The Pomeche Ridge Challenge: a standing SRV time trial in association with the Buckyball Racing Club

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Fresh from his (rapid) rise to fame in the Elite Racer SRV championships, Cmdr Osashes finally takes to the ridge in The Scooner and ... if I'm being honest ... does annoyingly well.

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He only filed a Black Run entry on account of sailing 1.24km over the Blue finish line and 950m over the Red finish line (his eye clearly focused on the big one) however I've scrutinised his video and come up with times for all three stages. So, Osashes takes 4th place on the Blue run, dropping back below 50m at the 5min 27sec mark (he actually crossed the 62° line at 4min 18sec), he takes 3rd place on the Red run in 7mins 34secs and ... drumroll ... takes 2nd place on the Black run (only the 2nd person to beat turkwinif in recent memory) with a time of 8mins 49secs.

Congratulations sir, extraordinary stuff! (and if I understand correctly this was from your first ever attempt o_O). I predict at least one 1st place result before the month is out.
 
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Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Had three consecutive submissions from Cmdr Alvin Wall (aka @Walter2) over the weekend as he progressively improved his Blue run time. Starting with 18 minutes, then 16 minutes, he finally posted a terrific run of 12 minutes and 1 second which puts SRV "This Thing Has a Name?" in 15th place, just 5 seconds ahead of @Ozric. Nice going Alvin, at that rate of improvement you'll be in the top 3 in no time at all! :p

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Walter2

Walter2
Alec Turner said:
Nice going Alvin, at that rate of improvement you'll be in the top 3 in no time at all! :p
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Thanks, Alec, but I've waved goodbye to Pomeche.
On my first attempt I fell off the ridge and took half an hour to get back up to the course - I didn't bother to post that.
After the last run I continued going east until I fell off again, straight into a valley of dragon's teeth, which was the deciding factor. It's difficult to flyve such narrow tracks when you can't see where you're headed, and I don't have Sgurr's or Crank's skills with a SRV.
 

sgurr

S
Walter2 said:
Thanks, Alec, but I've waved goodbye to Pomeche.
On my first attempt I fell off the ridge and took half an hour to get back up to the course - I didn't bother to post that.
After the last run I continued going east until I fell off again, straight into a valley of dragon's teeth, which was the deciding factor. It's difficult to flyve such narrow tracks when you can't see where you're headed, and I don't have Sgurr's or Crank's skills with a SRV.
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Nice run!

Were you trying to find myself/Crank yesterday? We were on a different ridge elsewhere on the world, apologies if you were expecting us to be here.
 

Walter2

Walter2
No need to apologise. I was merely trying to prove to myself that Pomeche was more of a bite than I could chew.
It's always nice to be proved right.
 

Walter2

Walter2
sgurr said:
Your first entry is faster than my first!
I recently checked mine, 13:35 for the blue almost 2 years ago and I was really pleased with that at the time.
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Don't worry - that was my third attempt and probably the best I could manage.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Parp parp! No sooner has @Osashes settled in to his 4th place position on the Blue run than Cmdr Kay Altos returns with a fantastic new time of 4 minutes 51 seconds putting the Jalalabad Express 36 seconds ahead of The Scooner, knocking Osashes back down to 5th.

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If I were Shaye Blackwood I'd pay particular attention to the sign-off which Kay included with that submission ...

"This is not the last try"
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
While not actually changing any positions on the leaderboard, today's submissions from a "rusty" Cmdr Shaye Blackwood are nevertheless still exceptional runs with times of 4 minutes and 17 seconds on the Blue run (now just 14 seconds off 2nd) and 8 minutes 16 seconds to cement that 4th place position on the Red.

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Many SRVs were harmed in the making of these runs.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Meanwhile - I'm currently working on a ridge challenge for the folks in Colonia - provisional name "The Kraken 100", a 100km long ridge run using the enudrance challenge reapair rules (where any repairs have to be performed via a ship recall).

Attempts to get a nice clean demonstration run have thus far been .... frustrating ... thanks to large quantities of ninja rocks scattered over this deceptively easy looking ridge.

 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Crank Larson said:
Can you share the location? :) My alt has an urge to make a visit...
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Kraken's Retreat in the LOS system. Start with the SRV parked stationary on the ridge leading up to the base and 100km away from it. Finish line is when you physically hit the base (perhaps? haven't decided yet), any SRV repairs must be performed by recalling and boarding your ship before redeploying the SRV to continue your run.

See today's "Going to Colonia" log entry for an aerial screenshot.

