Booze Cruise #4 - 800 ships, 2 mega-t of Wine, 600 billions of profit
08 Jun 2021Netchild
Yes! It was this time of the month again! The Booze Cruise was on!The Rackham's Peak authorities counted around 800 ships in 24h in the system. The Pilots Federation carrier navigation system had 2 break-downs and since the last 8-10h of the public holiday they have even an issue which limits the in-flow of carriers (only outbound is possible right now).
We organized around 110 carriers with a total of 2,164,095t of wine. The total profit would have been 601,618,410,000 Cr. Due to the issues the Pilots Federation had during this time, around 20-ish carriers which we organized didn't had a chance to enter the rooftop of the galaxy (we were not alone, other carriers came up on their own).
It was very crowded up there. Anyone jumping up there knows that the system before the rooftop is a choke-point. Only 16 parking slots for carriers.
Luckily we had our P.T.N. Rackham's Peak Public Holiday Traffic Management System (prnrpphtms) from the last cruise (but in a refined / improved form). For our own carriers and the independent carriers which decided to join during the event we came up with a scheme to cycle all in and out for the wine offload. If the Pilots Federation wouldn't have the above mentioned issues, we would have managed to cycle all through.
For the independent carrier owners which came up to the rooftop on their own, we had reserved some spots to be able to shuffle them in during our own operations. As far as I noticed, all which requested passage (in or out) got a passage in a timely manner (dear engineers, we wouldn't mind if you could improve the FSDs of the carriers... shorter spool-up time, shorter cooldown time, ... that would have allowed better cycling-through at the choke-point). Without the reservations it would have been a nightmare, but our Traffic Managers did a great job and all were happy.
I was on duty for the offload-management when the second breakdown of the Pilots Federations carrier navigation network systems happened. The Traffic Manager on duty called-in and we had a look what we can do to keep the wine flowing for the 800-1000 commanders which went on the cruise with us. Luckily several commanders had not only their Peak-Haulers (Pythons), but also their Cutters and T9's with them. So we organized a quick intra-carrier move from the outer planets to the inner planets on big ships, so that the Pythons had a shorter round-trip to deliver to the outpost. But once the carrier navigation network came back online and we noticed the issue of being able only to plot outgoing jumps, it was clear that this doesn't scale. So we opened up all our carriers in system and still carrying wine, even those on the outer planets. We managed to empty all our carriers in-time. Some of the commanders which came up with their carriers independently called in at the end to help offloading their carriers to fulfill the demand at Rackham's Peak during the public holiday.
Some hours later, we were able to establish communication with the Pilots Federation. They are in the process of investigating the issue in their carrier navigation network around Rackham's Peak. As of this writing we don't have feedback yet, but it takes off course time to analyze the issue. Update a night of sleep later: reports are that about 3h after my log-entry the Pilots Federation found the issue and fixed it. Right now carrier jumps are again on-hold due to issues with the Pilots Federation carrier navigation network. They clearly have some issue they need to fix...
Once we had opened the wine-gates, and with no carrier being able to get in, the job of the Traffic Manager and the Offload Manager was a little bit more calm. So we had a little break at the bar:
And what would be a visit to the rooftop, without a little reflection how small you are compared to the galaxy?
All pilots up there had a lot of fun, despite the problems of the Pilot Federation. We hope the Pilots Federation manages to fix their carrier navigation network issue until the next public holiday, so that we can organize another Booze Cruise (bigger, better, more wine!).
o7.