The T-10 did a run in full combat fit. I hit every toast rack. The size 4 scoop hurt me, forgetting to buy gas hurt me, getting masslocked by a belt right before countdown hurt me twice. I glitched into the block at the end of the pad once and met two race fans. It wasn't a good time, but it was fun! I kinda wish I'd practiced first since I hadn't flown the thing in months... Over an hour, but I was giggling the whole way.
Community Event / Creation Buckyball Racing Club presents: On The Rocks 20-27 August 3304
- Thread starter Ozric
- Start date
Squeezed a run in at the last Minute with Beast of America. Felt good, hopefully it does well. I didn't have timers or checkpoints or facecam set up, but I'm uploading my recording now, the approaches for this one has some interesting twists I didn't expect. 
Unedited video, race starts at 2:40ish
[video=youtube_share;58rvxhilj1o]https://youtu.be/58rvxhilj1o[/video]
Unedited video, race starts at 2:40ish
[video=youtube_share;58rvxhilj1o]https://youtu.be/58rvxhilj1o[/video]
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Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
And here we are, we've reached the end
Bucky is much happier than he was a week ago. Not only does he now have enough supplies of fresh water to keep his customers happy for a long time, he has started having some replies from a couple of the Asteroid Bases that the racers have been visiting in particular Jack's Town (who are very happy to establish a trade route and joint partnership) and Freeholm (who aren't happy with the East India Company's performance).
The bar is full of racers once again sharing their stories of the events that have taken place over the last week, and boy are there some stories to tell. Not even Bucky was expecting to see a fully combat fitted Type-10 Defender scrape it's way through the mailslot.
There's been movers and shakers all over the board, we'll start first with the Regulation Dolphin. There was only one new entry in this class and it was from Cmdr. von Rhein, who had turned his attention from Open Unlimited. This run was done as part of the wing flights that took place yesterday, and from right near the beginning Edelgard could see that his wingmates were heading in a different direction to him. Edelgard was one of the few pilots who didn't head to Nu Tauri first and instead headed to Othime, he did this because he could get 2 White Dwarf jumps in along the way, saving him a jump. Then stopping at Jack's Town as the penultimate stop, so that the last was Nu Tauri before heading back home, and managing to catch another White Dwarf boost on the way. Making the Dolphin run, 1 less jump that his Python in Open Unlimited.
Impressive thinking and route plotting. He was rewarded with a time that put him into second place on the leaderboard. As there were no more submissions then the final standings are:
First Place: Darplata94
Second Place: Edelgard von Rhein
Third Place: Inga Stevenson
And now on to the Open Unlimited Class where we saw a few more entries. First in and another Cmdr. who took part in the Wing flights from yesterday (though this was from earlier in the day) was a maiden entry from Cmdr. ZX Spectrum. Rumours of sightings of him at Rebuy Prospect had come in from other Cmdrs on the course and so I knew to expect something. His run was a very impressive time and it was good enough to slot him into second place at the time of submission... Only he knows where he would have ended up had the recording software in his ship done the job for the faster run...
Next up was an entry from Cmdr. Phelbore. Now this entry was from a couple of days ago, but through disturbance in the space time continuum, it took a while to get to me. The entry was notable for being the first time (I realise I've said this before and been wrong both times, so I'm prepared to be wrong again) a Type-10 Defender has been run in a Buckyball race! Fully combat fitted too, stylish! What would you expect from a run like this, he has already listed some of his woes above, but at least no one was going to get in the way of a T-10 hurtling towards the station! And while his initial time may well have been over an hour, having a jump range of 23.82Ly means that 4 minutes 30 seconds are subtracted from the time, pushing him below the one hour mark. o7 Cmdr.
Next we had a second submission from Cmdr. J Fox. Maybe he knew that assaults were being made to the top of the leaderboard, or maybe he just knew he could get it a bit better. There were a lot of struggles near the start of the day, but then suddenly everything seemed to click. He was in the zone and in the end got close to what he thought was the perfect run, something very few Buckballers manage to achieve. His very impressive time of 26 minutes 46 seconds means that even after adding the Equaliser penalty, he was still in the low 31's and it pushed him up into top spot!
Next I received word on the sub ether radio, that an attempt from Bruski was on it's way to me. I'm not sure whether it's sickening, or just mighty impressive, how well Bruski did considering he only did one run! But then that's why he's consistently at or near the top of the leaderboards. The video from above says all it needs to say really, it was a very good run with a few adjustments... But while it was good enough to put him into second place ahead of our long standing leader, it was not enough to better Jay's time!
