My Favourite Headache

Don’t get me wrong – Buckyballing is one of the greatest, most fun things you can do in Elite Dangerous. It has a fabulous community. teaches you a lot of new skills and lets you see some of the most spectacular parts of the Bubble in an entirely new light. Not to mention that each race is a lot of fun and brings with it unique challenges.

But, after a season of Buckyballing, I feel I’ve sort of hit a ceiling. A ceiling I’m trying desperately to punch through. A ceiling I’m determined to rise above. The problem is, it’s giving me a headache. There are a lot a feelings of disappointment, of feeling unworthy, of feeling that I could, and should be doing a whole lot better than I am. And I almost got there with this, the first race of the new season.

Almost.

Owing to the unprecedented success of the last year’s season of eight re-runs of classic Buckyball races, a second season of eight races for this year has begun! Most are re-runs of classic races but there will be a few new ones too. My main account, Cmdr Homborger, will not be taking part as he is halfway to Colonia gathering as much bio data as he can so he can buy a Fleet Carrier once he gets there; so this year the Cmdr I created to take care of the Rush Fleet once it had been transferred from PS to PC, Cmdr Leeya Geddy, will be taking over the racing.

And so we have the first race of the new “Sweet Sixteen” Buckyball season – “The Empire Hustle“. It’s a simple course, all we have to do is to begin at Agnews’ Folly station in the Imperial system of Vequess, fly to four other stations in Imperial systems (all of which happen to be Orbis type stations) but before docking we have to approach from the front and fly all the way around the rear before making our way back to the mailslot and docking. Sounds so easy and straight forward doesn’t it? Ought to be a cinch. I thought I’d lay down a decent time on the first Saturday morning and that would be that.

I haven’t really learned anything about Buckyballing have I?

I called the new Regulation Cobra the My Favorite Headache for two reasons. The first will be blindingly obvious to seasoned Rush fans. “Leeya Geddy” is a play on the name of the most awesome bass player of all time, Geddy Lee (who just happens to have been the bass player for Rush). Now, he released a solo album called, “My Favorite Headache” (I know there’e supposed to be a “u” in there, British people). But also because Buckyballing can be quite the headache sometimes. Especially if you’re the host I would imagine.

Anyway, back to my first attempts. I was finding that, on the run around the five stations, struts and solar panel arms were swinging towards me out of the shadows, seemingly as if from nowhere sometimes, only for me to crash into them and go hopelessly spinning off course. Once I did this twice. On the way to the rear of the station and also on my way back to the slot. Of course, the second hit caused me to cannon off into another part of the superstructure and that ended my attempt right there. Not only that, but a ton of real life interruptions were disrupting my runs, meaning I’d have to abort and go back to the start.

I was getting a little too stressed about all this and so, to calm down I fired up my original Homborger account and carried on my slow journey to Colonia (via V1357 Cygni). It really helped, but I couldn’t help wondering when I would get the chance to complete a run.

I complained about this in the Buckyball forum and was told that Night Vision was a standard requirement for this procedure. Of course it was. One of the most obvious things to do if you can’t see things properly because of shadows or if the sunlight on the station has been eclipsed by the body it orbits.

Armed with this (rather obvious) bit of advice I completed my first successful attempt. I knew it wasn’t going to be a great time but at least it ought to have been an adequate time. When the first leaderboard was posted, however, my heart sank.

Last place. Of course it was last place, it’s always last place. Why did I think it would be any quicker? But not only that, the commander in ninth place had only been playing the game for two weeks! TWO WEEKS?! And to rub salt into the ugly gaping maw of a wound that was my pride they were over three minutes faster than my best, hardest won attempt.

