Buckyball Run 9: Move 'em out, let it roll!

[furrycat]

17-jump Hauler route

17? More fool me for not using trunkle.

 

[Marshall...]

Thanks again for organising the event. I'll be at the next one for sure!

 

[Jhyrryl]

I'd chuckle at the spell-checking underlines, but frankly I'd have trouble with "Alvin Hphwayuo" too

Congrats to Cookiehole, KliggJR and Cheetah, and nice job to everyone - wherever you are on the board, you're slowly but surely becoming a better pilot as a result
As always, thank you very much to ElectricZ and Bucky for running these. They're always excellent fun, and it's great to see the official Runs back!

I might put my final Asp run up later on, but I suspect it's this one that people will be wanting to see...
Open Play / Hauler - 15:21

For reference, my 17-jump Hauler route (which amusingly was also my Unlimited route in the Asp):

• HIP 78136 - Garden Enterprise
• HIP 79138 (fuel 44-55%)
• Garuttii (fuel 43-57%)
• Scorpii Sector DG-X b1-0 (fuel 42-83%)
• Ghimal
• L 268-67
• Terravor (fuel 42-74%)
• LHS 1504 (fuel 44-55%)
• LTT 11159 (fuel 43-65%)
• Cocontae
• HIP 17962 (fuel 43-74%)
• Arietis Sector DQ-Y c16 (fuel 40-97%)
• Arietis Sector IB-X b1-3 (unscoopable, fuel 76-89%)
• Hyades Sector DL-Y d39 (fuel 44-57%)
• Aries Dark Region LS-S b4-1 (fuel 44-61%)
• Pleiades Sector YF-N b7-3
• HIP 17704 (fuel 45-50%)
• Maia (fuel 45-49%) - Obsidian Orbital

There was, ah, quite a bit of fuel management.

Nice. I was trying to get a that route like together...I just couldn't find it.

 

[Elan]

Spoiler

I'd chuckle at the spell-checking underlines, but frankly I'd have trouble with "Alvin Hphwayuo" too

Congrats to Cookiehole, KliggJR and Cheetah, and nice job to everyone - wherever you are on the board, you're slowly but surely becoming a better pilot as a result
As always, thank you very much to ElectricZ and Bucky for running these. They're always excellent fun, and it's great to see the official Runs back!

I might put my final Asp run up later on, but I suspect it's this one that people will be wanting to see...
Open Play / Hauler - 15:21

For reference, my 17-jump Hauler route (which amusingly was also my Unlimited route in the Asp):

• HIP 78136 - Garden Enterprise
• HIP 79138 (fuel 44-55%)
• Garuttii (fuel 43-57%)
• Scorpii Sector DG-X b1-0 (fuel 42-83%)
• Ghimal
• L 268-67
• Terravor (fuel 42-74%)
• LHS 1504 (fuel 44-55%)
• LTT 11159 (fuel 43-65%)
• Cocontae
• HIP 17962 (fuel 43-74%)
• Arietis Sector DQ-Y c16 (fuel 40-97%)
• Arietis Sector IB-X b1-3 (unscoopable, fuel 76-89%)
• Hyades Sector DL-Y d39 (fuel 44-57%)
• Aries Dark Region LS-S b4-1 (fuel 44-61%)
• Pleiades Sector YF-N b7-3
• HIP 17704 (fuel 45-50%)
• Maia (fuel 45-49%) - Obsidian Orbital

There was, ah, quite a bit of fuel management.

That's some next level planning right there!

 

[cookiehole]

As promised, here are the preliminary results, subject to revision after verification.
As usual, feel free to post videos and share stories about the race as we tally the final scores, safe in the knowledge that the winners of this latest Buckyball will be footing the bill...

Now that Alot has absolutely broken the limits of what seemed to be possible with the Hauler and Cheetah has taken the other Hauler top slot I feel pretty relieved to only have to pay 2/5 of the bill instead of 3/4
Kudos to KliggJR for holding that Unlimited top slot in both categories with exactly the same race time and to all the racers who thought it'd be boring to run an "easy mode" buckyballing ship and raced some of the most racing-unsuited chunks of metal in the Galaxy. That's the spirit!
And again thank you very much EZ (and of course Bucky) for organising this great event!

I might put my final Asp run up later on, but I suspect it's this one that people will be wanting to see...

There was, ah, quite a bit of fuel management.

When I planned my route for the Hauler I thought about the theoretical possibility of doing that run in 17 jumps. I figured it would end in a total madness of fuel wizardry with high possibility of error and happily went with my 18-jumps-route.
That video shows a stack of fuel magic and I'm glad I didn't even try to find a route like that. There are six jumps on this route that are longer than the most "extreme" of my three fuel-management jumps.
That is a very well-deserved victory! Hats off!


