Community Event / Creation Buckyball Racing Club and Elite Racers present: Old World Hustle (11th-19th June)

[cookiehole]

The results for Open Unlimited are in.

Wow, now that's a great-looking podium! Thanks again for organizing this awesome race! I really liked the station loops, a good way to test the enhanced performance thrusters and have some more normalspace-maneuvering. The Regulation Eagle also was a good combination of challenge and fun.
Kudos to Kliggish for showing what the Sidey can do. I didn't realize what ship you were in until I saw that final leaderboard. Cool setup with the ship kit and yellow paint!
Also hats off to <-Lightspeed-> for playing the Orca card. We. just. need. more. Orcas!

Now for some race analysis:

Loadout (Open Unlimited)
Definetely a race for the fast ships again. Performance Enhanced Thrusters were pretty much a must have. Probably a completely tuned ship could have been a lot faster, but Engineering is extremely time consuming.
I went with the Viper Mk. III as it is fast, still relatively maneuverable and hasn't got the slow landing gear deployment of the imperial ships.
Loadout: I tried to make the ship as light as possible without ditching the shields. I found that the 3D distributor had enough juice for continuos boosting for nearly a complete loop. A 3A would have been heavier and thus have decreased the top speed (the Viper is a tad over the minimum weight of the 3APe Thrusters). Also the longest jump on my route was 9ly, so I could go with a D-grade FSD.

Route
I used Alot's EDTS

Spoiler

Open Unlimited:
Lave/Lave Station
Tionisla/Brett High
Orerve/Watson Station
Diso/Shifnalport --Refuel
Riedquat/La Soeur du Dan Ham
Uszaa/Patterson Dock
Lave/Lave Station

Regulation Eagle:
Lave, Lave Station (280Ls, Coriolis Starport)
=== 3.59Ly ===> Diso, Shifnalport (284Ls, Orbis Starport) [0.18T] -- 3.59Ly for 3.59Ly
=== 5.19Ly ===> Uszaa, Patterson Dock (1233Ls, Orbis Starport) [0.38T] -- 5.19Ly for 5.19Ly
=== 5.00Ly ===> Riedquat, La Soeur du Dan Ham (140Ls, Orbis Starport) [0.35T] -- 5.00Ly for 5.00Ly
--- 4.18Ly ---> Leesti [0.25T]
=== 3.73Ly ===> Orerve, Watson Station (290Ls, Orbis Starport) [0.19T] -- 7.91Ly for 7.20Ly --Refuel
--- 6.24Ly ---> Lave [0.55T]
--- 5.22Ly ---> Zaonce [0.38T]
=== 1.86Ly ===> Tionisla, Brett High (329Ls, Orbis Starport) [0.05T] -- 13.32Ly for 8.90Ly
--- 1.86Ly ---> Zaonce [0.05T]
=== 5.22Ly ===> Lave, Lave Station (280Ls, Coriolis Starport) [0.38T] -- 7.08Ly for 7.00Ly
Total distance: 42.09Ly (36.89Ly); total jumps: 10
Total SC distance: 2556Ls; ETT: 27:48; fuel cost: 2.75T

Also: Bookmarks! Bookmarking all the waypoint stations helps a lot. You can sort them by editing the name and putting numbers or other chars in front.

Supercruise
Most of the Stations were orbiting Earthlikes in the 100-400ls range. I used my normal approach:
1. Fly away from the star as quickly as possible
2. Turn towards the station in an arc (at the latest when the speed reaches 1-5% of the distance to the station)
3. Full throttle until 0:05, throttle to 0, zip by as close to the planet as possible.
4. Loop back to the station at 40% (seems a bit better turn rate than 50% to me), throttling fully up as soon as the station comes into view.
5. Getting between the planet and the station to use the Gravity for braking while applying throttle to stay at an 0:05 ETA
6. Apply throttle to keep the speed as high as possible without overshooting. Rule-of-thumb-ETAs for distances: 30Mm 0:05, 15Mm 0:04, 10Mm 0:03, 5Mm 0:02.