I'd welcome any thoughts on how to make this an awesome new standing challenge.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
IMPORTANT NEWS FOR THIS THREAD
Alec Turner said:
From the information contained in Kay Ross's talk on last night's Discovery Scanner livestream many people will already have twigged that the terrain features on all the landable planets that we're currently familiar with from Horizons are going to change with the launch of Odyssey.

To be clear what I mean by this is that notable planetary features like canyons, mountains, ridges, valleys, craters, etc that we're currently familiar with will almost certainly no longer exist in Odyssey in their current form. Don't get me wrong, these kinds of features will all still exist, but they'll be in completely different locations and arrangements.

Since one of the consequences of this is that all pre-existing "race tracks" (by which I mean interesting planetary locations that have been scouted, mapped and bookmarked by the racing community as good places to hold SRV or canyon based ship racing events) will cease to exist in their current form, Frontier were kind enough to reach out to me on Wednesday asking if I could spread the word on this subject. For the avoidance of chinese whispers I think it's best if I simply quote that message directly.
​
I have some news which will affect future Buckyball (and other organised) races in Elite that I want to share with you.​
​
It’s no secret that planets will change a lot when Odyssey lands. Given the way the Stellar Forge produces landscapes on each planet, the update will mean a regeneration of all land formations (canyons, ridges, valleys etc.) on planets which have them. To a large degree, the regeneration will be random (working within certain criteria for each planet such as being an ice world). Unfortunately, this means existing race courses are very likely to change.​
​
While it’s possible some planets will remain great for racing, we imagine this will mean groups like the Buckyball Racers will want to find new places to determine courses. We’d like to offer our support here in particular. If any of the racing groups choose to hold a racetrack discovery competition or similar, we’re more than happy to sponsor them with prizes and promotion to help re-establish this key part of the racing community.​
​
So, when Odyssey launches, things like the existing Buckyball "Pomeche Ridge Challenge" and "Cortes Drag Strip Challenge" will come to an end, their scoreboards will be frozen and we'll begin a search to find new venues for these challenges with fresh new leaderboards.

Although I will be sad to see these much loved locations go I totally appreciate the need for this (it's kind of a consequence of a very complex procedural generation algorithm, there's a butterfly effect, so if you change the algorithm even slightly, let alone with the large changes no doubt required for Odyssey, you're going to get completely different results coming out of the other end). Personally I'm very excited by this prospect and can't wait to see what this new world looks like!

So, what existing planetary features will you be most sad to lose and what new features are you must loooking forward to finding?
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Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Oh. My. Goodness!

It seems the prospect of losing the ridge challenge in its current form has spurred two of its greatest racers on to new levels of performance hithertoo undreamed of!

Yesterday Cmdr Shaye Blackwood submitted something which I'm not sure I've ever heard of before, a Black run that was so fast that the final bounce occured before the Red finish line such that the final time for the Black run (when the SRV came back below 50m altitude) was also a personal best for the Red run as well (i.e. he cleared the entire length of the Black run in a single bound).

So, Shaye Blackwood smashes the Black 7 minute barrier with an absolutely incredible time of 6 minutes 43 seconds.

That's the kind of time that deserves to sit at the top of the leaderboard for an entire year!

However ... you'll have noticed by now that I haven't yet posted said leaderboard and that's because, tragically, Shaye doesn't even get an entire day at the top.

Less than 24hrs later (and as far as I know more or less entirely coincidentally), Cmdr Sgurr does the exact same thing, posting a run where the Black run time was also a record on the Red run. Not just any old record tho' ... Cmdr Sgurr has completed the Black run in ...

5 MINUTES 21 SECONDS!!!

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.. simultaneously setting new records on both Red and Black.

I'm speechless.

Roll VT ...

Source: https://youtu.be/Y44r1Z1DSh0


To put that into perspective, Sgurr's Black run time would put him 5th on the Blue run .. or .. he completed the Black run faster than 91.3% of competitors completed the Blue!

Oh, and Sgurr also completed the Blue run in 3 minutes 40 seconds (I can't believe that's a footnote!)
 
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Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
Alec Turner said:
To put that into perspective, Sgurr's Black run time would put him 5th on the Blue run .. or .. he completed the Black run faster than 91.3% of competitors completed the Blue!

Oh, and Sgurr also completed the Blue run in 3 minutes 40 seconds (I can't believe that's a footnote!)
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That is absolute insanity! I can't even comprehend how that's possible. I watched the video, still don't get it 😅
 
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