Hey, this was only to prove my argument about how successful loop approaches can be!
And considering my chances to win this race are equal to zero if I don't even get a run in, I'd better try to daunt the competition to avoid having absolutely perfect unbeatable runs in the top slot* *I still have no idea how fast these times are, I really have to get racing asap.
Judging from how far in front of me Bruski, Polly and Arnul are relative to my runs (that even though were "just" the scouting ones, I recognize they weren't half bad), I can confidently say that you don't need to just race, you need to do it in proper cookiehole way to try and beat them.
Judging from how far in front of me Bruski, Polly and Arnul are relative to my runs (that even though were "just" the scouting ones, I recognize they weren't half bad), I can confidently say that you don't need to just race, you need to do it in proper cookiehole way to try and beat them.
Sounds good. Well, somewhat
Bookmarking the systems now, let's see how it goes
Formal intent to race:
CMDR Cookiehole
Free For All
DBX RATtlesnake
Edit: Done. Sorry about the last day submission, I don't really like doing my first run on the last day of the race but it has become a bit of a habit since winter semester started.
With less than five hours to go, it appears that Cookiehole has, well, done a Cookiehole... in Free For All, that is. The other podium places currently remain unchanged.
With less than five hours to go, it appears that Cookiehole has, well, done a Cookiehole... in Free For All, that is. The other podium places currently remain unchanged.
I left my "congrat's cookiehole" rubber stamp at home which is now about 300 miles away so you'll excuse me if I simply order another pint of Cornish best.
I left my "congrat's cookiehole" rubber stamp at home which is now about 300 miles away so you'll excuse me if I simply order another pint of Cornish best.
You haven't seen anything yet. Wait for the post race analysis wall-of-texts from the likes of cookie or Bruski, then you'll wish you knew a lot of other things before!
I'm currently uploading my entry from yesterday and will fill in the submission when it's ready. My attempt to do better this morning was unsuccessful due to my two worst supercruise approaches of the race squandering the time I gained from flying through the slot and not into it. I have no doubt that the 42 minute barrier could be broken with a clean run.
Considering I had to account for several unlucky pad assignments (one of which ending in an unavoidable pad 34), some little alignment issues with headtracking, having to answer a phone call during race (with headtracking on, fun stuff!), then said tracking dying just minutes later (battery ran out, justifying the alignment issues of before) during station approach (and no less than the pad 34 one!), I agree with the above estimate, very much so.
Well I did it knowing I would finish the race after the deadline; but I had to give it one more run - this time using all gravity braking and trying to be a bit cleaner on my station exits.
Knocked 3 minutes off my time, got it down to 46:32. Respectable, however the top dogs obviously have a few tricks up their sleeve I don't know.
I finished my run yesterday but haven't submitted it yet, won't get a chance to do that until tonight. Hope that is Ok. I don't think the board leaders need to feel threatened though, .
I'm currently uploading my entry from yesterday and will fill in the submission when it's ready. My attempt to do better this morning was unsuccessful due to my two worst supercruise approaches of the race squandering the time I gained from flying through the slot and not into it. I have no doubt that the 42 minute barrier could be broken with a clean run.
Considering I had to account for several unlucky pad assignments (one of which ending in an unavoidable pad 34), some little alignment issues with headtracking, having to answer a phone call during race (with headtracking on, fun stuff!), then said tracking dying just minutes later (battery ran out, justifying the alignment issues of before) during station approach (and no less than the pad 34 one!), I agree with the above estimate, very much so.
Possibly, but it would require a fair amount of luck/skilled timing with the gas giant SC approaches and no hyperspace exits on the wrong side of the star. I believe I could have pressed my time down to 43 min with a couple of more attempts.
Here's my bookmarks for the adder:
It's 3 jumps shorter than what the route planner suggested. Skipping refueling at Hamal probably saved a few seconds, the need to fill the tank to 80-90% at Serre cost a few. Of course, playing with the galaxy map instead of jumping as soon as possible also costs a couple of seconds, but thats unavoidable.
Regarding the DBX in the free-for-all, I lacked the range to make use of the white dwarfs between Ugraswar and LP 102, so it was run with the route planner as usual. My tactics here was that painting the ship pink would make it go faster.
Possibly, but it would require a fair amount of luck/skilled timing with the gas giant SC approaches and no hyperspace exits on the wrong side of the star. I believe I could have pressed my time down to 43 min with a couple of more attempts.
Looks a lot tidier than mine, and somehow this doesn't surprise me a bit.