The problem was, and the reason I was feeling so bitter, was that I had promised myself that I would practice the occultic Buckyballing racing technique of “Gravity Braking” – the mystic art of using a body’s gravity to slow your ship down rather than the standard “throttle to three quarters” steady approach that takes an age to slow your ship until it’s at the perfect speed and distance to emerge from supercruise next to the station (in fact, supercruise assist uses this standard approach and there is plenty of time to make yourself a nice, hot cup of tea and drink it before you arrive). It’s an incredibly tricky skill to master and, if you visit the video section on the Buckyball Racing Club‘s website, you can see various examples of this. Also, the crazed SRV “flyver”, Cmdr Alec Turner has posted a classic example on YouTube.

Now there are two main schools of Gravity Braking. The classic, “Spiralling In” method and the more accessible, yet slower “Loop and Swoop” or “Loop of Fame” method.

I began experimenting with the spiralling in method but, no matter how many times I attempted the manoeuvre I always had trouble controlling my speed and would shoot past the target body like a blob of faeces from a territorial, muck spreading rhino’s anus. My sense of direction completely disorientated as I flew aimlessly in supercruise trying to crowbar my poor, protesting Cobra around to face the station.

I clearly needed far more time than I had to master that particular school! So I tried my hand at the Loop and Swoop and was pleasantly surprised that I managed to just about nail it on my first attempt. Whilst experimenting with this method I was able to get roughly an 80% success rate. Which was rather encouraging.

On my next session, however, I couldn’t get it to work at all. And was having particular trouble on the approach to Gottlob Frege Colliseum. That body was rather small and the station seemed to be orbiting at a much greater distance than the others which made it difficult to judge just how much throttle to use for the swoop part of the technique.

Again, it was time to turn to the ever helpful and supportive Buckyballing community. Alec Turner advised that Gottlob was indeed a pain in the arse to approach, and that the station never seemed to be pointing toward the correct place. So! Ready or not it was time to begin another series of attempts, this time utilizing my unpractised grasp of the Loop and Swoop.

It did not begin well. Attempt after attempt had to be aborted either because real life would rather rudely interrupt (a phone call late at night, dog being sick, and once I got cramp in my foot, resulting in my knee jerking up sharply sending the keyboard which rests on my lap slapping me in the face), or because of a hardware failure (wireless mouse froze once whilst pulling up hard, leaving me spinning hopelessly into the vacuum) or because of shear, careless absentmindedness (how many damn times am I going to forget to commence recording before I start off?). There were also plenty of runs where I would totally misjudge the throttle needed to approach the station and shoot past it. I think I must have aborted around twelve attempts as the final day of racing was fast approaching. This race really was becoming quite the headache.

I think the scowl on my face as I made the solemn journey back to the start each time would have curdled milk.

It was the Saturday evening, just over twenty four hours before the final submissions would be accepted, I attempted another run. Hopefully, I thought, I can at least break the thirty minute barrier.

I was a little more careful with the station approaches which meant I was taking a little too long to drop in on them but I didn’t care. I seemed to be making much better time and I really didn’t want to mess up. I managed to make the entire run but did I manage to beak the thirty minute barrier?

Almost. Almost.

And I’m not last. In fact, I’m six places up!

Buckyballing may well be a headache sometimes, but it’s definitely my favourite one!

Now it’s time to practice Gravity Braking proper, and see if I can get to grips with the dark art of spiralling into the body to slow myself down. Strangely enough, I was playing on one of my other accounts just this morning and I tried it.

And it worked.

Firstly I want to thank Sulu for putting on one hell of a race. It has been a tremendous, unprecedented success with more commanders taking part and a record number of submissions handed in for the first race of the season. Buckyballing has never been so popular! Sulu has really had his work cut out validating all the submissions and producing the results tables. If it wasn’t for him, this race would not have been run.

Secondly, I want to thank everyone who took part. Both old Buckyballing Nutjobs through to returning commanders from last year and the new commanders racing for the first time. You have all made this community an absolute pleasure to be a part of.

It’s too late to take part in this race now. But the next is only a few weeks away and it promises to be an absolute corker! It will be hosted by Alec Turner himself and will be based on the classic “Thargoid Structure Scramble” from 3307. It will run from the 6th May to 14th May.

Sounds most intriguing does it not?

Don’t miss it!