Patterson Dock was different, being in a high orbit around a gas giant. My approach:
Same as before until 3. The Arc was important here to avoid coming close to the two planets between the star and Patterson dock (which would slow you down).
3. Full throttle until 0:04, approaching the Gas giant so that the station was behind it
4. Zipping past the Gas giant at full throttle to avoid 'getting caught' and keeping the ETA at or below 0:05 (if the ETA climbs above 0:06 even full throttle won't bring it down quickly).
5. Aligning as good as possible on the station, making sure that it is selected in the NavPanel. Throttle to 0.
6. As soon as the ETA drops to 0:01 quickly deselect it in the NavPanel. Reselect after about half a second (difficult to get it just right). This stops you quickly (if there's no planet nearby) and avoids overshooting. Only works at gas giants or star-orbiting stations or USSs, NavBeacons, etc.
7. Throttling back up if the ETA is >0:05. If the distance is still >30Mm, repeat 5, 6 and 7.
8. Normal final approach

Looping the station and docking

• If the SC approach was right, you should drop out more or less in front of the station. I steered towards the letterbox until I had a docking permission and then quickly turned towards the back of the station. If necessary I rerequested docking on the way, as I video'd the run.
• Boost!
• I learned in some Elite Racers video that you should use pitch and yaw instead of lateral/vertical thrust to avoid the station structures (Rings, Solar Panels, etc.). Use of the thrusters will slow your ship down, pitch and yaw will do it to a much lesser degree.
• For the 'corner' around the back of the station I came in relatively wide, again to preserve as much speed as possible (pretty much like in ground-based racing on tracks) and tried to time the boost so that I was pretty much oriented towards the front when the acceleration began. I used a bit of lateral thrust in that corner aswell.
• For the 'corner' into the station I didn't find any good technique; I'm not that happy with how much I slowed down there. I didn't want to hit boost for relatively obvious reasons (especially with Pe Thrusters).
• You can deploy the landing gear directly after hitting the button though to avoid going to full boost speed (instead it goes somewhere to about half of the boost speed I assume).
• Playing with the landing gear might actually be underrated in general. I. e. if you're going to slow in the docking bay a quick lift of the landing gear combined with full throttle can accelerate you pretty well. Also the gear re-deploys from the state it currently is in (for example you deploy your 8s-landing gear, put gear up 5s into the process, put it back down after 2s, it'll then take 5s to fully deploy (5s - 2s + 5s = 8s)).

All my videos for this run are in this playlist.

See you at BBRX! I can already hear the fusts clucking

 

[furrycat]

These are AWESOME! Or rather they would be if I could read them. Any chance of hyperlinks to higher-res versions?

Interactive versions are available at the r-o-m.

 

[Rankaze]

@Furrycat - Thank you for running this event. It was a great one, and made a great tuneup for BBRX. Obviously my supercruise skills have a long way to go, but I expected that as this is the first time I've seriously tried to be fast in SC since my six-month-or-so hiatus from the game (and I wasn't that great at it even before).

Learned a lot in this one, had a lot of fun.

 

[OLd_Sarg]

I had no clue that a Sidewinder could run with the big boys... wow
you guys have taught me much already .... I noticed last night that getting interdicted in my Cobra III running is like a cat playing with its food now...

 

[Polly]

Thanks for a great event furrycat! I really enjoyed flying the eagle again!

@Cookie: Thanks for your advice on supercruise. Unfortunately my rep tank is drained. Have an imaginary one for now.

 

[robinjb]

thank you Furry for hosting, congrats to the winners. cheers guys, see you at VZ Corvi for BBX.

I had no clue that a Sidewinder could run with the big boys... wow
you guys have taught me much already .... I noticed last night that getting interdicted in my Cobra III running is like a cat playing with its food now...