First Place: J Fox
Second Place: Bruski
Third Place: Darplata94
I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who took part in this race, especially those who made sacrifices to come back to the bubble to take part, and also all of the new racers! I must say I'm very impressed by how well all of the new racers did, not one of them should be ashamed at all for the times they achieved, and hopefully it has given them a taste to want to come back for more. It was also nice to see racers who haven't raced in a while coming back, and seeing they'd not forgotten how to do things in style.
A last special mention to Darplata94, who lead both categories from pretty much the whole week, only to be toppled from the lead in Open Unlimited on the last day (I know that feeling!), but managed to hold on to the lead in the Regulation Dolphin class.
Thanks again everyone, I hope you had a good time on the race. I honestly didn't expect it to be this popular, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Let the analysis begin!
I'm actually really happy with the way the Equaliser worked out, there's definitely potential there if we can refine it a bit to work with the smaller massed ships. If the race didn't involve carrying cargo then it might not have been a hindrance for them, but the fact that there's such a spread of ships on the leaderboard is encouraging. Plus not a single DBX or Asp-X My mission is complete
Bucky is much happier than he was a week ago. Not only does he now have enough supplies of fresh water to keep his customers happy for a long time, he has started having some replies from a couple of the Asteroid Bases that the racers have been visiting in particular Jack's Town (who are very happy to establish a trade route and joint partnership) and Freeholm (who aren't happy with the East India Company's performance).
The bar is full of racers once again sharing their stories of the events that have taken place over the last week, and boy are there some stories to tell. Not even Bucky was expecting to see a fully combat fitted Type-10 Defender scrape it's way through the mailslot.
There's been movers and shakers all over the board, we'll start first with the Regulation Dolphin. There was only one new entry in this class and it was from Cmdr. von Rhein, who had turned his attention from Open Unlimited. This run was done as part of the wing flights that took place yesterday, and from right near the beginning Edelgard could see that his wingmates were heading in a different direction to him. Edelgard was one of the few pilots who didn't head to Nu Tauri first and instead headed to Othime, he did this because he could get 2 White Dwarf jumps in along the way, saving him a jump. Then stopping at Jack's Town as the penultimate stop, so that the last was Nu Tauri before heading back home, and managing to catch another White Dwarf boost on the way. Making the Dolphin run, 1 less jump that his Python in Open Unlimited.
Impressive thinking and route plotting. He was rewarded with a time that put him into second place on the leaderboard. As there were no more submissions then the final standings are:
First Place: Darplata94
Second Place: Edelgard von Rhein
Third Place: Inga Stevenson
And now on to the Open Unlimited Class where we saw a few more entries. First in and another Cmdr. who took part in the Wing flights from yesterday (though this was from earlier in the day) was a maiden entry from Cmdr. ZX Spectrum. Rumours of sightings of him at Rebuy Prospect had come in from other Cmdrs on the course and so I knew to expect something. His run was a very impressive time and it was good enough to slot him into second place at the time of submission... Only he knows where he would have ended up had the recording software in his ship done the job for the faster run...
Next up was an entry from Cmdr. Phelbore. Now this entry was from a couple of days ago, but through disturbance in the space time continuum, it took a while to get to me. The entry was notable for being the first time (I realise I've said this before and been wrong both times, so I'm prepared to be wrong again) a Type-10 Defender has been run in a Buckyball race! Fully combat fitted too, stylish! What would you expect from a run like this, he has already listed some of his woes above, but at least no one was going to get in the way of a T-10 hurtling towards the station! And while his initial time may well have been over an hour, having a jump range of 23.82Ly means that 4 minutes 30 seconds are subtracted from the time, pushing him below the one hour mark. o7 Cmdr.
Next we had a second submission from Cmdr. J Fox. Maybe he knew that assaults were being made to the top of the leaderboard, or maybe he just knew he could get it a bit better. There were a lot of struggles near the start of the day, but then suddenly everything seemed to click. He was in the zone and in the end got close to what he thought was the perfect run, something very few Buckballers manage to achieve. His very impressive time of 26 minutes 46 seconds means that even after adding the Equaliser penalty, he was still in the low 31's and it pushed him up into top spot!
Next I received word on the sub ether radio, that an attempt from Bruski was on it's way to me. I'm not sure whether it's sickening, or just mighty impressive, how well Bruski did considering he only did one run! But then that's why he's consistently at or near the top of the leaderboards. The video from above says all it needs to say really, it was a very good run with a few adjustments... But while it was good enough to put him into second place ahead of our long standing leader, it was not enough to better Jay's time!
