[SIZE=+2]CLASSIFICATION[/SIZE]
CMDR
Cookiebot in the
Cookiebox holds on to the lead despite a late charge by CMDRs
Ozric in
Isil and
Jak in
The Less Obvious Enigma.
Congratulations to the cookiebots. Their prize is a tastefully desaturated rendering of their chariot, adorned with the logos of the Buckyball Racing Club and the Buckey Ball Raleigh.
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[SIZE=+2]STATISTICS[/SIZE]
The Asp Explorer was the most popular ship for this race, ahead of the Hauler. Racers chose wisely; those two ships monopolised the top five places and held eight of the top ten spots.
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There was a fairly even number of entries on each of the three days.
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CMDR
Jak was the most enthusiastic racer with three attempts.
Aken B.,
Adt Oophoi and
Ozric all improved on their first attempt with a subsequent entry.
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As expected, the second leg of the race was a minute faster than the first on average; for most builds it would have been a jump shorter.
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Here's the time plot of each entry.
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[SIZE=+2]RACE BALANCE[/SIZE]
I tried to balance the race so that a range of ships would be in with a chance. And because I hate Asps I tried to weight it so that one wouldn't win. Although it was a humble Hauler which achieved victory, Asps dominated the rest of the leaderboard.
With its long jump range the Asp would have been a shoo-in for victory in a fair race, hence the fuel rules which were designed to prevent it, the Anaconda and the Diamondback Explorer from completing the course in nine short jumps. I used
Alot's
edts tool to calculate the shortest route for thirteen commonly (and not so commonly)-raced ships and how much fuel it would require to run that route, then adjusted the rules so that the three favourite ships would not have enough fuel to complete the journey without refueling. The class 1 fuel scoop rule ensured that even with aggressive scooping you would still need to scoop for long enough that you would only gain a few seconds' advantage over an eleven-jump ship. In most cases those ships would be faster and could make up the time.
I estimated that the Adder, Anaconda, Asp Explorer, Asp Scout, Diamondback Explorer, Courier and Hauler should be able to achieve roughly comparable times. As it turned out only four of those ships were even entered.
I also used
edts to locate all the "Buckey" stations, all the "Ball" stations and all the "Raleigh" stations in the bubble, then calculated the distances between them. The fact that the three stations were close to the star and in low orbit was a nice bonus; they were chosen primarily for the distance between them. Other stations would have been much harder to balance and/or much longer to race.