The upload of my Open Hauler run has finally finished.
Compared to Alot's record run there is some bonus content like more "Temperature critical"-warnings and normal-lenght jumps, and that whole thing is 23 seconds longer with one extra jump gratis!

Spoiler

[video=youtube_share;ivuVHMMPHWg]https://youtu.be/ivuVHMMPHWg[/video]

I used a text file on my secondary monitor combined with a Ctrl-V -> enter macro for relatively quick plotting:

HIP 78136
Col 285 Sector UP-E c12-24		1 j	36.75ly max. ~60%
Hyades Sector GW-V B2-4 		12j	(no5, no7 unscoopable)
Hyades Sector DL-X B1-4			1 j	36.39ly max. ~60%
Pleiades Sector ZF-N B7-3		1 j	36.30ly max. ~60%
Maia 					3 j

I planned the route manually, plotting a route to Maia and searching for a better/farther first jump, then jumping to that system and repeating the whole process.

I'm currently uploading the Asp run and a shorter version of the first live run and will probably do a slightly edited video of the second live run too.
If anyone needs footage from the live run(s) or some clips about how not to dock I'm happy to help!

 

[drakhyr]

I might put my final Asp run up later on, but I suspect it's this one that people will be wanting to see...
Open Play / Hauler - 15:21

There was, ah, quite a bit of fuel management.

Not to mention a docking at the end that couldn't be done in an Asp. I saw the final boost close to the slot, with docking pad 16 selected, and thought "surely he's going to go flying way past the pad". But you didn't, and that's almost more impressive than all the carefully planned jumps!

 

[Rankaze]

Congrats to the winners, you guys are incredible as always.

Sorry I couldn't make the second live run, I just wasn't in flying shape yet. Would have liked to have been there.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

My ship name in the final results for the Hauler challenge appears to have gotten... Jacked up... however? EZ, can you take the sledgehammer to the big board one more time?

 

[Makc]

Video of the launch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIrzKU7V7kw

Sadly that was my best maneuver by far...didn't have time to scout the route properly, so I had to be conservative with my scooping, and ironically that led to a couple FSD failures and an emergency drop. Plus flying a Sidey I got mass-locked by literally everyone after leaving the station. Still great fun, though. I'll submit my time shortly.

I was late getting ready - my navigator needed soup and a nap - but had I known you were running a Sidewinder I would've taken mine and we could have jockeyed at the back of the pack . The little dart top right about 00:29s is me. Fastest I went anywhere the whole race: (LAUNCH) *boost* zooooooom *mass-locked*. As soon as I heard in TS "I've jumped" "Right behind" "Me too" the charge bar filled up quickly, haha.

EZ, and all the racers, thank you, and see you again in the next one. Looking forward to it!

 

[Avayu]

Congrats to the winners and thank xou all for the great race! It's been great fun and really interesting to try out a new way of flying. I'll definitely try to join another Buckyball run once I'm back in the bubble again.

 

[cookiehole]

Asp Run video

Here's my run in the Asp:
[video=youtube_share;46ZpOIrvT7Y]https://youtu.be/46ZpOIrvT7Y[/video]
Compared to the Hauler that run was pretty easy, as it took only two plots to Maia (to avoid these nasty three unscoopables in a row), with two unscoopables a few jumps apart.
The 15:10 run was accomplished already on the second successful attempt (sadly I can't find the video of that first failed attempt), and the 15:08 on the 5th run.
At first these times seemed pretty close to the optimum, but in the second live run I lost 52s to the SC hop at the beginning, theoretically making it a 14:58 under better track conditions.

A slightly shortened version of the live run and some interesting encounters with Obsidian Orbital are in this playlist.

 

[Raiko]

My final run time was actually 16:32, only 3s faster than my first run (not 16:16 as shown). So a couple of you will get boosted up a position.

I had a 17 jump route for my final run, but needed a couple of cut and pasted manual plots and a full half tank to make it work and I need a bit more practice with fast manual plots whilst scooping. Lol

I'd have probably got a better time just going with my original 18 jump route again, but I figured I might as well go for it.

The behaviour of the automatic route planner is a bit weird, only one of my manual plots should have been necessary, the first ten jumps were well within my full tank jump range, but only the first nine would plot in a route, the tenth jump always plotted as two (when plotting from HIP 78136), I didn't have any time to investigate further, so I just used two consecutive manual plots, then the rest of the route to Maia worked.

 

[Edelgard von Rhein]

Many thanks to @ElectricZ for staging the race! It was a lot of fun to run alongside so many other people in the first live race. Congratulations to the winners and well done to everyone who took part!

 

[reload]

Congrats to the winners and grumble grumble at the loss of podium place

Great racing with you all (and the newcomers!) as ever. I'm off on the Distant Horizons expedition launching next week, so it'll be six months or so before I'm back in the bubble (disasters permitting). Might not make the next BB, but will sure be in for number 11!

 

[DaveB]

Oi, Z.. do some percussive maintenance on the 'roo, he left me off the "live" section of the board. The only time I actually had worth turning in was in the opening live run

 

[Esvandiary]

Great racing with you all (and the newcomers!) as ever. I'm off on the Distant Horizons expedition launching next week, so it'll be six months or so before I'm back in the bubble (disasters permitting). Might not make the next BB, but will sure be in for number 11!

You're not telling me you're leaving... on time?!
I'm going on DW, but plan to catch up with the main group somewhere around Sagittarius A* (if not a little later). Too long away from the bubble for me otherwise!

 

[Raiko]

Oi, Z.. do some percussive maintenance on the 'roo, he left me off the "live" section of the board. The only time I actually had worth turning in was in the opening live run

I think that the "live" times are only from the second live run.

My live time (from the first run) is in the private / solo list, and you've got a time listed there as well.

 

[AkenBosch]

Congratulations to all the winners, may I say...stellar performance!

(pun very much intended)

I can imagine were that insolent DBX could have arrived in the hand of a truly capable pilot...

(...)But how the hell do you people manage that in 15 minutes, in an Asp? Wow.

Practice, a good deal of experience from past Buckyball runs and Buckyball Racing Club events, many attempts, in some cases optimized routes, planetary braking, ignorance concerning 'temperature critical' warnings and hull health, completely stripped down ships and a portion of madness

So, if I got the salient points correctly, it mostly comes down to a practicing a good deal of optimized planetary braking ignorance, critically concerned hull health and completely stripped down madness, right?

 

[Raiko]

You're not telling me you're leaving... on time?!
I'm going on DW, but plan to catch up with the main group somewhere around Sagittarius A* (if not a little later). Too long away from the bubble for me otherwise!

That's my plan as well, although I'm planning to join the departure and probably head to the first waypoint.

 

[cookiehole]

So, if I got the salient points correctly, it mostly comes down to a practicing a good deal of optimized planetary braking ignorance, critically concerned hull health and completely stripped down madness, right?

Yep. I think this run was relatively special as most of the time was spent jumping while the overall duration was rather short. Having as little jumps as possible was definetly the way to go in this race, which means completely stripped down ships (all small D, A FSD and smallest fuel tank that allows for 2 jumps (due to hardly evitable unscoopables)) and optimized routes (especially for the Hauler).

Planetary braking is always an important thing, although that's relatively difficult to state in numbers (comparing the videos side by side is very helpful though).

Hull health wasn't that big of a problem with only one docking, but in the hotter ships module health (especially the FSD) could be a concern. The heat buildup can vary dramatically between different scooping strategies and techniques. Alot did that extremely well in the Hauler run, while some of my Asp runs were hotter than they needed to be due to a relatively lazy scooping style in some cases.

For a good time, it was also important not to loose any seconds between the jumps, as there were quite a few of them. Not as intense as in the A* Challenge certainly, but starting the FSD at exactly the point where the cooldown ends could yield probably 15 seconds over the course opposed to "reacting" to the FSD-readyness-sound. Of course charging while scooping is inevitable; my scooping style in the Hauler and the Asp is usually 'diving in' vertically and then pulling up, flying horizontally over the star and pulling up shortly after starting the FSD charge.
Doing the next plot is also difficult as you can't scoop optimally in the meantime (you don't want to crash into the star but also want to scoop while you're in the GalMap). You might loose some seconds at every replot due to loading times, messing with the search, not scooping quickly enough or having the next jump target obscured. Probably the biggest reason why Alot's Open Hauler time is "only" 23 seconds faster than mine (despite having one jump less) is that he had to replot 13(?) times more often and had to worry much more about fuel levels at the same time.

The last thing is always a bit of luck (and partially the right daytime), for example exclusion zones not showing up correctly, which side of the star you drop out, which landing pad you get assigned, how much traffic there is at stations and a few other things that can improve or ruin a run. Therefore, multiple attempts are necessary in most cases (and you need to get to know your route).

 

[reload]

I'm going on DW, but plan to catch up with the main group somewhere around Sagittarius A* (if not a little later). Too long away from the bubble for me otherwise!

Given it'll only take you 8 hours or so to catch up...