Part 1
It’s July 3308. It Buckyball race number SIX! And guess what? Its the Chicken Run!
For some reason I’m having a lot more fun with this race. Dunno if it’s the lack of hyperdictions or that I’ve been finding landing on high gravity worlds a lot of fun recently or maybe it’s because I’ve actually got all week to keep trying. It doesn’t matter. I’m having a ball! A BuckyBall! Haha! Well, at least, at first I was.
Anyway – The Chicken Run. So called because the settlements you have to visit in this race are set on planets with a progressively higher gravity. You can chicken out and return to the start but this comes with a greater time penalty depending on how soon you return.
Ok! So we start at Noriega Station in the system of LTT 2151. Make sure we have an empty hold, check that our modules are within the regulations and it’s time to launch. Before we attempt any planetary landings, we need some delicate cargo, something that can be lost if we approach a little to steep and land a little too heavily. Therefore we need to purchase a minimum of 1t of the rare commodity, Crystalline Spheres. We need to head to Snow Moon (a station not a planetary body, to make things a little confusing) in the Bento system to pick some up. Then once they’re on beard it’s full speed to our first planetary base – Korniyenko Terminal on the not too daunting 0.1G moon Okinura 8c. So far, so straightforward. Unless you’re trying really hard, you’re not going to do too much damage landing there.
I go through the usual ritual – approach the body at 75% throttle in supercruise, keep the targeted settlement in the top 25% of the planet disc, reduce the throttle to almost zero when the disc begins to fill the canopy (otherwise I tend to drop out of supercruise far too early damaging hull and still much too far from the target), wait for orbital flight to engage. Then keep flying straight towards the target until the “glide” phase starts and then this should bring you close enough to the settlement to be able to request docking permission. The higher the gravity, the shallower the angle of approach to the target. This is the way I have figured out is the safest and surest method to land on planetary bodies over the four to five years I’ve had my Pilot’s Federation license. The problem is, even with the lower gravity bodies, the orbital flight phase of the approach seems to take far too long.
Land. Launch. As the landing pad dips and swings around select the next system from the galmap, and lift off. Next settlement Is Koch Beacon on Bliatrimpe 7 – 1.06G. Again, not really a big challenge to land on. But because I’m using a slightly shallower angle of approach, it takes even longer during the orbital flight phase to get to the glide phase. It seems to take an age before glide kicks in and I can make my final approach. Eventually I reach the base, land smoothly and safely, relaunch and make my way to Baffin Plant on Shoujeman 5 – 2.13G
Shoujeman 5 looms large in front of me. Now it’s not just the shallower angle it’s also the sheer size of the planet that feels like its exponentially increasing my approach time. It might be giving me a nice, level flight to the landing pad once I get there but its just taking so, so long. Next is King’s inheritance on Laila’s Memory (2.87g) in the Wolf 562 system, followed by Moore Beacon on 5 G. Capricorni 3 – 3.99G
Both landings are taking increasingly longer to reach and the seconds seem to be ticking away almost as fast as the minutes. I’m beginning to think to myself that there must be a better way to approach this. I am already way past the current slowest time on the leader board and I still have the highest g planet to go, as well as the trip back to Noriega.
As I feared, the last approach takes, by far, the longest of all. Weber Legacy. A base on the planet Robert Kelly – 4.74G in the system Ross 905. By now I’m sure I’m doing it all wrong. I mean, sure I’m landing nice and safely on all these high g planets but “safely” isn’t exactly part of the Buckyball aesthetic! The “D” rated thrusters on my Cobra can barely lift her off the pad as she struggles back up and away from the mass lock of the surface. As the engines groan and the hull creaks with the effort of escaping the mass lock, I begin spooling up the hyperdrive to make my way back to the start.
By now the clock is nearing the hour mark and I know that my final time will be lamentable. By the time I make it back and land at the Noriega Station, my final time is an hour and four minutes. An hour and four minutes! I feel bewildered and confused, yet determined. I disembark and check out the concourse. I manage to find a sympathetic ear (as I so often do) and unload all my inadequacies onto the poor lady. She listens intently but I something tells me she isn’t really interested. When I’m done I go back to the Wormwood’s Bane to think.
Part 2
After about four days of practicing (about an hour per day) I was ready to take another go. I was hoping to slice around ten minutes off my initial time and maybe move off the bottom of the leaderboard. This time I was approaching space stations by looping toward them, rather than flying directly from the main star. It helps you get closer before you have to reduce your speed to avoid a loop of shame, and also allows you to drop out of supercruise directly in front of the station for a more direct entry. I had been practicing a special technique called “gravity braking” but so far, I have been unable to master it. So, maybe that’s for another race.
