Community Event / Creation The Buckyball Racing Club presents: Once Upon a Time in Leesti (Triple Eight Championship, Race 7)

I don't know that I have any specific pearls of wisdom to share but I thought I might just detail my unlimited process in case there's anything obvious to me that's not obvious to others. So, starting from my bookmarks ...

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Starting at George Lucas I repair, refuel and buy the two rares. Oh, and I also spend quite a lot of time getting either pad 12 or 36 to start from (enjoying the casual ribbing from EDCoPilot as I repeatedly cancel docking requests). No point disadvantaging myself by a second or two before I've even started.

I plot a route to my Lave Station bookmark and then target Associated Pharmaceutical Services in the Nav' panel.

OK, ready to go I start recording and wait for the clock to hit :00.

Go - SCO to Assoc' Pharm' Serv' (never bothered learning an optimal drop-in angle), do the tunnel and then hit the resume route binding to switch back to my plotted Lave Station route before engaging the jump.

SCO to Lave and land, buy the rare, hit launch, open bookmarks and plot to Ridley Scott, then target Orange Sidey in the Nav panel.

SCO to Orange Sidey (again, never bothered learning an optimal drop-in), fly through the ad's, resume route to Ridley Scott and jump.

SCO to Ridley Scott, fly the station loop (re-requesting docking as I go if I get a bad pad).

Land, buy the rare, launch, plot a route to Shifnalport bookmark and go.

SCO to Shifnalport, land, buy the rare, hit launch and then use the 04.5 bookmark to target the Lave Radio Signal Booster.
This is an odd one. I had a hell of a job finding the signal booster in the Nav Panel but found that if I plotted using the bookmmark then, even tho' it gives no feedback and even tho it doesn't appear targeted when you're preparing to jump to supercruise, as soon as you do it appears targeted and you can then quickly SCO to it.

Land outside the trespass zone and do the SRV run (same route every time, which I did memorise).

Recall the ship as soon as possible, wait and board.

Take off, one boost up then open galaxy map and plot route to Mansfield. Doing this is about the only wasted time in the whole run but any other way I tried (even plotting the route while gliding down to the signal booster) left the booster untargeted and hard to find again. Jump as soon as I come out of the galaxy map.

SCO to Mansfield repeating the mantra "don't forget to sell, don't forget to sell". Land, sell, buy, launch, plot route to Azeban.

SCO to Azeban, land, buy the rare, launch, plot route to George Lucas and back we go.

SCO to George Lucas, land ... and breathe again.

There's also quite a lot of turning night vision on and off at various point (on for structure loops, etc, off otherwise 'cos the jaggies offend me), and also quite a few more mantra's to make sure I remember what I'm supposed to be doing next.

Anyway, that was my unlimited run process basically.
 
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All runs have now been verified, and nobody has complained about the provisional final standings, so here are the confirmed final standings for Once Upon a Time in Leesti.
Also, as I'm feeling a lot better tonight, here is the belated summary commentary for the final couple of day's racing:

The first run logged after the "penultimate update" right after it in fact, was a great one: Cmdr Alec Turner made the old rares run in 26m32s in Ask Again Later to move into first place in the Regulation Cobras.

Next up was Cmdr Fearless21 in Nicky-Nock, just failing to break the 30 minute barrier, with a run of 30m29s.

V.A.R.S. controversy then arrived in Once Upon a Time class, as the race marshals found that the V.A.R.S. data from Cmdr Sgurr's flight recorder had been suspiciously erased. Luckily race co-ordinator Anthony 'Fat Tony' Lonnigan appeared in the nick of time, to declare that he had seen Sgurr's flight data, the time was good enough for first place and absolutely no bribery had occurred.** So Cmdr Sgurr took the lead with an excellent time of 25:43 in Class of '84. Welcome back @sgurr o7

Speaking of Fat Tony, an old associate of his "Kevin the Stabber" joined the race late in Marion Cobretti, and his time of 27m43s was fast enough to move straight into 4th place 5 seconds ahead of Epaphus

Cmdr Martinjameson logged a new run with 29m14 finally pulling over 20 seconds ahead of Sir Boundness and Sinister Hedgehog after their three Cobras had been neck and neck for the whole race.

As the clock ticked down towards the end of the race, an improvement of over 30 seconds in his Mk.III Baller allowed Cmdr Epaphus to surge past Sulu, Tobias and Kevin the Stabber snatching 4th place, a position he would hold onto until the end. A little behind Epaphus, Buckyball Regulation Class veteran Cmdr Ozric also got back ahead of Sulu with an improved run of 28m10s in Raid'n'Run, finishing the race 8 seconds behind Tobias.

