The Buckyball Racing Club Presents: Close Encounters of the Bucky Kind (Swift-16 Championship, Race 8)

Fish172

Fish172
Well that was a dammed interesting race.
I have never seen such close racing, it was a joy to watch and take part in. Thank you @Ozric for ending the championships in such style.

I came to this race knowing previous attempts were less than successful, but armed with some new found skills and understanding from a fellow commander. I hit it hard, and did not stop. I was having fun this time round! The station that always put trepidation in my heart was Robert Aitken. It is devilishly tight if you want to be quick. Well who knew I could do that? I certainly did not. Now I can hit it at a 1-2 second approach most times (not all mind you). What surprised me the most is what a difficult place Big Pappas could be. It is utterly unforgiving. It even got me shouting at my screen. Go figure.
Then obscurations, they nearly sent me to the asylum. I will say no more.
As for the Dolphin, my god I never knew it could do that! My set up had 68ly jump, 591 boost and 4 jumps in the tank with small shields even and permaboost. The way it performed has given me serious doubts about the DBX in future races. Here are my Dolphin runs just for interest

Dolphin.png


Congratulations to the winners, they deserve it in this crazy race.

Special thanks to @sgurr and you know why!

Again thanks Ozric for a truly wonderful race.
 

Darkfyre99

Darkfyre99
Ozric said:
I've only had a few entries since yesterday's leaderboard update, seems everyone is gearing up for tonight and hoping for less obscured jumps that there were last night.
Click to expand...

That was going to be my strategy, since I had a very good (for me) time with an extra jump. I decided to do the math, so I knew when exactly the windows for my attempts would be... only to discover that I was missing some critical information to plug into my Kerbal Space Program spreadsheets. Sadly, it took my evening play window to come to that conclusion. :(

Sunday morning involved the usual obligations, and after a leasurely lunch I was getting set up to do some runs. Then my sister discovered she wasn't going to be called into work, so she decided to invite the extended clan over to her new house for an afternoon of family fun. :) By the time I got back home, it was too late to race. :(

Thank you, @Ozric, for hosting this race. I would've liked to have made a better showing in it, but as much fun as racing is, some things are higher on my priority list. :) Looking forward to the results. And congrats to everyone who participated, regardless of placement. These races are usually about personal improvement. I, for one, am becoming more confident about pushing the limit of my supercruise approaches. :cool:
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
Well first off thank you to every one who took part, I'm glad you've all enjoyed and been frustrated by it :D I have the provisional leaderboards done, but I think I might give a bit more time as it's barely lunch time over in the states. Lots of people across the whole leaderboard improving their times which is nice to see at the end.

CMDR Timber McWolf said:
This race solidified the stuff I learned in the Pareco Run in such a way that I find myself selling all the flight automation modules in my ships. :unsure:
Click to expand...

Excellent! That's what we aim for here, freeing up module slots :D

Darkfyre99 said:
Thank you, @Ozric, for hosting this race. I would've liked to have made a better showing in it, but as much fun as racing is, some things are higher on my priority list. :) Looking forward to the results. And congrats to everyone who participated, regardless of placement. These races are usually about personal improvement. I, for one, am becoming more confident about pushing the limit of my supercruise approaches. :cool:
Click to expand...
Priorities being in the right order is always the most important thing :)
 

Kevin The Stabber

Kevin The Stabber
Had a lot if fun with this one! Those close encounters were a new and fun challenge. Thanks to @Ozric for an amazing job hosting. The write ups each day were great! Shout out to @Bruski for doing the video updates, loved it! It didn't feel right without my rival @Alec Turner at the end but WE SHALL MEET AGAIN! Shout out as well to @sgurr for always being so supportive and helpful, even with me gunning for his spot in regulation! Crossing my fingers that I held a spot on the podium, but I don't expect it much seeing everyone go at it so hard this weekend! Congrats to all the winners in advance!!!! o7
 

FearlessF21

FearlessF21
Well once again the season comes to an end on a high. What a race and to echo what everyone else has said @Ozric, thanks for an absolute bag of laughs runing this one. never been more frustrated running round thinking i had topped the last time, only to discover that 3 seconds messing about with landing pads / gear meant another duff run. but you live and learn for the next time.

great stuff and once again thanks for the laughs
 
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jspace

J
I loved how tricky the approach to Robert Aitken was. Getting it juust right was something I only got close to, but it was fun nonetheless.
I put my best (and sometimes only) runs for different ships up. I mostly ran them in order of what I thought would be slowest to fastest. Scouting and my first attempt to get a feel for the course were done in the Sidewinder.

