At first glance the penultimate race of this year’s Buckyball season seems a rather complicated affair. It promises endless preparations full of mathematics, weight to jump ratios and meticulous galaxy plotting. But in reality the Mischief Mile: Rebooted was far simpler than it looked.
So here is the course. You basically have to travel from one end of The Bubble to the other, starting at Hooke Hub in the Tepech system and ending at Ocampo Station all the way over on the other side of densely inhabited space in the system of Mirateje. Only 344 light years. The main catch here being, as it’s a Fuel Rat inspired race, it has to be done without scooping. You can refill at stations along the way (which takes valuable time) or you can get a friend to use fuel transfer limpets (even worse – this requires…gulp…social skills). There are some systems you must call in at on the way. Wollheim, being the home base of the Fuel Rats is a must, along with the two most popular places to run out of fuel – LHS 3719 and NLTT 48288. You can also do the route in reverse if you wish.
Preparation, however, revealed how simple this task actually is. In the regulation Cobra MkIII a full tank, using the fastest route, will get you from the start all the way to Wollheim. Might as well refuel there seeing as you’ve got to land there anyway and then it’s another straightforward run all the way through LHS 3719 right up to NLT48288. Then your fuel is running low again.
After a little bit of scouting around I decided that Hadfield Port in the Brani system was the optimum refuelling place but this still meant an extra jump and docking that would add, for my skill level at least, a good few unwanted minutes. I decided just to go for it and get a time anyway and then maybe see if I could organise something a little more efficient later in the week.
Making sure my scoop was unequipped I began my run. It seemed to go smoothly up until Wollheim, nothing but jumping and the landing there went quite smoothly. The journey then took me from there through the uninhabited required system of LHS 3719 and then on to NLTT 48288 – a red/brown dwarf binary system with no orbiting bodies. With hardly any fuel left it’s only a small hop to Brani and then only a few light seconds to the outpost Hadfield Port.
Landing at Hadfield went surprisingly quickly, although not without it’s problems. Its usually a bit of a struggle finding the correct pad and then I tend to make a meal of the approach and loose a fair amount of my shields before I manage to touchdown. Again, for me, this didn’t go too badly and I refuelled and made my way the remaining six jumps to Marateje and Ocampo Station.
As you can see I finished with a time of 24:40 which, even though I was in last place was a good, solid effort and I was reasonably happy with it. But it did need improving! So for the following couple of mornings I went and did some Fuel Ratting, hanging around in Rat Chat and hoping to latch on to one of my fellow squeakers with a view to getting then to refuel me. They could hang out at NLTT 48288, just waiting for me. I would seek them out just as I would a rescue but instead of me refuelling them, they would be refuelling me.
The results were pretty disappointing. None of the rats on duty seemed to have the time that week for a refuelling, too busy being on call for emergencies, which I really ought to have expected. I would have been fine with this but I didn’t manage to get any rescues in either. Far too slow to call jumps. I wasn’t surprised. Rescuing stranded commanders is far more important than improving a low end Buckyballer’s race time. It was a pity because it would have been interesting to see how much faster my time would have been had I used someone with limpets and not made the extra jump to stop at an outpost. I would just have to try again later in the week. But then, out of the blue, I received a message.
Veteran Fuel Rat, Planet Circumnavigator Extraordinaire, Emerging Gameplay Innovator and Buckyball Racing Legend Cmdr Alec Turner had just sent me a request. We were both active at the same time of day and he wondered if I could help refuel him to try and improve his run. My eyes nearly popped out of my head. It was a no brainer.
“You Betcha!” I replied.
And so, the following morning I was waiting at NLTT 48288 in my Krait Phantom – the Nagisa’s Kiss (Assassination Classroom) equipped with four limpet controllers and a cargo hold chock full of limpets. We used a similar method to a fuel rescue. We winged up, and I would wait until Alec would count down the jumps from LHS 3719, home in on my wing beacon when he arrived in system with navlock on, drop in on my position and I would refuel him. It all sounded rather straight forward and we are both well practiced in this technique. It proved, however, that one or two trail runs would probably have been wise
Everything went smoothly up until Alec arrived in system. I could not see his signal anywhere and he seemed to be taking an age to drop in on my position. Then the message came through on the comms.
“No beacon?”
I cursed profusely. I had totally neglected to light my wing beacon! There was nothing for Alec to drop in on. I fumbled around, panicking, pressing wrong button after wrong button, punctuated by yet more cursing.
I think I must have broken the record for the amount of wrong buttons pressed before eventually managing to light my beacon and, almost immediately, Alec’s regulation Cobra thundered in from supercruise.
I sent out my first limpets, yet barely had I sent out four of them when the Ask Again Later boosted off, taking herself out of limpet range. I pulled the Nagisa’s Kiss up and over and carefully approached, making sure I didn’t boost into her myself, until I was in limpet range again and carried on firing them.
A somewhat sheepish apology for the boost emerged over the comms. I grinned. Man, we were rusty! It seemed to take far more limpets than expected to completely fill the Ask Again Later but soon she boosted away, the wing was disbanded, and she was gone.
I was eager to discover what kind of improvement this method might have made to Alec’s time. I didn’t have long to wait. A short while afterwards another message came though.
“Strange. that actually took longer.”
It was perplexing. But the refuelling hadn’t exactly gone smoothly. So we decided to try again the following morning.
This time I made sure my beacon was on right from the beginning. Alec dropped in on me the second he entered the system and the whole process was much, much faster!
As you can see Alec’s time had improved 7 seconds shy of a whole minute! This put Alec right up into second place and breathing down the uncatchable Shaye Blackwood’s neck. We met up in the bar at Ocampo Station afterwards, gave each other a high five, embraced and had a few drinks before saying our farewells. I left feeling elated. Being part of the pit crew, as it were, was even more satisfying than racing itself!
But I still wanted to improve my time. I wasn’t bothered about getting someone to refuel me (that experiment had now been well and truly explored) but I could use the snickers option. The rules state that if I fill my cargo with snickers, picked up from Wollheim (if you want to know the significance of snickers with regards to fuel rats then read this) and carry them the rest of the way to Ocampo then I could have a full two minutes off my time. So, on the final morning of Race Week, I took another go.
And there I am! The final leaderboard and a minute and a half improvement. And nowhere near in last place either! A great bundle of thanks, and snickers, to Ashnak who has worked hard to sponsor and adjudicate the race. It’s a lot of work sifting through all that evidence, forms and creating those leaderboards. Without sponsors like him we would not have these wonderful races.
Unfortunately, this report is late, the race is over, there is no time, now, to enter. But there is one more! If you check the Buckyball Magic 8 page you will see that The Last Gasp begins on the 24th September. C’mon! It’s a marvellous, friendly, if a little unhinged community and trust me – you will be so glad you took part (even if you come last but, c’mon, anyone can beat my times) So make sure you enter!
But this race got me thinking…surely there could be more races where a pit crew would be essential. Using both refuelling and repair limpets. Where the Buckballers race as teams rather than as individuals. Definitely worth thinking about! Buckyball organisers out there how about it? Next season?
Elite Dangerous RUSH FLEET 