The Buckyball Racing Club presents: The Last Gasp - Resuscitated (Magic 8-Ball Championship, Race 8)

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Right then, you've held your breath in suspense for long enough, here are the final Last Gasp leaderboards!

JcMzJXt.png


As usual, let's do the run down of new submissions first.

In regulation, Cmdr Draig Seren entered a final submission before heading off to compete in a far more exhausting race, the London Marathon! Making further improvements to climb 3 more places, Draig ends up in 13th place with a final total of 673LY. Next up we had a massive improvement from Epaphus (later cemented with an even better run), climbing 7 places with a fantastic 1,121 to take 3rd place (at the time of submission). Not just a dedicated Corvette racer but a true Buckyball contender! Alas he was then knocked out of the podium by champion racer Bruski who (briefly) overtook Elastul Ma'fer to take 2nd place. Bruski could never quite match Shaye's extraordinary run and concedes that Shaye's (presumed) win was "well deserved".

The regulation excitement wasn't over tho. Elastul Ma'fer (Ozric) came back in a sensational last minute entry where he "almost blew up the ship inside the station after managing to scrape through with just 1 second of air left". With 1,245LYs on the odometer Elastul finishes in 2nd place. However, it's Buckyball racer extraordinaire Shaye Blackwood who claims the number 1 spot. Making a seemingly impossible new route work Shaye breaks the 1,400 barrier and finishes on a mind blowing 1,453.97 light years. A very well deserved win indeed!

The final submissions in regulation were from Inga Stevenson who beat Rocky Star on distance but lost out due to the time bonus to finish 12th, and brand new racer Kyle Stryker who joins us just as the season finishes with a 549LY run to finish 17th. Welcome to Buckyball and I hope you'll join us again next season!

Now let's turn to the unlimited ship class. First new submission here was from Edelgard Von Rhein who managed to climb 2 more places with an excellent 2,198 light years that, at time of submission, was a podium 3rd. But it was Cmdr Bruski (again) who snuck in at the 11th hour. Racing a ship provocatively named "Shiny Loophole", this run only differed from Shaye's in a single stop. Further boosted with a remaining Oxygen bonus of over two and a half minutes, the final score of 2,295LYs leaves Bruski finishing 1st in this class. Bruski describes this race as "frustrating and complex and exasperatingly and exhiliratingly fun and brutal".

Next and Kyle Stryker also makes their debut in unlimited ship class racing with a fine 1,120LY run to finish 12th. Meanwhile Cmdr Epaphus is back to prove the Corvette can race, beating Edelgard's Viper with a 1,262LY run that left just 7 seconds on the clock (after a nail biting obscured jump). Epaphus did experiment with some 5-stop routes but alas the planetary landing penalty was just too great and 4-stops proved to be "the sweet spot". And speaking of ships not normally associated with racing, Cmdr Crotalus (famed for running Buckyballs in a variety of ships) turned up in a Type-10 Defender to run a 3-stop 909LY run that finishes in 14th place. Back to more traditional racing ships tho' and Cmdr jspace came back with the fastest Imperial Courier of the race, using the added bonus from 2 mins of remaining air to just beat Caelum Incola into 5th place.

Finally in unlimited, Inga Stevenson made a further improvement with a devilish 1,666LY run. Inga crashed into a planet, forgot to refuel and suffered module damage from overheating that nearly lost beer mats, but she still pipped Martinjameson to 8th ... or she would have done except the final submission of the race was from Martinjameson who felt the "time crunch" and, "the quickest they've planned a route", came up with a 1,726LY run to snatch 8th place back again.

So that's it, the final winners (and their routes) are as follows:

Regulation class

1Shaye BlackwoodBykovsky Terminal / GcirithangBoucher Freeport / FintiEuclid Hub / EdanditisNicollet Settlement / QahatiniGooch City / Angrbonii
2Elastul Ma'ferYurchikhin Port / LamakuSacco Installation / BD-12 6174Sargent Terminal / SvanticaniBunch Prospect / YeniklisShaikh Horizons / LTT 9455
3BruskiMiletus Dock / LHS 2541Hoshi Enterprise / VZ CorviWilliams Hub / Eta CorviHenry Orbital / LP 673-13Baird City / LHS 2471

Unlimited class

1BruskiGrushin Survey / AstrimuiSmirnova Port / PapakoBarnwell Prospect / KaruntiAbbot Enterprise / HIP 117114Tombaugh's Claim / HIP 114472
2Shaye BlackwoodFedden Stop / AtjilGrushin Survey / AstrimuiSmirnova Port / PapakoAbbot Enterprise / HIP 117114Tombaugh's Claim / HIP 114472
3SuluLuu Prospect / PardokGrushin Survey / AstrimuiSmirnova Port / PapakoAbbot Enterprise / HIP 117114Hansteen Orbital / Bhuman

Congratulations one and all. Now, let's finish this with a few more fun facts.

Shaye, Sulu and Bruski all ended up using Astrimui, HIP 117114 and Papako in Unlimited whilst Elastul Ma'fer, Bruski and Sulu all included LHS 2471 in their regulation runs.

Out of the 239 separate stations visited, only 22 were visited by more than one commander!

The final average amount of air remaining was exactly one minute!

In regulation we saw min, average and max station distances of 87.25, 177.60 and 310.55 light years respectively, while in unlimited class those figures were 180.25, 355.58 and 457.96 light years.

The largest maximum distance between the stations visited in any given run was 90.48 lights years (courtesy of Captain-MD who was otherwise cruelly time robbed of a siginificant finishing position in this race). The shortest maximum distance between stops meanwhile was 8.71 light years (courtesy of FearlessF21's regulation run).

OK, that's it! All that remains is for me to thank everyone who's taken part in either this or any of the Magic 8-Ball Championship races (who's final points tally I will be announcing tomorrow) and to hand over to you lot to share your winning (and not so winning) tactics, videos and blooper reels.

Hopefully we can all agree (myself included) that it's been exhausting, but an absolute blast.

Fly fast commanders!

o7
 
Last edited:

Fish172

Fish172
Well Alec thank for the most brilliant way to finish the competition. Had the mostest fun, and blow me a podium spot again. I need to be careful though as I might get taken seriously. I also notice I think I managed to match the furthest distance out which I said at the time was starting to get a bit concerning with no life support. As for Mine, Bruski`s and Shaye`s routes, there was no passing of info at all. What were the odds of that? Well done Shaye & Bruski, I enjoyed fighting out the 2200 club. Even proud to run at that level to be honest.

I would also like to particularly congratulate Ozric for that podium spot too.

The odd thing about this race was the fact that time did not matter in one sense. I set the the number of jumps I was prepared to make then went about finding suitable outposts no more than 50ls out. I set myself finally on an 11 / 4 / 11 runs, which is as much as I could do. It got to a point that the Bubble was getting too thin on stations to make plotting possible, but as the other two found out, it was, a bit!

Fly hard brothers!
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
w00t I made a podium! I'm glad I got one during the regulation cup, considering my placings during normal races (though I'm often left alone in Regulation there ;) )

A huge thanks for organising the race Alec it's been great fun overall. A little too much time spent in eddb, far too many silly mistakes like selling multiple Beermats, and the route plotter deciding it needed more jumps on the way back from a system than it would on the way there, caused for some frustrating moments :) I, like Sulu, found the race oddly calming. And although there was a time limit, it didn't feel as though there was as much of a time pressure as there normally is in trying to improve your time over a set course. I'll talk through some of the challenges a bit once I sort out the video of my run.

Truly amazing work by Shaye in Regulation to get that far! I had pushed 1,380 on a theoretical run, so I thought it might be possible to go beyond 1,400 but to get past 1,450 is crazy! Well done to Bruski too, I knew that you would be gunning for my distance and had to put something better on the board.

Well done to all those who took part in the race, and in the championship. It's been an awesome ride, and it's been so heartening to see so many people enjoying racing throughout the year.
 

Caelum Incola

Caelum Incola
Thanks Alec for a brill race, despite my brief showing and late entry. RL seems to have got in the way for the last couple of rounds. As I mentioned in the Discord channel though, a big thanks to all the seasoned racers that have taken me under their collective wing these past 8 months or so and taught me the Ways of the Bucky. Alongside Distant Worlds II, this has been the best community experience I've had in game. Looking forward to next season already.
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
Draig Seren said:
Thanks @Alec Turner That was a great race, each of the race in the championship has improved my flying. Now it's back to BGS, exploration, engineering...
It's somewhat humbling to realise that if I'd done the race twice, I'd still only be in 2nd place!
Click to expand...

Caelum Incola said:
Thanks Alec for a brill race, despite my brief showing and late entry. RL seems to have got in the way for the last couple of rounds. As I mentioned in the Discord channel though, a big thanks to all the seasoned racers that have taken me under their collective wing these past 8 months or so and taught me the Ways of the Bucky. Alongside Distant Worlds II, this has been the best community experience I've had in game. Looking forward to next season already.
Click to expand...

Bucky is proud of you and everyone else, for getting out there and giving it a go! Once you start on the path to improving you general flying skills through racing, you'll find that it bleeds into your normal flying. Then as you practice without even realising it, so your times/distances will improve.

giphy.gif
 

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
So for my part, Elastul has always been linked with the Alliance and her home base is in Eranin. So as that's where all my ships were parked I thought I'd start off checking there. The first mistake I made was not realising that you don't use up Oxygen when in Witchspace, so I thought I could only get 6 jumps either way. Once I realised how much time I had spare and what was going on I just added 1 jump either way for each minute spare. My first long runs were 9 jumps.

I basically picked a system, did a search in eddb for Outposts closer than 200Ls (should have added has market to that earlier) and started there. Turns out there's so many systems with Outposts closer than 50Ls I quickly narrowed down the search. I discovered that, giving Odyssey some praise somewhere I thought I wouldn't, the Galaxy Map shows you the amount of jumps a route is on the map screen, rather than having to either count them or exit and look in the Nav Panel. Which meant finding the start/end points was easier, and adding potential cargo in to the mix was equally as easy.
I did my planning in Odyssey, then swapped to Horizons to race :D There are some anomalies you don't find out till running the route, like what may be a certain number of jumps from Rebuy to a destination, isn't necessarily the same coming the other way.

For my penultimate submitted entry I got to 11 jumps out and 9 jumps back at the end. Shaye told us he had done 12 jumps either way, I scouted a run and tried it, but there's no way it was going to be possible, but 11 either way might be and would probably have to be. The ideal situation would be to have station 2 20+Ly further out from the first, number 3 a further 20+Ly out, then work your way back for 4 and 5. But I could not find a decent 11 jump route around where I was.
Eranin is basically on the same level of the galactic plane as Fullerene C60, so my first system was only 25Ly "above" the start and I couldn't get much more than 20Ly further out. I switched up and dropped "down" towards Slaver space and this time the first system was about 70Ly "below" the start, the range of systems was a bit better and crucially further overall. Knowing what I want to find, and not quite able to has been the most frustrating part of this race :D But as we're perched on the edge of the bubble you can pretty much go in any direction within a 180 degree area.

I normally stick on some Synthwave or Tool when racing, but last week Frontier released a set of lo-fi remixes they'd done to Planet Zoo songs and not only is it amazing but I found it very fitting. I think it helped add to the calming aspect of the race. So I put a few of those songs over it.

Source: https://youtu.be/yvAVfiXB6V8


Thanks once again to Alec for organising, and everyone else taking part!
 

Edelgard von Rhein

E
Congratulations to the winners and well done to everyone who managed to complete the course - this was a very different type of race, with a hard time limit and the aim to go farther more than faster (although faster does improve the score as well and allow you to go farther). o7

I'm surprised to have flown the only Cobra MkIII in Unlimited. One of the first things I did when the rules were announced was to check the laden jump range of small ships (to avoid pad blocking in a medium ship), with 5t of cargo. I found that the best results were for the Cobra MkIII with the Dolphin and DBS similar but the Cobra MkIII build I settled on had the advantage in boost speed, reaching 650+m/s. I downsized the fuel tank to a class 3, giving me three jumps, and decided that I was happy to boost off white dwarfs, if possible. In-game, the range achieved by my build was a bit off from what I had expected, so I achieved exactly 50.00LY for the Morglay by partly-engineering a heat sink launcher to be lightweight and half way through grade 5.
I needed that heat sink launcher on my final run!
In looking around the Bubble for collections of distant outposts, for my final attempt I went down and to the right, to the places closer to the Coal Sack nebula. My most distant outpost was Ptack Orbital in Bodhinga (there was another outpost I could have chosen as there is a close binary of planets that each have an outpost), 449.04 LY from C60. I found more than five outposts around (in fact Bodhinga sticks out a bit from the Bubble, so I was looking for stepping stones there and back) and settled upon Heinkel's Exile, Natar, as my first stop, then Ptack, then Gaensler Outpost, Yalua (at ~150LS from the star this was the furthest station I visited from its star but this system was in just the right place and my second most-distant system at 431.99LY), Brunner Landing, Wurunabijao, and finally Curtis Dock, Gangga. The route was 9 jumps out and back with 2 white dwarf boosts each way iirc.
The run itself involved cooking my ship a bit. I encountered a pirate early on and avoided the interdiction by staying close to the star as I scooped and charged my FSD, using a heat sink. I was lucky as I might easily have crashed into the star if the pirate had been able to get an angle on me. With my downsized fuel tank I needed to refuel almost fully after each white dwarf boost so to avoid losing time I would have to charge and scoop together, which meant using another heat sink. At about this time I realised I was not sure if any of my outposts had restock facilities, so I took heat damage rather than use my last heat sink, saving it for the way back. Fortunately, one of my outposts did have restock facilities so I replenished my heat sinks and used them all on the way back, making sure I was charging my FSD as soon as possible and scooping at the same time to keep my tank filled up enough - but I still ran a teeny bit short at one point and cooked my modules slightly getting enough fuel in to make my next jump. I had favourable pad allocations at almost all of the outposts which helped a lot and the gravity braking and pad touchdowns went smoothly, though gravity braking had a limited effect in places with low-mass planets whose orbital cruise zones I had to avoid. Rebuy Prospect was well-positioned for gravity braking, being on the opposite side of the star around its parent planet when I arrived.

Thanks to Alec Turner for running this race and also the 8-ball Championship! It has helped to keep me interested and motivated after getting back from my circumnavigation and has given me something to look forward to. o7
Fly fast!
 

Epaphus

Epaphus
Thanks for hosting the race Alec. It was an interesting one and required to think differently to the others. Almost every run required the planning of a new route, rather than running the same route over and over again trying to gain a few seconds.
A fitting end to the 8 ball championship. (y)

I did similar to Ozric on my first run, I didn't account for the O2 timer stopping in witchspace and ended up with 2:30 seconds left. Plotted a new route adding extra jumps and ended up with 3 minutes O2 left which baffled me a bit, thinking back it most likely the supercruise time based to the stations for the new route and better landings. With 3 minutes left on the clock on clock I felt comfortable breaking the 1k ly mark, then Shaye comes in with a 1.3k ly run 😮. Tried a couple of 12 jump runs to try to get close to that but just couldn't quite make it back to Rebuy Prospect in time so had to settle with a 11 jump run and submitted on Saturday night thinking that was going to be it.
Sunday I decided to the same run in VR and was able to get back to rebuy with a few extra seconds left.

On my first Vette run at the 4th stop I knew I wouldn't have enough time for the 5 so chickened out and headed back to Rebuy. While planning the route I didn't even think about obscured jumps so hit a couple of those on the way. I was determined to get a 5 stop route but after a couple of days of planning and testing I couldn't get one to work without losing too many jumps to improve on my initial route so decided to make it a 4 stop and have a slight improvement on what I had.
If running without live support wasn't risky enough it turned out my final Vette route had higher G planets than I would liked, something I forgot to account for when looking for places to land. Unlike the Chicken Run Vette this one was built for jump range not face planting landing pads 😁

I did find it interesting all of the extra sounds you wouldn't normally hear with the life support off as they get drowned out by all of the other sounds the ship normally makes, I also noticed how much I rely on the audio cues for races. I found I had to pay more attention to the FSD cool down and mass lock indicators to make sure I didn't waste any time.

I think sounds your CMDR makes in the last 60 seconds will haunt me for weeks, especially after the VR runs!
I'm sure I was holding my own breath for those last few seconds heading into Rebuy 😂

If anyone is interested here are my final runs, both in VR

Cobra run

Corvette run
 

Arrowroot 66

Arrowroot 66
I thought there would be lots of scooping and charging on this one so I picked the Dolphin to race. Never gave a thought to how much jump distance would be lost with cargo.

After an initial trial with a 7 jump and 2 white dwarf route, I went to the opposite extreme and tried for 2 jumps to the first outpost. I used eddb, working back from the furthest I could theoretically reach with 5 tons aboard, until the galaxy map said I really could do it in 2 jumps not 3. Then I searched again, using the jump distance for 4 tons until I found the one furthest from Rebuy; then I went from there as far as possible with 3 tons. I used a similar process for finding stations on the way back.

I didn't submit this run, but found I had enough time to add 2 jumps in each direction and plot again. I submitted the 4 jump routes for both ships and then started looking for a 5 jump route. And then 6 jumps.

By now it was the last day and I was trying to make a 7 jump, 816ly route work in the Cobra. After several failed attempts I switched to the Dolphin and didn't pay enough attention when I plotted a 7-jump route. I forgot to set 5 tons of cargo in the route plotter so I had a nasty surprise when it took me 8 jumps to get to the first outpost. This was followed by a very pleasant surprise when I made it back to Rebuy with 30 seconds to spare!

I actually enjoyed the process of running once and then looking for a longer route; it made for a change from continually running the same route trying to shave off a few seconds here and there.

Thanks again to Alec for this excellent race and organising the whole championship, well done to the winners, and to @Draig Seren for yet again sneaking ahead of me at the last moment, and sorry, not sorry to @Darkfyre99 for doing exactly that to you! 😁
 

Shaye Blackwood

S
Race write-up:
For Unlimited I was looking for systems around 450 - 625 Ly away, but was sad to find that the bubble haven't actually expanded much since I used Bodhinga as my port when coming back to the bubble after exploring back in ancient times. In other directions the only options further away were Which Head Nebula and California Nebula, both of wich seemed like a bit of a stretch to get to with stations not ideally placed either. Having settled on the area near Bodhinga I went looking for the "best" 5 systems I could string together without having to use more than one jump between them.

Regulation on the other hand gave me way too many options, even filtering down to systems with a station within 20 Ls left me with 123 targets to go choose from. The idea was to first find a system 12 jumps away with an outpost within 100 Ls of arrival (later reduced this to 80, and trying to avoid anything above 40). From there find every system within one jump range with the same requirements and choose the one furthest from Fullerene C60. Repeat this for the third system, then reverse it to find the closest to Fullerene C60 for the last two with the last one also being 12 jumps from Fullerence C60. Systems would ideally then form an arrowhead pointing away form Fullerene C60, or more likely a fan shape.

For the last route I figured I had enough time left to do 13 jumps on the return trip so I started looking for another route where the fourth stop was also going away from Fullerene C60. Despite numerous pirate interdictions and personal mistakes on sunday I managed to complete this route one time on the last raceday. :D

Like many others I used eddb.io extensively for my research on where to go, searching for stations filtering only outposts and setting a limit on max distance from arrival.

Unlimited run
Regulation run:
Source: https://youtu.be/XanWsVhFydk


Congratulations to everyone attempting this race and finding their limits, this is definitely the hardest race I've taken part in when it comes to planning (finally relegating Signs of Life from it's top spot). Also huge thanks to Alec for hosting this race, really trying to find the limit of how much work I'm willing to do for a race. :whistle:
 
Last edited:

Homborger

Homborger
Alec Turner said:
Final account from Cmdr Homborger, the unofficial biographer of the Magic 8-Ball championship.

edrushfleet.co.uk

Racing Against Death

“Oxygen Depleted in 0:09…” And so…finally…we come to the end of the Buckyball season. The final race entitled “The Last Gasp – Resuscitated” might we…
edrushfleet.co.uk edrushfleet.co.uk
Click to expand...
Thanks Alec! I don't manage to get on this forum much so I didn't get around to posting it. I'm so glad people enjoy reading them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom