Out of Fuel? - Explorer Rescue Service, The Fuel Rats
- Thread starter Surly_Badger
- Start date
Loot drop from Surly is amazing. Think we may just win the "Best Loot" award this year! 
Hull repair limpets and limpet synthesis confirmed!
Should I be driving down there in my DWE t-shirt or something?
News at Lavecon: repair limpets in future version. "That'll buff out"
ninja'd! I'm not just old, I'm slow.
ninja'd! I'm not just old, I'm slow.
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calling all fuel rats ... I have an unusual rescue mission involving your very own Mr Brentnall who's head is curremtly so big that he's become lodged inside the Lavecon LAN room ...
Fuel Rat trainer: aced it!
Game Cab docking challenge: current winner
Lavecon Buckyball 2017: current winner
RATSIGNAL!
Fuel Rat trainer: aced it!
Game Cab docking challenge: current winner
Lavecon Buckyball 2017: current winner
RATSIGNAL!
Do they repair your windscreen too?
Low hull is kinda not useful to repair, as 1% means your ship can still be totally operational. While a busted windscreen is a life-or-death situation as your O2 leaks out.
Synthesis could be cool, it means you could be doing stuff without any limpets, and just a controller, and make limpets on the fly. Hope the grind isn't too bad...
EDIT: oh and FSD / thrusters too, for those odd times a CMDR has face-planted so bad they can't repair anything. I did think FDev previously said "repair limpets", so just hull is actually disappointing if so focused.
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Frontier Rat!
As if he hadn't had enough praise this weekend for cleaning up in the race awards I just wanted to tell you guys that Alex Brentnall (and everyone on the other end of the IRC) have been frickin' heroes this weekend basically manning the Fuel Rat stand single handedly with a constant tide of wannabe rats from dawn until dusk on both days. Well played sir, very well played indeed.
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I don't see how that'd work once it was shattered out.
Although a paint-and-squeegee limpet ought to be available for Imperial Cutters/Clippers. Because!
Yeah, I have officially played too many games for too many hours... Buckyball race, docking challenge, Artemis. Pretty much everything I had time to join inbetween the fuel rat event I won so I guess it was a good job I didn't have time to do anything more!
[Essay]
What we did and feedback:
For those that didn't follow. Lavecon is a IRL convention at Northampton UK for fans of Elite and sci-fi in general which FDev join in with. The Fuel Rats had an event in the lan room which was basically a standard fuel rat drill but involving a tactical faceplant into the star and a code-red scenario. The upside being we had myself and a few other rats alongside in person coaching the players through it.
This worked fantastically well with a 100% success ratio and some frankly amazing results. o2 timers started at 25 minutes around the Fr+ time and once the wrong system and navlock failed issues had been sorted and the TFP completed the timer scores were mostly between 8 minutes and 16 minutes left!
Each participant was "secretly" marked on: Experience level, skill/style, communications, time left on o2 timer and Execution of TFP. Very few dared to do both the flying and the irc chat so I handled that for most people, however, the best TFP drops were 500m, 700m, 1km, 1km and 3km. And none of these players had ever done a TFP before!! Worst was a few Mm but moving to 3km on the 2nd attempt.
We had many good comments on the process being a lot more challenging than they thought and a lot more adrenaline pumping than expected. Lots said it was highly enjoyable being a completely different way to play the game than they usually do... And deliberately flying into a star was a little un-nerving for more than a few people.
Over the 2 days we ran 22 players through the challenge including Steve Kirby from FDev. Each time there was up to 15 people stood behind watching and asking questions so the audience was much larger than the number appears. Several are interested in joining to some extent so if you see any pop in over the next few weeks do take care of them as I know you will!
Winners:
1st) Cmdr Nyxa Lovell - Best all around attempt
2nd) Cmdr D Sinclair - Best style/skill award
3rd) Cmdr Just Call Me Wendy (Steve Kirby FDev) - Tagline "I know what I'm doing"
4th) Cmdr Zulu Romeo - Excellent run with a focus on control and accuracy
Honorable mentions:
Cmdr Taz101 - Great control skill and style, speedy and efficient but just didn't quite nail the drop at the end with ~3km
Cmdr Myshka - Same as above, ~1km drop
Very hard to separate the top 3, in short it was rather a close event in the end, as I said some amazing results.