First Place: J Fox
Second Place: Bruski
Third Place: Darplata94
I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who took part in this race, especially those who made sacrifices to come back to the bubble to take part, and also all of the new racers! I must say I'm very impressed by how well all of the new racers did, not one of them should be ashamed at all for the times they achieved, and hopefully it has given them a taste to want to come back for more. It was also nice to see racers who haven't raced in a while coming back, and seeing they'd not forgotten how to do things in style.
A last special mention to Darplata94, who lead both categories from pretty much the whole week, only to be toppled from the lead in Open Unlimited on the last day (I know that feeling!), but managed to hold on to the lead in the Regulation Dolphin class.
Thanks again everyone, I hope you had a good time on the race. I honestly didn't expect it to be this popular, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Let the analysis begin!
I'm actually really happy with the way the Equaliser worked out, there's definitely potential there if we can refine it a bit to work with the smaller massed ships. If the race didn't involve carrying cargo then it might not have been a hindrance for them, but the fact that there's such a spread of ships on the leaderboard is encouraging. Plus not a single DBX or Asp-X
My mission is complete
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Great race Ozric (even tho I only had a couple of days to run it), such a challenging bunch of supercruise approaches! (even Rebuy Prospect actually ... I love the fact that the home of Buckyball Racing is so easy to accidentally overshoot ... or is that just me?).
And so you should be, that worked brilliantly - look at the spread - Orca/Viper/iCourier/Cobra/Chieftain/Corvette all within 6 mins of each other! Not to mention a T10!
Post race analysis? Fix the damn route plotter FD so it can plot for my current weight!
I'm actually really happy with the way the Equaliser worked out, there's definitely potential there if we can refine it a bit to work with the smaller massed ships. If the race didn't involve carrying cargo then it might not have been a hindrance for them, but the fact that there's such a spread of ships on the leaderboard is encouraging. Plus not a single DBX or Asp-X
And so you should be, that worked brilliantly - look at the spread - Orca/Viper/iCourier/Cobra/Chieftain/Corvette all within 6 mins of each other! Not to mention a T10!
Post race analysis? Fix the damn route plotter FD so it can plot for my current weight!
I enjoyed this race very much, thank you Ozric for organising.
Congratulations to
Congratulations to
J Fox and Darplata94 for winning their respective classes.
Thanks Ozric! Great race!!
Nice seeing so many different ships taking part. The equalizer was well thought, and it was difficult to take advantage of it.
Congrats to the winners! [yesnod]
Next time I'll try to fly more rude... It's not very BRC to race without shields, and finish with 100% hull, and more than 10% fuel.
Nice seeing so many different ships taking part. The equalizer was well thought, and it was difficult to take advantage of it.
Congrats to the winners! [yesnod]
Next time I'll try to fly more rude... It's not very BRC to race without shields, and finish with 100% hull, and more than 10% fuel.
I'm actually really happy with the way the Equaliser worked out, there's definitely potential there if we can refine it a bit to work with the smaller massed ships. If the race didn't involve carrying cargo then it might not have been a hindrance for them, but the fact that there's such a spread of ships on the leaderboard is encouraging. Plus not a single DBX or Asp-X
Thanks for the race, Ozric! And great work on that Equaliser, though as you said, there's room for improvement when it comes to low mass ships (Haulier than Thou lost nearly ten light years when it was full of Buckyball Beer Mats!)
Congrats to the winners, the newcomers, and everyone who raced against that clock!
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
Yeah I'm sure that people cleverer than I could iron out the details for the lower mass ships, I hadn't actually considered that carrying cargo would impact anywhere near as much as it did.
Nice!
Race analysis:
I'm able to do reasonably fast supercruise approaches. I'm rather underwhelming at fast docking. But I'm pretty decent at jumping, fuel scooping and route planning. All that shouldn't come as a surprise, given that I spend most of my time in this game in exploration with my trusty Eagle Explorer.
That said, I went a lot back and forth in my approach to the best route. I've pretty right from the start considered adding fuel to keep the jump range down. I've experimented a bit and in the end, my winning run did involve some manual plotting, but nowhere as extreme as Alec was trying. (How did you actually plan to use up all those 100 tons of fuel? I didn't need more than 65.) My route therefore involved only select manual plotting to minimise the risk of running afoul the galaxy map UI. Longest jump was a tad over 50 lightyears. That had the side-effect that I actually went to Jack's Town first. But then, I didn't really care whether it's 4 or 9 tons of cargo I'm shuttling around.
The rest was just me being silly, or unaccustomed to the fast that the Orca might be quite speedy in theory, but it sure doesn't like changing direction. Heat and scooping was a non-issue (naturally). On the other hand, I was constantly confused by my changes to the route due to me trying out a different cargo setup. (I more than once chose a target, only to realise that it belonged to the wrong ship setup.)
By the way: I also considered using that neutron star 80 lightyears from Fullerence C60, but it's just too much in the wrong direction.
The Equaliser:
In short words: Interesting and fun mechanic, but very much misnamed.
In a race, you've got three different parts: Docking, supercruise and interstellar travel. Different races weight each differently (typically weighing the first two against the third). For each part, some ships are better than others. For docking, you want the fast and agile ships. Supercruise is mostly easy: Big ships are bad, small ships are good. And for interstellar travel you want those with long jump range.
An Anaconda can eat those parsecs like no other, but an asteroid changes direction quicker and overtakes it while doing so. A Viper turns circles around fighters, but just flat out ignores you at the suggestion of jumping more than 40 lightyears. An Asp Explorer jumps quite well, and can dance in supercruise. But only a station wall can stop it in normal space. An Imperial Courier is King of speed and has a decent jump range, but turn the nose around and you have to wait a long time to see that station door come closer. A Diamondback Explorer is ... well, the slow fuel scoop is an interesting weakness, but chances are that it doesn't really come to play in anything but a long-distance race. Oh, it's not very fast either.
As soon as you have some larger interstellar distances in a race, the jumping tends to outweigh the other two parts -- unless there are many stops on the way. I guess most Buckyball races tend to involve quite some distance. However, the Equaliser just flat out took away the jumping part and only supercruise and docking remained. That's not an equaliser, it's a disqualifier. This is not criticism, as I believe everybody likes to see something else than a Diamondback Explorer as the winner. But one should be very clear, that the Viper Mk3 was easily the best ship for this job, followed by the likes of Imperial Courier, Eagles, and so on. (And the Imperial Clipper, but it wouldn't have survived Freeholm.)
What I'm saying is that it did not create a level playing field. It just made another type of ships the winner. And as it happens, Elite has more ships that cater to this type than it has good jumpers.
In any case. I haven't yet planned my next sightseeing trip through the Milky Way (although I still have unfinished business with the Sagittarius Arm and of course the Scutum Arm always beckons me), so I'll probably show up for the odd race again in the coming weeks. Thanks a lot for organising it, Ozric. I'm still surprised that my initial joke of racing this in an Orca actually turned out to ... well, work.
Race analysis:
I'm able to do reasonably fast supercruise approaches. I'm rather underwhelming at fast docking. But I'm pretty decent at jumping, fuel scooping and route planning. All that shouldn't come as a surprise, given that I spend most of my time in this game in exploration with my trusty Eagle Explorer.
That said, I went a lot back and forth in my approach to the best route. I've pretty right from the start considered adding fuel to keep the jump range down. I've experimented a bit and in the end, my winning run did involve some manual plotting, but nowhere as extreme as Alec was trying. (How did you actually plan to use up all those 100 tons of fuel? I didn't need more than 65.) My route therefore involved only select manual plotting to minimise the risk of running afoul the galaxy map UI. Longest jump was a tad over 50 lightyears. That had the side-effect that I actually went to Jack's Town first. But then, I didn't really care whether it's 4 or 9 tons of cargo I'm shuttling around.
The rest was just me being silly, or unaccustomed to the fast that the Orca might be quite speedy in theory, but it sure doesn't like changing direction. Heat and scooping was a non-issue (naturally). On the other hand, I was constantly confused by my changes to the route due to me trying out a different cargo setup. (I more than once chose a target, only to realise that it belonged to the wrong ship setup.)
By the way: I also considered using that neutron star 80 lightyears from Fullerence C60, but it's just too much in the wrong direction.
The Equaliser:
In short words: Interesting and fun mechanic, but very much misnamed.
In a race, you've got three different parts: Docking, supercruise and interstellar travel. Different races weight each differently (typically weighing the first two against the third). For each part, some ships are better than others. For docking, you want the fast and agile ships. Supercruise is mostly easy: Big ships are bad, small ships are good. And for interstellar travel you want those with long jump range.
An Anaconda can eat those parsecs like no other, but an asteroid changes direction quicker and overtakes it while doing so. A Viper turns circles around fighters, but just flat out ignores you at the suggestion of jumping more than 40 lightyears. An Asp Explorer jumps quite well, and can dance in supercruise. But only a station wall can stop it in normal space. An Imperial Courier is King of speed and has a decent jump range, but turn the nose around and you have to wait a long time to see that station door come closer. A Diamondback Explorer is ... well, the slow fuel scoop is an interesting weakness, but chances are that it doesn't really come to play in anything but a long-distance race. Oh, it's not very fast either.
As soon as you have some larger interstellar distances in a race, the jumping tends to outweigh the other two parts -- unless there are many stops on the way. I guess most Buckyball races tend to involve quite some distance. However, the Equaliser just flat out took away the jumping part and only supercruise and docking remained. That's not an equaliser, it's a disqualifier. This is not criticism, as I believe everybody likes to see something else than a Diamondback Explorer as the winner. But one should be very clear, that the Viper Mk3 was easily the best ship for this job, followed by the likes of Imperial Courier, Eagles, and so on. (And the Imperial Clipper, but it wouldn't have survived Freeholm.)
What I'm saying is that it did not create a level playing field. It just made another type of ships the winner. And as it happens, Elite has more ships that cater to this type than it has good jumpers.
In any case. I haven't yet planned my next sightseeing trip through the Milky Way (although I still have unfinished business with the Sagittarius Arm and of course the Scutum Arm always beckons me), so I'll probably show up for the odd race again in the coming weeks. Thanks a lot for organising it, Ozric. I'm still surprised that my initial joke of racing this in an Orca actually turned out to ... well, work.
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Hey Jay, congrat's on the win, stunning times you posted there!
Re: my fuel thing, alas I hadn't really had time to plan anything sensible so the 2 big fuel runs I did were just my first experiments in this really. I just spotted (far too late really) that Ozric's rules were all about starting weight and figured I should weigh my ship down with fuel (rather than random junk left in the ship from its last voyage) which I could then burn on route. At that point I had no idea how much I would actually need so I just took ALL the fuel. But yeah, you're right, it was too much and given time I guess I would have tweaked that (and the route). Actually one amusing thing which I forgot to mention is that on my second "big fuel" run I got sick of accidentally scooping little bits of fuel I didn't want so I turned off the scoop. That worked great until I lost about a minute floundering around inside a White Dwarf cone wondering why I wasn't supercharging.
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
In my defence, I only named it a few days before the race started
But you make some very interesting points, some of which I hadn't considered and while I don't agree with everything, the gist is certainly spot on.Personally I don't find the really light ships better for racing at all, because they just bounce off the landing pad
This is obviously partly to do with my lithobraking style of docking hehe. I would have actually thought the Cobra Mk. III would have been the best considering it's boost speed that's more important as with engineering you can boost indefinitely. I wanted it to be more about flying a ship you enjoy flying, rather than seeing a gap of more than 100Ly and thinking you had to fly one of the 2 regulars. I was also, pleasantly, surprised with how well the Orca did Certainly a lot of room for improvement and adjustments, but it's encouraging to see that people think there's at least a foundation there. Which is a lot better than I was worried it was going to turn out.
Adjustments maybe, but everybody had fun. That's good in my book.
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
There's been a minor update to the leaderboard. Due to some power issues with one of the competitors their entry didn't make it's way to me until last night, though the run itself was made 4 days ago. We have another first time competitor, Cmdr. Zippo Starfire, who rocked up in his Keelback to lay siege to the course. First time racing, one run only, and scraping in just ahead of the Type-10... Not too shabby
Many thanks to Ozric for staging the event! It has been great fun, with some very different approaches and challenges. Congratulations to the winners and well done to everyone who took part o7. Hope to see you all at the next event (and in the meantime there's always the Black Riband and the A* Challenge!).
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Thanks for posting the video Bruski - I see I should still be making my approaches faster (and your approach to Freeholm especially was an eye-opener, I spiralled in with the counter on 4 secs and I think you could have gained maybe 20 seconds on me just from that) and completing the transactions whilst the pad was in motion was also a huge time-saver o7.
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Thanks for posting the video Bruski - I see I should still be making my approaches faster (and your approach to Freeholm especially was an eye-opener, I spiralled in with the counter on 4 secs and I think you could have gained maybe 20 seconds on me just from that) and completing the transactions whilst the pad was in motion was also a huge time-saver o7.
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
Oh yes I completely forgot to mention that, I had no idea that if you pressed Enter Hangar, and then pressed Launch, it would override it and pull you straight back up to launch!
Still learning something new with every one of these race threads
Love you all and this game It does?!?! Well holy crap ... I never knew that! [haha]