First the Cutter. Probably the worst option for this race. A T10 might be worse, but I didn't try it.

Learning from that and taking inventory of ships that were readily/easily stripped to make something, I ran the Federal Corvette.

The T6 is one of the few ships that could complete the course in 5 jumps. I had too much fuel and had to take extra jumps. C'est la vie. Not a great run otherwise.

I really wanted to push the Sidewinder, and did the most runs in that. I thought the lack of jump range could be made up by the excellent SC handling and ease of docking, and maybe a better pilot could take advantage of that, but I came to the conclusion that I was unlikely to break 20:30 with 3 extra jumps.

In between Sidey runs I switched to Regulation. My goal was to break 25 minutes. I did with 24:59, but that wasn't good enough, so I kept trying until getting a clean run.

Up until this point I didn't really have any issues with obscured jumps. I could usually run in reverse and be fine. That wasn't the case Sunday so I had to scramble a bit to get something to work. I was finally able to break 20 minutes with the boring and predictable iCourier.
Maybe I should have stuck with the T6. That would have been more interesting. :unsure:
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
Well I have received no more submissions and so I think it's safe to say that bar anyone spotting some mistakes I've made on the final leaderboards, we have come to the end of the race and the end of the championship. But not on the end of the year's racing... :)

As there has been a lot of improvements and new entries in both classes I'm just going to go through the movers and shakers in the final update. And we'll start in Regulation.
(for listening while reading)
Source: https://youtu.be/bY85ET2gXGQ?si=7rQofSY0wi4aR8H5


First of all we have new it at 17 Cmdr. Heliaxx with a nice run straight into the 26 minute bracket. Ahead of them was another new entry as Cmdr. Psykit bundled The Joy of Hex in very close to breaking the 26 minute barrier. Unfortunately the next few places on the leaderboard have been shuffled down as there's been action above. Our next entry is another new entry breaking in to the top 10 at number 9 is BRC veteran Cookiehole, it's been great to have you back racing occasionally, with a time of 24:45. Jumping up two places to number 8 is jspace knocking almost a minute off of their time. One above jumping up four places to number 7! is Epaphus, who knocked off a minute and a half. And finally jumping up by one spot into 5th and knocking down Edlegard, is Cmdr. Sulu who also managed to take off almost a minute.

But no one could challenge the top four, and none of them made it to the course to try and improve for varying reason. And so, incredibly, tied for 3rd place we have Alec and Bruski! In second place with a sub 23 minute time, which especially considering it's his first full year of Buckyball racing, is very impressive indeed! We have Kevin The Stabber! And on the top spot making the Cobra do things the rest of us think is impossible with a fantastic time of 22:39 is Sgurr!

CcHY8SJl.png



Now we move on to Unlimited (you'll probably have to start the music from 0:04 again for dramatic effect ;) )

First of all at number 20 we have Cmdr. Timber Mcwolf who changed up to the Python and managed to knock over 5 minutes off their time, which is fantastic. Next up we have another improvement at 18 from Triplerazor. Just above at 17 is a new entry from Draig Seren, who just managed to make it in time to chuck an Imperial Courier recklessly around the course. Also new in at 15 we have LeroyJethroTull who managed a couple of runs in the DBX. Up to number 12 now and it's another new entry, this time from Cookiehole who was close to breaking that 20 minute barrier and just 3 seconds ahead of Arrowroot66. Speaking of the 20 minute barrier, the first Cmdr to break it was jspace who, you guessed it, swapped ship and snuck in at 19:58. It would have been enough to move a bit higher, but Edelgard managed to improve his time by over 30 seconds and holds on to 10th place.

Into the top ten now and in 9th we had a new entry from Cmdr. Raiko, who fortunately managed to find some time to get on the course as it was one he'd been looking forwards to racing for a while. It's always frustrating when we miss out on things, so glad you made it. 19:12 was only good enough for 9th because Cmdr. Epaphus was beavering away at both classes on the final couple of days and managed another improvement here. Knocking off 45 seconds to move up by one into 7th. In 6th we have another improvement and although only by a few seconds, it was enough to finally break the 19 minute barrier for Tobias who had been tantalisingly close.