Translated from Akenese to common Galactic, it reads approximately as follows:
000 - Starting point in Arthaiyati
01 - Arrival at Ugraswar stage, once there:
Full refuel
Reminder to manual plot to 01A after jumping in LP 920-2
Plot route to LP 102-320 (02)
Once in LP 920-2, manual selection to 01A
After jumping to 01A, open galmap to update plot to 02 from there (one jump saved compared to original plotting)
02 - Arrival at LP 102-320 stage:
Refuel to around 50%
Reminder to manual select to 02A immediately after plotting to 03, no intermediate jumps
After jumping to 02A, reopen galmap to update (another jump saved)
03 - Arrival at Hamal stage:
Refuel to around 40%
Reminder to manual select to 03A immediately after plotting to 04, no intermediate jumps
After jumping to 03A, reopen galmap to update to 04 (there goes another jump)
04 - Arrival at Buzhang Ku stage:
Full refuel, direct plot to Barathaona (no jumps saved)
05 - Arrival at Barathaona stage:
Refuel to 50%, automatic plotting to Serre (should have saved another jump, but not sure...I must have refueled at 50% for reasons)
06 - Arrival at Serre stage:
Refuel to around 70%, reminder to manual select to 06A after jumping in jkfghkdfhgk FB-X B1-0
From there, manual jump to 06B
Then, manual jump to 06C
Once there, galmap update to original plot to 000 (Start/end line, another jump saved)
07 - Arrival back at Arthayati, with an awful lot of fuel to spare:
Somewhere between the LP 102-320 and Hamal stages there was also the part about going AFK, grabbing the phone under charge on the wall behind you, returning to your seat just in time for not plunging into a star's corona, doing the acrobatics to keep the phone between your ear and shoulder and trying to see where you are going while at the same time giving coherent answers to your interlocutor (just for the record, it was my gf calling from her workplace, asking about the repairing costs of a broken smartphone display for a customer at their store, so I couldn't even just babble something and hang up ), then finally realising that you could just recline the whole upper body and shoulder in an awkward stance to keep phone upright together with the tracker, seconds before ending the call.
Talks about the advantages of a wireless head tracker ...ok, it died moments later anyway because I forgot to charge the battery and it was already working on fumes, but I'm the only one to blame for that. Still pulled off the only complete run after my first one at least.
Regarding the DBX in the free-for-all, I lacked the range to make use of the white dwarfs between Ugraswar and LP 102, so it was run with the route planner as usual.
Well, I initially went with the true and tested tactic of renaming mine to "Flaming Bucket Of Bolts", but then the cool factor when I entered crowded stations became unbearable for any passers-by, and I also had troubles managing boost speeds in excess of 1800+ m/s, so in the end I had to remove the "Flaming" part and revert back to the Bucket's shabby looks and 400 m/s boost speed.
After spending way more time in the planning than the execution for Regulation Adder I can say with a degree of confidence that without a fuel scoop it isn't possible to complete the course in the optimal number of jumps. We can, however, get quite close.
[size=+2]Routing[/size]
I trust the in-game route planner so little that I don't actually know many jumps it wants us to take. Using edts without the -l flag forbids it from calculating "long" jumps, ie jumps that aren't possible with a full tank, and gets us a good approximation of what the in-game planner would provide.
First we need to set up the FSD with: EDI> set_ship -f A3 -t 12 -m 49.5
Note that the unladen ship mass is 49.5T not the 50T rounded value as reported in the Coriolis summary line.
If we now add the -l flag and the -a flag to use our very own CMDR Alot's custom algorithm we see the best possible route. EDI> edts -a -l -r -o -s Arthaiyati -e Arthaiyati Ugraswar "LP 920-69" "LP 102-320" Hamal "Buzhang Ku" Barathaona Serre
So that's six whole jumps that could be saved assuming perfect fuel management. Some of the jumps can only be done with half-empty tanks. For instance for the Barathaona - Serre leg edts wants the first jump to be to Caill which can only be done with at most 2.57T of fuel. Clearly if we actually had 2.57T we wouldn't have enough fuel left over after that jump to complete the remaining two jumps to Serre.
We have a few tricks up our sleeve to handle this kind of situation. First we have the -x flag which will explicitly exclude a system from consideration in plotting.
EDI> edts -a -r -l -s Barathaona -e Serre -x Caill will offer a new route which happens to be even worse.
Our second trick is to use close_to in conjunction with the --direction flag to find a system which is roughly in the direction of the destination but within a more reasonable range. We can jump 25.08Ly on a full tank and 29.63Ly (to Caill) is too far away so we can look for systems within that range.
This gives a few candidates including CD-35 6972 and we can look for a route which goes via that system.
EDI> edts -a -r -l -s Barathaona -e Serre "CD-35 6972" proposes Barathaona - CD-35 6972 - Crucis Sector ZP-X b1-6 - Hydrae Sector BV-Y b4 - Serre which is 5 jumps. However CD-35 6972 is still 27.62Ly away from Barathaona so can't be reached with a full tank. The routing output showed that the jump can be done with no more than 6.34T in the tank so we use fuel_usage to check if the route is viable with less than that amount of fuel.