Late in the race Inga Stevenson posted an improved time of 30:36 in Ship of Theseus, finishing a couple of minutes clear of Cmdr Bruski who had been feared lost in the temporal storms that battered his Mk.III 8 Heads 8 Onions 8 Rebuys as it traversed witchspace,turning a great run into a battle for survival.​


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Over in Shenanigan Class, Cmdr Sulu logged a great run on 31m56s in his Dolphin Seagull, to move back ahead of Tobias and onto the podium. Right behind him and also passing by Tobias, Epaphus got back to Leesti in his Asp Explorer In Front of Things, logging an excellent new time of 32m02s.

Next in was Martinjameson flying another Whippet, sorry I mean Dolphin, Whippet? That's Luxury to register a run of 36m20s.

The next arrival's V.A.R.S. recording also confounded the race marshals, but Buckyball blogger Leeya Geddy had spotted Cmdr Sgurr carrying a suspicious briefcase into Tony's office earlier, so she knew how these things worked, first place requires a bottle of Centauri Mega Gin and some Motrona Experience Jelly for Mrs Lonnigan, but a pile of credits was more than enough to validate a nice time of 38m02s in Passage To Bangkok! **

Alec Turner was hot on the heals of Shaye, becoming the second Cmdr to break thirty minutes in unlimited with a fantastic run of 29m50s in the leading Dolphin Champagne Charlie, now only 22 seconds behind the race leader.

Meanwhile, as Alec hunted top spot, Cmdr Raiko was struggling to get any run on the board in his own race, eventually surviving a run in yet another Dolphin, The BuckyBus.

Cmdr Inga Stevenson was having none of that Dolphin nonsense, she flies real starships, not space buses, and logged a time of 39m08s after switching from DBX to her Asp Explorer Emerald Dawn.​

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** Note that no bribes were received, but Sgurr and Leeya needed to resubmit video evidence via PM, due to incorrect links.

And that is that, see you all at the next race, thanks and congrats to everyone who took place, especially podium Cmdrs: Shaye Blackwood, Sgurr, Alec Turner, Darplata94.... and.... drumroll.... 🎊 Sulu!!! 🎊 (congrats bud)​
Anyway, it's a Tuesday and the time in the Old Worlds is past 8:30, so why not listen in to our friends at Lave Radio right now, they might be discussing this very race, assuming those hacks haven't done any permanent damage!
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Ok, getting on with the post, although there is another Rush related post I’m almost done with that needs finishing first. To continue with the OUATIL race, however, I’m going to need to ask a favour of the top four racers in the Shenanigans class. So, @Shaye Blackwood @Alec Turner @Fish172 @Epaphus would you be able to send me (pm) two analyses each of how you perform a “perfect” gravity breaking approach to some of the varied types of bodies/orbits in this race. please? 🙏 Only a few sentences each or more, up to you. The first needs to be a “classic” description of how you approach the manoeuvre, as if you were programming a bot to do it for you, and the second description needs to be a “romantic” version - how it feels, how it sounds, how it looks, how you feel/what it makes you feel as you progress along the manoeuvre, and drop out as close to “perfect” as you are satisfied with.

I know it’s a lot to ask and it’s entirely up to any of you if you’d like to contribute but it would be awesome if you could!
 
OK folks, here's part one of today's top 4 split screen extravaganza and we begin with Shenanigan/Unlimited class featuring Shaye Blackwood, Alec Turner, Sulu and Epaphus.

The full half hour version without music is here ..
Source: https://youtu.be/Yjmq8jLObD0


.. and the 4x speed version with pumping dance soundtrack is here ..
Source: https://youtu.be/-VWaSLesmgc


The Regulation class videos will be coming in a few hours time.
 
Okay, I finally found some time to edit the raw footage of the most successful, albeit failed, run I managed to produce.


As I post this, the HD version is still processing, but in about an hour it should be done.

Things to keep in mind while watching:
  1. I've sped quite a bit of the footage up to between 2x and 10x to boil the time down from about 1 hour. The shenanigans are in normal speed.
  2. When entering Lave, it looks like I parked the ship and took a break - well, I tabbed out of the game to come here to read the instructions (I still got it wong...)
  3. Apparently, the intense electromagnetic radiation at the Lave Signal Booster smoothened my brain significantly - I had forgotten that I need to select the targeted beacon to be able to scan it.
 
Almost forgot to post it here! Post izzup!
Great article.
I liked reading it. And the different explanation approaches were interesting.
That I still don't feel like I have come any closer to understanding the art of gravity breaking definitely isn't the fault of this article.
It may be my way of thinking that gets in my way here. I struggle to get a mental picture of the spiral and how to use the sticks and buttons of my trusty old XBox 360 controller to introduce this spiral that actually works.
Though there were some aspects mentioned in the "romantic" approaches that rang a bell in me. Listening to the sound of the engines makes a lot of sense for me as this provides more detailed information about your speed than the speedometer of the cockpit. My ears recognize my ship getting caught in a gravity well far earlier than the sensors of the ship do.
 
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