In to the podium places now and another person trying to break a barrier was Shaye. Who did manage to improve their time, but finished bang on 18 minutes. Both great and frustrating at the same time I'm sure. No improvement from Bruski, but we did have an improvement from Sgurr down to 17:02 so close. But as he said to me "I don't care what place it ends up, I can't improve on that with a reasonable amount of effort."
The next day I received another entry coming in at 16:57 (by 10 frames) gotta love it when you think you're done... Just one more turn...

Z5q8Hg1l.png


Huge congratulations to Sgurr for coming first in both classes and thank you so much to everyone who's taken part. I'm really glad you've enjoyed/hated it, it's been great to watch.

Can we also just appreciate how close things were too. I often wonder in things like Alpine skiing (which I consider to be a bit more reactive like Elite) how people can end up so close after such distances. And yet after over 20 minutes of racing, in Regulation we have a tie for third, 9 and 10 are one second apart, as are 11 and 12. And in Unlimited 3 to 6 are less than a minute, the next 3 places covered by ten seconds, and a 3 second gap further down too.

Fly fast Cmdrs o7
 

Edelgard von Rhein

E
Many congratulations to Sgurr for a double win and to the others who managed the Long climb out of the gravity well onto the podium! Well done to everyone who managed to complete the course and, especially, a big thank you to Ozric for staging a remarkable race, in terms of the competition, simplicity of concept and the unique challenges it posed! o7 to all of you!

This race is a personal favourite of mine but I do like to avoid the obvious ship choices, as many of us did in this race. Last time around I flew an Adder - this time I prepared a Federal Assault Ship and am both surprised and pleased to put it into the top 10. During the race I checked the past leaderboards going back to the beginning of the Buckyball Racing Club (the first race was the Pleiades Hip Hop in 3301) and discovered that (except for standing challenges) the FAS does not appear on any of them! So, for the first time, here is a video of what it looks like to race a FAS:
Source: https://youtu.be/TIMJXp2kS2I

It has been a good year for racing and there has been a wide variety of events and challenges within them. It seems as if there's always something new to do, even after so many dozens of races. I hope 2024 will continue this trend!

As Ozric said above, this year is not quite over yet - there is to be a standalone event over the Christmas period. From 23rd - 31st of this month I shall be staging a finale to 3309, with Obfuscated In The Outer Rim, a Robert Holdstock -themed race, highlighting the effort the late Michael Brookes put into creating a tribute to his Legacy in-game and other authors that inspired him.
 
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CMDR Timber McWolf

CMDR Timber McWolf
Proudly raises the red lantern mug

Congratulations to @sgurr for the double-W.
Also congrats to the inhabitants of the remaining podium spots in both classes.
Cheers to everyone that participated in this race.
And a big cheers to @Ozric for hosting this race.



The races this year have spawned a question in my head...
My optical sensors are a little weak in the red/green spectrum, which makes it impossible for me to tell the red and green lights apart - they all look white to me. In another thread, someone said that only the red ones would be flashing. But when I fly through the mailslot, every light is flashing. Is there any other way to tell if I have the greens on my right when I enter? Knowing that would improve my ability to find my pad by about 80%.
 
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sgurr

S
CMDR Timber McWolf said:
The races this year have spawned a question in my head...
My optical sensors are a little weak in the red/green spectrum, which makes it impossible for me to tell the red and green lights apart - they all look white to me. In another thread, someone said that only the red ones would be flashing. But when I fly through the mailslot, every light is flashing. Is there any other way to tell if I have the greens on my right when I enter? Knowing that would improve my ability to find my pad by about 80%.
Click to expand...
I don't know of any other way of judging pad orientation from the outside, but as you go through the slot the compass will change and point to your pad.
 
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sgurr

S
Lots of improvements over the last weekend which was fantastic, and congrats to everyone for getting round as well as the other podiumers

Great Cobra flying @Kevin The Stabber, that was close, you're gonna win one soon!

And @Shaye Blackwood I'm gobsmacked at how fast you got the Type-7 round, that deserves some sort of award.
Suggestions on a postcard people

and @Bruski for yet another double podium!

and @Ozric , thanks so much for running it, this was the perfect race to finish up the Sweet-16 and took me to some new places, (including silent rage as I faceplant Aitken's gg yet again ;) )
 
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