6 run I forgot to disable the pad size filter in eddb and didn't realize that I could have gone much faster with outposts until after the run. I would have attempted another Run with Yegorov-Teng-Yegorov-Carpenter-Yegorov wich would have yielded slightly higher profit with probably much shorter docking times but didn't have enough time.

[...]
Testing new trading approaches is worth it
One thing I haven't seen mentioned, how did people buy things at the station? I originally tried to land, hit "enter hangar" and complete buying before I got to the bottom so I could launch again immediately. I wasn't ever able to pull this off, so I ended up going all the way into the hangar, and then launching from there, which is a roundtrip of 45-50 seconds. However after some testing, I discovered if I traded while sitting on the pad, and then hit "launch" directly from the pad, I could get finished in as little as 30-35 seconds.
[...]

I tested the different turnaround/trading approaches aswell and also found the surface-to-launch the fastest one for me. The pad turnaround times vary significantly, on a large pad it's approx. 47 s for a hangar-launch, 14 s for a surface-launch and 25 s for a mixed launch (hangar and then hitting "launch" on the way down). My fastest trade turnaround was 32 s with a mixed launch, but I barely managed to pull that one off in time, so I stuck with an average 38 s surface-launch after that. As pointed out by someone earlier though it really depends on how fast you are in the menus (I didn't really have a good strategy for that) and thus each of the turnaround methods can have its own advantages.


Additional stuff
Spreadsheet

Videos:
T6
T7
T9

Loadouts are in the spreadsheet. I didn't have any engineering on the T7 due to time constraints.
Lessons learned: Don't meticulously analyze SC times for stations you're not going to use at all if you don't have much time.

Thanks for a very fun race EZ and a very entertaining race thread everyone!
I'm sad I could only take part during the last two days (and I was pretty lucky that these were days with high trade profits), but it has been great fun following the action in the forum during the week and racing the cows was a challenging and welcome change from the fast ships. See you all at the next race!

 

[AkenBosch]

my somewhat underwhelming performance

*my somewhat underwhelming performance*

Mid-pack crowd, light your pitchforks and sharpen your torches!