The main difference to my initial run, however, was to enter the planetary exclusion zones at a much steeper angle. This drastically reduces the time it takes to get to the surface but, especially on the higher gravity worlds, it means a lot more momentum is carried forward as you try to maneuver toward the pad. My strategy was to just to fly down and attempt to level out just before reaching the pad. This was fine at the 0.1G Korniyenko Terminal but once I got to 1.06G Koch Beacon I carried my momentum forward and missed the pad altogether. I didn’t crash but then had to thrust back upwards and over the perimeter wall, losing valuable time.
The landing at Baffin Plant (2.13G) was a lot smoother although I did belly flop the Cobra before landing on the pad. At least there wasn’t a perimeter fence to hop over this time, but I still managed to faceplant the Wormwood’s Bane onto the pad before leveling out and landing.
And so I carried on to King’s Inheritance (2.87G). My strategy now was to just fly straight to the pad, try and level out and then land. This worked out quite well, more by luck than judgement and I landed (albeit after a bit of scrambled maneuvering) without losing too much of my shields.
This would dictate my landing strategies for the final two bases. However, I was not prepared for just how unforgiving a high g landing can be. Descending down to Moore Beacon (3.99G) was taking a fraction of the time it dd on my first attempt but ended up approaching the pad from an awkward sideways direction. Once you reach a certain speed at that angle it’s impossible to slow down and once I had stuck to the ground I couldn’t orientate myself to the pad properly. I lost at least a couple of precious minutes trying to level out and yaw around to face the correct direction. Then it was time to blast off and head for the terrifying 4.74G of Weber Legacy.
The Weber landing went surprisingly well. I approached with a bit more caution and at a slightly shallower angle and my approach was a little more controlled, although It’s hard not to bellyflop your ship just before bouncing onto the pad!
The journey then back to Noriega was just pretty straightforward. I tried not to rush the docking procedure too much and finished with a time of 52:40. That’s twelve minutes faster than my initial submission! I am over the moon!
And not only that, I am finally off the bottom of the leaderboard!
This isn’t the end! There will be one more submission, if I survive it. There are a handful of places where I can shave off a minute here or there. And the next run will be attempted shieldless! Wish me luck Commanders o7!
Part 3
Well, it’s all over, and I can’t help but be a little down about my lack of improvement since the second submission. I’ve only really improved by a few minutes. Either my planetary approaches are too shallow and take too long, or they are too steep and it takes ages to manoeuvrer my ship to the landing pad.
On one of my attempts I decided just to head straight for the pad attempting to level out just before I hit. only I really don’t have the skill yet for this. At Baffin Plant I hit the pad so hard I got stuck and it took my at least two whole minutes to try and extricate myself from the gubbins that surround it.
Another one of my frustrations was to utterly fail at quickly finding the pad I was supposed to land on. For some reason it was usually at the other side of the base from my approach and trying to efficiently make my way there without crashing into the base itself was a skill far too high for my current level, at least in high gravity. This usually tended to happen at King’s Inheritance.
It didn’t seem to matter how many runs I made, I just didn’t have the skill or the experience to fly quickly to the landing pad. Even at Baffin Plant, which is only around 3G, I decided not to fly straight into the pad this time but as soon as I banked my Cobra around to quickly approach it from the right direction I would loose height, The lateral thrusters just aren’t powerful enough to keep you in the air on those massive worlds. So it was yet another “Baffinflop” for me!
For my final submission I was determined to get a sub 50 minute time. So I ran a shieldless run, chickening out at King’s inheritance to make it straight back to Noriega. Before I launched from King’s, I made sure to bash the Wormwood’s Bane against the pad a few times to get the hull to under 10%, thereby qualifying me for the “crash pilot” bonus. I made it in a total time, including penalties for chickening out on two landings, of 54.55. Take off three minutes for going shieldless and another three for having less than 10% hull. A time of 48.55 – enough for a sub fifty! A day later, however, the message came through from the race judge that you only qualify for the “crash pilot” bonus if you have less than 10% hull as you’ve landed at the last planet! So it was actually only a time of 51:55. Serve me right for not reading the rules properly!
And there I am…not last! Sixth off the bottom in fact. It’s a pity my best run ended in an explosion. I did that run in about 43 minutes with a single chicken out on Weber Legacy. Add the eight for missing it out and minus the three for a shieldless run and it would have been 48 minutes. Still, I’ve no one to blame but myself., and I’ve learned a lot of flying skills and tips that will help me in getting even more out of my spacefaring career. Special mention must go to Ozric for running what was quite possibly the most amazing race of the season so far.
On to the next commanders! o7
Elite Dangerous RUSH FLEET 