Unclenches Was fully expecting a run from Brusky knocking me off first for regulation bonus as well.
Adding my thanks to Dr Nagi for creating this madness. I'm quite new to buckyball but this is easily the most complex race I've been involved in so far. Congratulations to everyone that participated, may your wallet refill quickly.
On to the promised post race analysis.
Preperations:
On reading the rules I immediately wanted to run an Anaconda for the unlimited class, I like big ships and suspect there wont be many chances to race them. Initially I didn't have any plans to compete in the bonus class but some time off work suddenly popped up so why not. This is roughly how I went about preparing.
First I bought a new Anaconda and engineered it as I didn't want to strip down either of my existing ones. Imperial Courier was already built and ready, just needed some tuning (in its final iteration, mine keeps its 885 m/s top speed with 4 tons of cargo). Next the regulation Dolphin joined the fleet in case I found time to run it.
I also set up bookmarks for all the waypoints except the station to buy fish, added several of those later on.
Plotting the route:
For the
Anaconda I built it around the 75,73 Ly jump from Arjung to Kerurukamar, calculations showed no saved jumps increasing it even to max jump range from this.
For the
Courier I wanted to keep the amount of jumps from Oppidavasti to Arjung at 5 and Maya to Oppidavasti at 6. This provided some challenges with heat management and keeping enough shields to not blow up too often, I did not get this nailed down until friday and actually only had 2 completed runs in this build.
I first went to eddb.io and made a list of all the stations selling fish that were located rougly between Oppidavasti and Arjung. Then I added their galactic coordinates for calculating distances and estimated number of jumps both to and from each one. Next up was visiting all of them to check for asteroid belts and how many planets were in my way. Entering the jump range (both from Oppidavasti with 1 ton of limpet and to Arjung with a total of 5 tons aboard) would give me candidates to go and check in each ship.
I had to redo this for every time I made a change that affected the jump range on the Courier.
Racing (final iteration Courier):
- Target first bookmark. Buy a limpet. Make sure pips are 2-4-0.
- Launch, tap silent running (thanks to Alec for this tip), ram into one of the pad lights until less than 6% or I blow up.
- Boost out and jump. Scoop and jump as soon as FSD is off cooldown and fuel is sufficient.
- Spiral to Newcomb Gateway in supercruise, boost through the slot and change pips to 4-2-0.
- Hit the back "wall" head on to not spin out of control, change pips back to 2-4-0.
- Land, refuel if needed, buy fish, launch, select next bookmark, boost out and jump.
- 3 jumps to Arjung, fill tank before leaving star.
- Select next bookmark, retarget Arjung 4, move focus to the fish in Inventory on right panel.
- Ram into the rings if hull percentage allows it. Boost towards the center of the ring.
- Stop, drop 1 ton fish and boost further into the ring, turn around and target the fish.
- Top speed and boost at around 1 km from the fish.
- Target next waypoint, get out of mass lock and jump.
- 2 jumps to Kemurukamar, fill tank before leaving star.
- Select next bookmark, target Blazin Dynamo, move focus to repair limpet controller in modules on right panel.
- Find Barnard's Loop nebula, need to enter the rings from the opposit side of where the nebula is.
- Gravity brake using the gas giant, spiral in to approach from the outside of the ring.
- Line up the tunnel, go full speed, use limpet, throttle down until limpet attatches, full throttle and boost to gain max speed in tunnel.
- Turn off limpet controller immediately after reacing top speed, target next waypoint, boost out of mass lock and jump.
- 4 jumps to Maya.
- Spiral to Fisher Enterprise in supercruise, boost through the slot and change pips to 4-2-0.
- Hit the back "wall" head on to not spin out of control, change pips back to 2-4-0.
- Land, refuel if internal fueltank will empty before reaching Arfstrom Station, sell remaining fish, launch, select next bookmark, boost out and jump.
- 6 jumps back to Oppidavasti, don't need to fill fuel on last jump, try not to fry the FSD too much.
- Spiral to Arfstrom Station in supercruise, boost through the slot and change pips to 4-2-0.
- Hit the back "wall" head on to not spin out of control, change pips back to 2-4-0.
- Land.
- Relax everything.
Dolphin run:
Source: https://youtu.be/ncacmsN29zw
Courier run:
Source: https://youtu.be/ZqE0oCK64uU
Anaconda run:
Source: https://youtu.be/_6bVYsAFmcA