Buckyballers kill themselves far more than anything catching them. Join us in BBX ...thread is here. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-10-It-s-Not-What-You-Got-It-s-How-You-Use-It

 

[furrycat]

[size=+2]Regulation Eagle[/size]

R	E	CMDR name	Forum name	Ship name	Ship type	Callsign	Raced
1		cookiehole	cookiehole	Momentum Conservation	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Charlie Oscar Oscar[/size]	00:26:05
2		Alot	Esvandiary	Eagle 2 Landing	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Alpha Lima Oscar[/size]	00:26:27
3		Aken B.	AkenBosch	Boost and a Prayer	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Alpha Kilo Echo[/size]	00:27:08
4		<-LightSpeed->	superflyguy	Three ways 'til Sunday	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Lima India Golf[/size]	00:28:31
5		Polly	Polly	Aquila Rubra	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Papa Oscar Lima[/size]	00:28:53
6		Kliggish	robinjb	Teagle	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Kilo Lima India[/size]	00:28:54
=		Ozric	Ozric	Fool of a Took	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Oscar Zulu Romeo[/size]	00:28:54
8		Seneh	Jhyrryl	Challenger	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Sierra Echo November[/size]	00:29:09
9		Alec Turner	Alec Turner	Varnishing Paint	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Alpha Lima Echo[/size]	00:29:11
10		Crystal Starblade	Rankaze	Thrillseeker IV	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Charlie Romeo Yankee[/size]	00:29:43
11		Orange Sheets	Orange Sheets	Lave Potion	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Oscar Romeo Alpha[/size]	00:30:57
12		Markzx59	racer1	Screech	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Mike Alpha Romeo[/size]	00:31:22
13		Inga Stevenson	Darkfyre99	Junkyard Surprise	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics India November Golf[/size]	00:31:37
14		Stern Winter	Stern Winter	Bloody Penguin	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Sierra Tango Echo[/size]	00:31:41
15		Bruski	Bruski	Bruski's Eagle	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Beta Romeo Uniform[/size]	00:31:43
16		Terrorsidic	Terrorsidic	Elite Ricer	Eagle	[size=-2]Core Dynamics Tango Echo Romeo[/size]	00:34:12

 

[racer1]

Nice podiums

The route was easy this time with bookmarks and the fact that for historical reasons (i guess) the destinations were essentially all in the same plane.

 

[AkenBosch]

Those podiums are great! I'd have used any other livery but a red one if only I knew

The usual congratulations to the usual winners, the usual runners-up (congrats to me too ), the usual stats galore from furrycat after the usual very well made event, the usual wall-of-text-of-neverending-wisdom from cookiehole (please stop trying to explain us how to do things, we try nonetheless but we mostly can't )

See you all at the next one! (That's not the BBR X sadly, 600 km away from "my cockpit" still for a while...well, not that sadly thinking of it...)

 

[Alec Turner]

Nice podiums

Assuming people are referring to post #247, all I see is a circle with a minus sign in the middle of it.

 

[furrycat]

I think what happens is Google Photos forgets that I set the images to be publically available. So you get a 404 error trying to view them.

I have tried ... again ... to fix it.

​

 

[Alec Turner]

I think what happens is Google Photos forgets that I set the images to be publically available. So you get a 404 error trying to view them.

I have tried ... again ... to fix it.

Beautiful, thank you.

 

[furrycat]

In other news the race results have been published in the Lave Herald and other local news outlets.

 

[Stern Winter]

I think what happens is Google Photos forgets that I set the images to be publically available. So you get a 404 error trying to view them.

I have tried ... again ... to fix it.

Sounds familiar. You have my sympathies

Thanks for a great race.

 

[furrycat]

Sounds familiar. You have my sympathies

Thanks for a great race.

Yeah I found various reports of people seeing the exact same symptoms as me. They upload their photos to a public shared album. They test that the photo is visible via the supplied URL. Then magically it isn't.

I used Google Photos because the storage was free when I created a Youtube account. Maybe I'll just use Imgur instead.

 

[Birdnose]

I used Google Photos because the storage was free when I created a Youtube account. Maybe I'll just use Imgur instead.

Dropbox also works, but you have to change "dl=0" to "raw=1" in the public URL it gives you, to get the actual image.