Thanks and further feedback:
Yes as Alec said massive praise goes to Masterloon, Watar, Demfloro, Adanaran for helping run the #laverats channel as damsels and dispatchers. A big thanks in particular Brother Sabathius who ran almost all the damsel side of things on both days with lots of brandy, humor and generally powered through one after the other. I was foolishly worried that I'd be sat there with a queue of people and nobody available on the irc but that was never the case so thank you for that!
(sorry for anyone I miss on the thank you lists, there was lots of things happening and alcohol involved)
Had some really positive comments throughout both days about the event and the rats in general and quite a few "thank yous" from people we've helped in the past.
A thanks again to the tech-rats for getting the channel up just for us to run the event in and sorting the bot. There were many comments on how well the !search function works and general amazement at how automated and sophisticated fuel ratting has become. (On the Saturday I was sat with one player where we just watched a live rescue take place in #fuelrats and he was literally stunned at the whole dispatching and general process).
There were also many who I quickly showed the Confluence help pages to who were amazed at all the background reading material, statistics page, leader-board stats etc. A common question was asking how busy we are and as the leaderboard shows about 30-40 rescues a day surprised many people.
The short answer is, lots and lots of people know about the Fuel Rats but many don't know much beyond the "who we are" and "what we do". Showing a basic bit of behind the scenes was a pretty great eye-opener for many people.
More thanks to Alec Turner, Uvelius Sang and Surly Badger also get a huge thanks from me for the frankly amazing artwork, advertisements printing and loot/prizes. (I think we won the unofficial "best free loot competition" too!).
Many people were determined to get their hands on the certificate, I still have a good 15 left, not sure what to do with them but I may be able to get them posted out to people if anyone wants one sent their way.
Thanks to Yujo Kameida as well for distributing the loot, stickers like it was his life's calling on the Saturday!
Finally lots of people including the devs asked if we would be branching into repair limpets. I could only answer: "I'd be surprised if we didn't"... So no pressure guys!
Personal reflection:
In short this event would have not been at all the same without all of you and it turned out pretty fantastic. It was great to see you all again as well, hopefully I'll be around next year, maybe more of the same again.
Anyone that was there will tell you I spent a lot of time talking at a rapid pace helping people through the event and the rest of the time running around between things and the bar! Despite the "workload" I did find it highly enjoyable.
Suggestions:
1) From a player looking at Confluence: It's very wordy, one thing that may help is a bullet point step-step guide for rats in certain scenarios like the TFP, the CRs etc that can be used as a quick reference guide for anyone that hasn't trained in the obscure events.
This may already exist but being truthful I probably don't know half of what's on confluence
2) Next year at Lavecon we should consider doing a "Dispatcher training" challenge where we can add more and more clients in until the participant breaks under the pressure
Not sure how this would work as dispatching isn't a simple process... I'll have a think over the next 12 months and see what I can come up with.One thing I'd love to do is have them dispatch whilst the rat and damsel both stream on a 2nd/3rd screen so they can watch a drill rescue in real time whilst dispatching it.
I also want to get a large vertical screen with the #fuelrats channel up so anyone wandering by can watch any live rescues over the weekend happen in real time as a lot of people were interested in that.
[/essay]
Side note: Big props to the Buckyball racers too, helped make this a very enjoyable weekend. You are awesome!
Side note 2: I have not tons but a significant amount of loot left if anyone is visiting any Elite related events in the UK I can send a care package of stickers and badges, let me know.
Tl: dr - Epic weekend!
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Somewhere north of 63K if memory serves.
Thanks Alex for organizing the event! It was a great idea, and it executed marvelously. Very fun to watch the Laverat rescues happen
Great, I was curious if I were to run out while exploring if there was an option to get service along the edge (say the Abyss) or something if fuel scoopable stars gets rare. That's good to know then, though might take a long time to get out there...
Alex, you did an epic job there, and I enjoyed being the Damsel a lot. I'd love to get there in person next year.
My moment of carelessness left me stranded in Grie Flye UY-N b40-0 (53kly from Sol). It took nearly three whole days before I got rescued (it would've been two but I had real life gubbins to deal with and really couldn't stay up an extra hour to get it done on the second day). So, yeah, if you drop the ball that far out it'll take a while but nowhere near as long a while as you might be imagining...
If you've run out of fuel you're basically at the top of a drainpipe and "rat up a drainpipe" is a thing people say for a reason.
Well at least there is hope and that way I wouldn't lose my exploration data at all since I'm actually not that super far from where you were rescued (I'm currently in Byooe Chraea RZ-Z c0)...