Fair enough, one hour is not as bad as I thought, so I'll wait until the race thread is up before making my mind up.
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With regard to the rares, I last traded them a few weeks back for the decal CG. The amounts available are determined by the state of the controlling faction at the station where they are sold. In that CG, during the weekend the factions were all in boom and this, fortunately for me, was when I had time to play and was shipping competitive amounts in my T6. Then a War state hit one of the factions early the following week and one of the others on the most efficient route went out of boom (I think it might have gone into Civil Unrest) and the amount of work to deliver the same amount of cargo either doubled or tripled, so I was able to call it quits on the Tuesday knowing that realistically not enough people would ship enough goods to knock me down a grade. I imagine similar situations occurring during the rebooted Black Riband.
Sorry if I was ranty yesterday!
Blame the football again, and the heat (us northerners aren't used to nice weather!)
If shouldn't be as bad with this as a CG, because there's a large number of source stations to choose your four from, and booms normally last longer than during CGs (because the boom has a budget). The rares stations are often in boom as well, and a few of the illegal rares have very high boom spawns. The jump ranges of ships now also means there's only a couple of jumps difference between a perfect route and a fairly good one.
So unless your are absolutely intent on have the most perfect route available (which will possibly vary by ship / cargo capacity anyway) then you probably don't need to wait for a specific set of systems to be in boom. And even if you did wait for that, I'd be surprised if you had to wait more than a couple of weeks.
I'm more concerned about some of the rares that Limoncello Lizard and friends unlocked getting suppressed again (eg the ear grubs which have a boom spawn of 45 tons and are illegal in all my destination systems).
In any case, I do understand your worries, but I don't anticipate too many problems.
Just in case though (and just for you!
) I'm adding a shorter event with it's own leaderboard. The Bootlegger Express, will require you to visit four rares supply systems (any except Alacarakmo) and then any one of six black markets (to sell 8 tons), plus any one of the installations (to make 2 tunnel drops) and then return to Weyl with 8 tons of legal rares.
So basically the same style as the new Riband, but as simple as the original.
Depending on your definition of "competitive" though, you might need an engineered DBX for that one.
Non-engineered Cobra 3/4 runs of the Bootlegger Express will qualify for the Cobra Express.
There were a couple of other standalone leaderboards that I'd planned to add in the future to the Black Riband if it proved to be popular, but I'll probably scrap those now as there's already enough leaderboards!
I think everyone makes races that they'd like to participate in themselves, and I enjoy longer, more complex events, that still need a bit of thought if you throw the numbers into Esvandiary's EDTS. I also like Ironman / one-shot type runs, like my Ironbucky, which is why this has mandatory pre-run declarations and a cooldown.
I'm also not too worried how popular the race is, I was happy with the participation of the original Black Riband and the Ironbucky. If no one takes the Black Riband in the first month, I'll just have a go myself in a fully equipped Cobra Mk4 with passenger cabins, to encourage others to take my record(s).
So I prefer this to be a standing challenge with one or two attempts every month or two, rather than a frantic one/two week event (which could end up triggering civil unrest or lockdown in the systems of some of my in-game friends!).
Others like simpler events - your Armed and Dangerous was great fun as was Drakhyr's Close Encounters that we've just done.
Anyway back to writing up my huge and complex race thread!!!!