And sadly, no, it shows us that the second jump to Crucis Sector ZP-X b1-6 is impossible when carrying the 4.53T which would be left on arrival at CD-35 6972.
To cut a long story short it turns out that 6.08T is the right amount of fuel to do this leg in 4 jumps. Without fuel scooping capability we can only reach that amount of fuel by burning it on previous jumps, refueling some multiple of 10% at a station or receiving some multiple of 1T fuel limpets from a friendly Fuel Rat; I'm not even sure if the latter option would be allowed in the rules.
Despite employing all my tricks I was unable to come up with a way to arrive at Barathaona with (6.08 - n - 1.236m)T of fuel for any n number of limpets or m 10% refuels. I had to resign myself to doing the leg in 5 jumps.
As an aside if you're wondering why 10% of 12T works out to 1.236 it's because a refuel guarantees to fill the reserve tank and so is more than 10% in practice.
I also decided that Serre to Arthaiyati couldn't be done in the optimal 5 jumps.
That left a final route of:
Arthaiyati - Ugraswar: 3 jumps
Ugraswar - LP 102-320: 7 jumps
LP 102-320 - Hamal: 4 jumps
Hamal - Buzhang Ku: 3 jumps
Buzhang Ku - Barathaona: 4 jumps
Barathaona - Serre: 5 jumps (1 more than optimal)
Serre - Arthaiyati: 6 jumps (1 more than optimal)
In order to do it I'd need a 30% refuel at LP 102-320 and an additional 30% refuel at Hamal. The other legs would need a full refuel.
[size=+2]Preparation[/size]
Where possible we want to fight against the in-game planner as little as possible. Although edts may reveal an optimal route, if it differs from what the game wants us to do we need to click on bookmarks, type in system names, scroll the map around or do other evil hacks to get it working.
If the game's route is good enough, we'll use it. If it isn't, we'll use as much as we can. Taking the Serre to Arthaiyati leg as an example, it wants us to go via Hydrae Sector ZZ-Y b1 for the first jump. With edts we can see that it is possible to do a 6-jump leg via that system, so following the route that far makes sense.
For the next jump, however, we need to go to Hydrae Sector FB-X b1-2 instead. For that we can open the map immediately after arriving at the previous system, select a bookmark and choose a direct jump. By going for a single jump rather than a route plot we don't erase the route. When we arrive at the destination we open the map again and the game will automatically reroute to Arthaiyati.
Flying a scouting run of the whole route revealed that the automatic replot would start via Crucis Sector IC-U b3-3 and that it was a perfectly reasonable choice, so again I accepted it and moved to a bookmark only where necessary.
In total I needed seven manual jumps including two to the destination systems which were in range. At Wolf 12, my manual penultimate jump to Hamal, I had enough fuel to go straight to Hamal but the planner wanted me to do two jumps. Scrolling the map to the bookmark allowed me to go there directly.
[size=+2]Actually doing it[/size] The boring part. Anyone can fly a spaceship around. Spending hours micromanaging a database is much more fun.
The Regulation Adder is slow. So slow that a front or medium pad is the best choice for the race. In other races and other ships I tend to favour the rear pads so I can carry more speed into the station, and with enough distributor juice to boost out I wouldn't lose too much time starting further away from the exit.
In this race we can boost twice in the time it takes to escape masslock. Starting at the back becomes a disadvantage as the ship slowly drifts away at a painful 260m/s.
Unfortunately in my actual run I tried to get too clever at one of the stations. I was initially offered a pad which I didn't really want. I cancelled and re-requested docking permission only to get a pad at the back. When I cancelled that I got another rear pad and it was too late to change. Many seconds were lost.
[size=+2]Video[/size]
Edited highlights video with hyperspace, FSD charging and drifting towards and away from the station chopped out:
You haven't seen anything yet. Wait for the post race analysis wall-of-texts from the likes of cookie or Bruski, then you'll wish you knew a lot of other things before!
I did this one in 4. My force precognition powers must have failed me here. Possibly because I didn't wear my lightsaber. Won't make that mistake again.
Bleedin' Eck!! I didn't realise there was so much planning that could be done.
I sort of assumed that once Id turned refuelable stars only filter off, the galaxy map would suggest the quickest/shortest route. I see I have a lot to learn.
Out of interest how many here are running it on PS4? Not trying to make excuses, honest, still happy with my time, but things like the galaxy map and station services seem to take an age to load (especially when youre in a rush), do those running it on PC have the same issues?
Oh wait, yes you're in a perfect position to do so hahaha.
