March 3308 Booze Cruise - aftermath
30 Mar 2022Netchild
The Booze Cruise of March is now several days past its end...This time we didn't prepare in advance, as we had indications that it may be possible that it may not happen. We wanted to be a little bit careful and not start the long trip with a lot of carriers to the Peak with the possibility to have people sit there and be bored. Yes, the view is impressive, but if you are sitting with your ship at the fringe of the galaxy with endless black on one side, and the rest of the civilization 5000 LY away...
On the other hand we weren't unprepared. Several long-term cruisers (read: several Sommeliers) had their carrier prepared (either at the Peek for PH-watch), or ready to climb up the ladder to the Peak with passengers. Once the public holiday was confirmed, we opened our long-range communication network for all interested people and started to spool-up the jump-engines of the carriers.
Besides surprising our fellow trade-partners with the speed of the well-oiled machinery for the Booze Cruise and the fact the our Sommeliers provided full Space Traffic Control, we also had some not so nice encounters. The traffic jam at the Peak and one system before the peak made it nearly impossible for those carrier owners, which still run on the old carrier management system of the Pilots Federation (software version "EDH"). Unfortunately the Brewer Corporation has not reacted so far to any of our suggestions. If you participated in the cruise (or you was there on your own without joining or long range coordination channels) and agree, please voice your opinion to the Brewer Corporation via showing your support to the aforementioned request.
Nevertheless the hurdles the Brewer Corporation has put in front of a part of the carrier owners, and a few protesters at the Peak regarding some recent actions of the Pilots Federation, we had a good amount of participating carriers. 36 registered and unloaded with us, 2 more affected by the hurdles got help from carriers which already had the most recent carrier navigation equipment, and some lone-souls which near the end of the PH noticed that they will not be able to unload their carrier alone and requested help from us. In total we delivered more than 640kt of wine up there, which means a profit of about 178 billions. During the trip several Cmdrs got their Elite to Elite V rating in trade from the Pilots Federation, and a few (5?) Cmdrs even bought a carrier before the PH even ended.
All in all, we had wine until the last minute of the PH, and we were able to sell off all the wine until the last minute of the PH. Despite the hurdles, we were able to do a calm and successful STC, and all haulers (mostly independent ones, only a few where in our squadron) had fun and got a lot of profits out of this cruise.
At this point I want to highlight something which was a little bit more prominent in this cruise than in the last cruises. Several independent carrier owners went up there and wanted to reserve wine for themselves. While we understand this sentiment (we had a similar one in our first cruises), now after more than a year of monthly cruises we made a lot of experience at the Peak, and we can tell that it it is a much better idea to not reserve the wine on your carrier for yourself:
- as a carrier owner you can not even break even from selling wine from your FC, you need to haul yourself (about 5 python runs) to break even
- do not botter to sell the wine from your FC at max-price (see the point above), either sell it at the default value, or at min-value (the last one is beneficial for those people in no matter which squadron to boost the trade-rank in the squad-leaderboard)
- unloading a carrier alone in 24h to be able to get back with the FC to the bubble on the amount of Tritium you brought up, is a lot of stress, it will exhaust you, and most likely you will not be able to do it... 82 python runs are required to empty 23kt, this means if you are there for 48h without sleep, you have 35 minutes per run... with 2 working days of 8h and 6h of sleep in-between this goes down to 19 minutes per run... yes, this is can be done, but you are nearly dead afterwards... we've been there, we know how it feels, don't make the same error
- it doesn't matter from where you buy wine, forget about "my FC", "your FC" or "the FC of a stranger", think rather in "the next FC with wine will arrive once the empty FC has left the system"
- we don't force anyone to get into our squad or to stay in our communication channels, we simply provide a place to coordinate carrier movement, a place to see which FC is doing the next wine unloading, a place to have fun with other traders (a lot of people come for the profits, but stay for the experience in the community), we only ask to keep the communication family friendly
- we always had enough wine up there to cover the entire PH for several hundred Cmdrs, you will not miss out on profits... and we share with everyone!
- the most beneficial behavior at the Peak during a Booze Cruise for all is to join the community and to cycle as many carriers through the system as possible by opening all the wine to everyone, so that the first traffic jam at the system before the Peak clears up and more wine can enter the system (even on EDH/console carriers)... we provide shuttle services between the big bulk of the traffic jam and the Peak, we provide STC, we provide rescue operations (you undocked by accident or missed the jump and are stranded in a system which you can't leave without a FC, no problem, we organize a pick-up, you miscalculated the Tritium requirements, no problem, we help you)
- feel free to join our coordination channels during a BC to see how much fun it is to do a cruise together with us, instead of doing it alone, you can first simply read and get an impression, and decide if you want to join the fun or not
Oh, btw, after some modification to my FC, the P.T.N. Ras Tschubai, I had to take off course a nice shot at the Peak:
