Community Event / Creation The Buckyball Racing Club presents: The Trouble With Triples (12th to 20th November 3308)

Shaye Blackwood

S
Thanks for hosting Edelgard, I always enjoy your races :)

My route was the same as Alec's but for different reasons (I'll go out of my way to avoid those white dwarves). Seeing the largest distance between systems would be CD-58 7880 back to Aura, my thinking was to run the fuel level down to make it in 2 jumps if I had to as my ship was borderline on range. Speaking of choise of ship, I've been flying the Dolphin since the end of the 8 Ball Championship and it's been impressive, the ship I'd compare it to in fligh characteristics is actually the Vulture. Sadly flying the Asp Explorer feels almost as bad as flying the Cutter to me now. 😭

Source: https://youtu.be/4VzwPM457QA
 

Shaye Blackwood

S
Birdnose said:
I think I finally figured out what was doing that to me. If you plot a route to a station using a bookmark, then go into the route settings and replot, it forgets the station and only plots to the system. I was running into this when I toggled jet cone boost off and hit replot. The solution was to turn it off and then use my bookmark to plot.
Click to expand...
Is this in Odyssey? Because doing that definitely works for me in Horizon as I had to do that on purpose this race to get fuel.
 

Draig Seren

Draig Seren
Alec Turner said:
While we wait for the final scores was just gonna quickly mention my regulation route. Carefully took a screenshot of my bookmarks, and then promptly left it on my home PC. Oh well, basically in regulation I went ..

Aura, Atkov Ring
HIP 61986, Luiken Port
Hedetes, Alpha Star Tooling or Grand Willow Range
Tulill, Griffith Enterprise
Tiralla, Matisse Rock
CD-58 7880 ABC 1, Wagner Landing
Aura, Atkov Ring

This is effectively the reverse of the route I got from the Multi Waypoint Planner on Down To Earth Astronomy's Cmdrs Toolbox website (generally my lazy goto for a race where you need to plan your own route).

I originally spent quite a lot of time trying to optimise the forward route using low fuel and manual plotting. The only saving I found was to cut the journey from "Aura" to "CD-58 7880" from 6 jumps down to 5 by using the trick I mentioned early in this thread about engaging my jump when I was on the absolute limits of min fuel vs. max jump range (and then continuing to scoop so I had enough fuel for the onward journey). However I quickly discovered that if I ran the route in reverse with the in-game "use jet cone boost" option ticked then I also got a route with nothing longer than 5 stops (total length 20 iirc?) so I started doing that. About half way through the week I began thinking about the time I was losing from needlessly jet cone scooping and set out to test each stage of the route. It turned out I only needed the jet cone of the 1st WD between "Aura" and "HIP 61986", all the others were a complete waste of time. So I then switched to a technique where I'd start with the jet cone option ticked and then, once I'd done the 1st WD on that route, would turn the option off for the remainder of the run. Apart from that I didn't have to do any manual plotting at all. The only other slight issue was that I stuck to not using KGBFOAM filtering (possibly not necessary) so I had a couple of unscoopables to contend with which meant I had to do some pretty hefty fuel scooping on occasion to ensure I wasn't left waiting for the refuel on subsequent jumps.
Click to expand...

So I suppose the good news is that I figured out the same route (using the spansh route finder) and also only used jet cone boost on the first leg. The bad news is that I'm 4.5 minutes slower...
I suspect I did too much fuel scooping when it wasn't really necessary, my spiral approach technique still needs work and I think my landing technique is too gentle, but I'm sure I'll get better eventually. See you all next time. o7
 
Last edited:

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
Woohoo, thanks a lot again for an epic race Edelgard, and huge congratulations to everyone who took part. Just to echo some of the comments I want to thank all the new racers who took part, you all put in an amazing effort and were very impressive for your first time.

Sorry Alec. But you really did push me to my limit.

I started off looking at going to Luiken first but it was 6 jumps to get there, so I chose to go the other way. The ingame route plotter just on normal gave me a maximum of 5 jumps all the way round, including that final stint of Luiken back to Atkov. Because I was using no filters I had a non scoopable on the third jump to Wagner, so I had to go really hard on the fuel scooping on the fist two jumps so that I could get enough fuel that I didn't have to wait for the penultimate jump as by the time the FSD had cooled down I had scooped enough to make the jump.

One thing that helped me was something I remember Drakhyr telling me years ago. When you first jump into the system, rather than trying to get the next system in view straight away you aim right for the centre of the star. This means that you're on the shortest route and so will start fuel scooping almost straight away, then you can move to get the next system in range.

Refuel at Wagner and next I had to make sure I had a certain amount of fuel by the time I jumped into Tiralla, which meant I could make the next jump without needing to waste additional time scooping. I ended up using a heatsink the system before.
Then more aggressive scooping on the way to Hedetes, definitely the trickiest system in the route with another Heat Sink used trying to drop in at Grand Willow Range. As I said yesterday on my final run I had to unfortunately jump to SC for a couple of seconds before the way became clear.

The final hurdle was the landing back at Atkov. Fortunately because the station was orbiting a moon around a planet, you could go full on at it and I was approaching at around 0:03 seconds using the planet to slow me down to 4/5 seconds for the final approach to the station. Very much fly by the seat of your pants time. I'll upload the video tomorrow.

Once again congrats to everyone, it's been a brilliant year of racing. Looking forward to next year, if there's any systems left to race in 😬
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Well, gosh ... that was quite the race. I don't think I've been that invested in trying to win a race for quite a while. Usually I hit my limit and then someone will post a time so far ahead that I know I'm beat before the final weekend but the fight in regulation with Ozric (plus Sulu and Epaphus snapping at our heals) was close as heck and it was always worth trying for one more run (especially when the Wagner jumps opened up again). So congrat's to Ozric for a race well fought and won (seriously tho ... TWO damn seconds!), and of course to Shaye for helping me make the decision to focus on regulation class! 😆

I plan to post my regulation run later today.

And otherwise just wanted to echo the sentiments of others - terrific race all round, great to see a bunch of new (and recent) racers getting stuck in and what a great finish to a brilliant year.

We still have the standing challenges (Epaphus recently made massive improvements to his Pomeche Ridge time which was great to see). I should probably keep quiet about this but I've been at the top of the IronBucky challenge for far too long now!

I'm also thinking of creating some new SRV challenges on New Mordor which has just been discovered a mere 77ly from Sol (I'm there now and plan to spend the next week looking for good courses).

o7
 
Last edited:

Ozric

Volunteer Moderator
Ozric
Here's the video of my run for anyone who wants to watch it. The other thing I forgot to mention yesterday was the variety of stars on the route. Something that most people don't think about is how the size/mass of the star affects how easy it is to get away from one, and therefore how it affects your fuel scooping.

If you try scooping from a medium M class star, then you can fly right up to the exclusion zone and then fly away again in a fairly short time. But if you try it with A, B or O, or larger stars of other classes, then you will quickly notice that it takes you a lot longer to escape than you are used to.

There were a few stars on my route that were like this and you can see the two different scooping techniques in the first two jumps. The first star I'd learnt through experience was one that wanted to keep you close to it, so you will notice that I initially head away from the star so that I can cut in on a steeper angle for fuel scooping always keeping the system I want to jump to away from my direction of travel. That means at the end I can veer away and reduce the speed the heat is building up.

The second star is far different and this one I aim straight for the centre, to start the scooping as soon as possible and then hug the exclusion zone. I actually have to zero the throttle to make sure I don't travel too far around the star and have the jump obscured. If I had of tried that approach on the first star then I wouldn't have got the next system out of my field of vision before the FSD was charged and my ship would have been cooking me :D

Source: https://youtu.be/JBHByJWU3Jg
 

Arrowroot 66

Arrowroot 66
Hmmm, a few things to think about there. I kept the plotting on KGBFOAM plus whatever white dwarfs are and scooped wherever I went. It took effort not to overfill, especially when I was only 1 or 2 jumps from a station but I was usually able to engage the FSD the moment it had cooled down. The Dolphin was great for this, the iCourier needed 3 heatsink launchers, and the DBS was far better than I thought it would be.

Fish172 said:
Well we will race around Thargoid mother ships then. The race must go on.
Click to expand...
So long as I can still kick them up the bum and run away! If not I'll stay in 3.8 where it's safe :)

HRDiagram said:
Happy to see that the T7 was represented! I was setting one up myself (it's my favourite ship, and when I hear "overheating" my mind goes straight to it ❤️), but because of other commitments I haven't had the time to complete it and race 🙁

I'll definitely use one the next time I race, whether it's a regulation ship (please please please!), or unlimited!
Click to expand...
Yes! More different ships, although a reappearance for the Magic 8-ball Cobra would be very welcome too.
 

Homborger

Homborger
So the race report is done. It's in a different place on the site, however, as its just as much a piece on the DBS as it is the race, so it's at the bottom of the Caress Of Steel page. Such fun!

edrushfleet.co.uk

Album 3/Ships 5+6

Caress of Steel was quite an ambitious project for such a young band. Unfortunately, although the first three tracks are rather good, the two far longer conceptual tracks can take a bit of getting …
edrushfleet.co.uk edrushfleet.co.uk
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom