I never managed to scoop even a single canister using my ship. I had to fetch them by SRV every time. I must check if the shipyard put the cargo hatch behind the thrusters of the Courier at the last refit...
This race being solely based on Supercruise (SC)/Orbital Cruise (OC) and planetary Normalspace, the ship requirements were speed, maneuverability, handling in gravity and being able to scoop directly from the ground.
I chose the Eagle because of it's excellent SC and Normalspace maneuverability aswell as its predictable handling in gravity. Also I'm pretty used to it from the Elite Racers' Stadium series.
As seen on the leaderboard, other fast and agile small ships like the Viper Mk. III, Sidewinder and the iCourier performed well too.
Comparing Aken's fastest run and mine, I'd say the higher speed of the Viper (or Courier/iEagle/etc.) meant about 1-2s less per takeoff, while I felt the Eagle to be easier to brake at descent. These things are difficult to compare though as each individual landing/scooping approach is different and especially lithobraking can have a much more substantial effect than the ship choice itself.
The loadout was a standard Normalspace racing outfitting with the addition of a planetary hangar. With direct scooping the hangar wasn't strictly necessary, but since I could reach below minimum thruster mass by dropping the shields (joker!) anyway, I kept it as a backup.
Of course engineer modifications, especially drive tuning and a modded power distributor, could have helped in shaving a few seconds off (I'd estimate around 5-10s).
I think there was no major difference between both directions of the route. Going through my videos, the leg between the crash site and Guin Survey was nearly exactly the same duration in both directions. In my runs, the leg between Forward Horizons and the Crash site was around 1:25-1:35 min while it took roughly 1:30-1:40 min the other way around. The difference is very small though and could be due to different factors aswell. With the rather complex trinary planetary system this time could also be influenced by the position of planet 2C relative to the others. I mainly chose Forward Horizons for the start, as planet 2D is a bit further from the pair of 2B and 2C, and so starting from there would maybe give me a more consistent initial SC and the possibility to maneuver around 2C after having left OC and having accelerated to around 200km/s. Furrycat's statistics on the other hand show a difference of nearly 1:30 min between these two directions, so I think it's difficult to generalize the optimal route in this race and it would come down to specific testing for each time of day/planetary constellation.
For routes between planets in general I consider the deciding factors to be planet size & gravity (having a significant effect on the duration of initial Supercruise) and in most cases gravity braking opportunities at the destination planet. My rule of thumb is always going from the smaller lighter planet to the bigger heavier one if there's a significant mass difference, so that you can get up to speed quickly at the initial part of SC while being able to slow down quickly at the final approach. The same applies for routes between orbiting stations, with the height of the orbit making a difference aswell.
In most races there are more factors such as planet distance from star though, so it often comes down to specific testing aswell.
Orbital Cruise and Supercruise
Except for scooping problems and other mishaps aswell as docking, the most important part of the race was getting Orbital Cruise right.
I've written a wall of text over a year ago at the first BRC planetary race 'Escape Velocity'. Back then I was still naive enough to think that OC would become easy at some point
Since the gravity of the planet has such a strong effect on the speed, it's essential to leave the gravity well as fast as possible (straight up). For travel between planets I always left the OC zone completely before starting a turn to avoid staying at low speeds for too long. For the leg between Guin Survey and the Crash Site I started to turn parallel to the surface at about half the OC zone's height and used the 0° high speed zone to get around the planet. If the target is completely on the other side of the planet and not only slightly below the horizon it's probably fastest to leave OC completely and go around the planet at a greater distance.
On approach the basics of that post (link) still apply and I have only few corrections/additions to make*:
The basic physics principles of SC apply in OC aswell: The closer you are to a (more massive) gravitational body (the deeper you are in the gravitational field), the slower your ship will go. You can keep higher speeds than the gravitational 'speed limit' by approaching at a higher-than-safe speed (above the blue zone of the throttle) and staying at full throttle. As in SC the ETA timer below the target is a good indication with 6s usually marking the 'safe' speed. With the approaches in this race, I've found 3-5s ETA the desirable zone for most of the approach.
While SC has a 'safe disengage' speed limit related to your "horizontal" speed, the transitions in OC are limited by your vertical descent speed (indicated in the right vertical bar of the OC overlay). While transitioning from one zone into the next (SC to OC, OC to Glide), your vertical speed must not be in the red zone or you will suffer an emergency drop. To avoid this I usually bleed off vertical speed by leveling out slightly above the transition altitude (Blue/Yellow line) as seen in the graphic in my 'Escape Velocity' post.
The crucial part of Orbital Cruise is imo speed/height management. While the vertical speed is the deciding factor for transitioning to OC/Glide, the horizontal speed is what enables you to get to the planet in the first place and is fairly high at the beginning. I pretty much always do a fast and shallow approach as opposed to diving down vertically at controlled lower speed (which I've actually never really tested, it might be faster!).
This speed of several 100 km/s has to somehow decrease to 2.5 km/s for glide without overshooting the target or getting 'stranded' at the standard OC speeds.
My rule of thumb is keeping the target at or slightly below the horizon on initial approach and then entering the OC zone (blue) at high speed (ETA 0:03-0:05) at a shallow angle to avoid crashing out of SC. Depending on how far the target still is and how fast I am, I change my altitude in the OC zone. At lower altitudes your speed will decay faster, but you also run a higher risk of getting stranded or overshooting. In this race I was mostly descending quickly and then 'skimming' over the surface of the Glide zone to bleed off speed, adjusting my throttle to 100% if I was starting to get too slow. Paying attention to the vertical speed indicator while descending often gives a good impression how 'ok' or 'not ok' your speed is.
Ideally, you end up at a 50° angle in front and above your target with at the right speed ready to pitch down and enter glide. Since the glide speed is fixed at 2.5 km/s, being able to use the maximum angle (60°) is optimal but difficult to reach. With the dropout altitude in this race being around 45km, I tried hitting the yellow line at around 70km distance to target.
Since all of this is mostly guesswork and depends a lot on the planet, practice and a bit of luck are key.
Normalspace/Scooping
Scooping directly from the ship obviously was the way to go. Due to the scan distance limit and the roughness of the terrain this only works with small ships or experimental techniques and luck (namely flipping the canister into the air with the nose and scooping it from there).
I found the Eagle to be much easier to use than the iCourier. The Viper, Sidewinder and Hauler probably are probably comparably good if not better.
I tried to approach the site not directly from above to be able to bleed vertical speed off while finding a good approach path for scooping. I chose one of the canisters on the hill most of the time and tried to slowly scratch over the surface into them, selecting the target when close enough.
The takeoffs and landings were standart planetary style: Straight up / 45-80° down and leveling off to eliminate vertical speed.
*Note to self: This is getting longer than the original post...
Thanks to everybody who participated; it has been great fun seeing so many of you on the course and hanging out/racing together!
Congrats to Aken and Drakhyr, I found those low 5 min times very difficult to reach (something like 3 out of 20 attempts in that time region). In general it's great to see so many sub-6 min times!
Thanks a ton to furrycat for organizing this terrific event! The concept was great fun (it's great to still see so many different race ideas after over a year of racing!) and the well thought out rules and the graphs made it even better
I think this could well have run for 5 or more days, but on the other hand the short duration and the compact course made for a lot of racing action.
See you all at Tunnel Vision, looking forward to it
Can't say if I'm more amazed by the undisputed piloting skills, or by the ability to pull off such detailed and on point wall-of-texts every time. This needs a great deal of mental discipline.
Reading cookiehole's post race analysis I usually conclude that more or less we do things the same way for the most part, him doing them better of course, but no way I'd be able to explain what I do and why in such an analytical way. He crunches numbers, weighs variables and evaluates options. I follow guts, ride unicorns and smell colours. [yesnod]
I forgot before to mention Drakhyr, he definitely returned to the races with a bang, hat off. And general respect to anyone placing a time on the board or having a try at it, that was a tricky one!
As promised, here are a few of my thoughts, to supplement cookiehole's useful wall of text.
First, the video of my run. This was the only attempt where I managed to get under 5m30s, and landing conveniently close to a canister to scoop was definitely a help!
Orbital Cruise was the area where I was trying some different trigger points from cookiehole (though obviously aiming for the same outcome!). In particular I was trying to judge using absolute distance and altitude figures, rather than the "time-to-target" measure, mainly because a lot of the time the target was below the nose of my ship so I couldn't see that!
For the planet-to-planet section (i.e. Guin Survey to the crashed ship, or vice versa), I was aiming for:
Depart straight up, entering orbital cruise as soon as possible.
At an altitude of about 100km, start turning down to be heading towards target parallel to the surface; this normally resulted in levelling out at about 150km up.
Head round the planet at a constant altitude (i.e. in the blue zone for maximum speed).
The point where I was looking to reduce throttle and turn down was when my distance to target was approx three times my altitude - i.e. if at an altitude of 150-160km, slow and turn down at about 500km from target. The big change I made during the event was to realise I needed to reduce throttle at this point (to zero works fine), previously I was trying to do the whole thing at full throttle which didn't work so well!
Level out a bit above the drop zone (aiming for around 60km altitute) to bleed off speed, otherwise I would be going too fast to drop to glide.
Turn back down to the target when distance to target is approx 1.5 - 2 times altitude - in an ideal world this is as soon as the speed has dropped sufficiently, in some cases I had to continue level for a bit to get this.
Ideally this drops into glide at around 45 degree descent. If the descent angle was shallower (40 degrees or less) I was making sure to point my nose above the target and slowly curve downwards in order to stay in glide as long as possible.
On departure between worlds (i.e. to/from Forward Horizons), I was generally starting to turn (slowly) at about 200km altitude. While cookiehole is right that it is essential to avoid being held to a low speed, the rate of acceleration compared to the gravitational speed limits means you can turn a bit and still avoid being slowed at all by the 200km/s limit zone.
Well done to cookiehole and Aken B for some tremendous times (again!), and well done to furrycat for a lovely race - I thought this had a combination of short course, simple rules and trying something new that is absolutely spot on for a MWM event.
So much awesomeness, so little rep that I can hand out. I think I'm in Aken's unicorn riding camp in that I don't really analyse what I'm doing at the time (just tend to go with gut reaction regardings speeds, angles, etc - and incidentally, it's true testament to ED's superb flight/physics models and audio that it really is possible to "feel" your way around a course like this) and therefore find it hard to deconstruct what I did afterwards. Definitely straight up (90 degrees) until out of the drop zone. In my earlier race (and video) I tended to keep going (like cookiehole) until half-way through the OC zone. In my later attempts (and second video) I tended more towards starting to turn (slowly) once out of DRP. I definitely think having headlook helped in gauging the interplanetary trajectory and I'm also really loving "Joystick Curves" for refining the behaviour of the T-Flight. By the way ... did anyone manage any fast runs when they had to go around moon 2C or were all the best times done when it was out of the way?
Once you're above the drop altitude I have good results flying at +2 degrees pitch, as the bonus from being close to zero combined with the fact that you are slightly climbing and thus increasing your maximum speed gives optimal surface cruising potential.
Clever little race idea.
