"You're doing what!?"
05 Apr 2022Caelum Incola
“Buckyball Racing!? Aren’t they those dangerous lunatics that fly ships in ways they were never meant to be flown?”“Well, they’re racers, and who’s to say that screaming into a starport at over 500ms isn’t how a Viper or an Imperial Eagle was meant to be flown? Or using the landing pad and your shields as a brake before slamming down onto your gear isn’t the done thing either?”
“The starport Air Traffic Controller for one. They’re reckless and cause accidents with their mayhem and their hooning about around the Bubble. You’re a grown man. A respectable Elite ranked pilot. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
And so went the conversation with my better half after I told her I’d be competing in the Buckyball Racers Magic 8 Ball Championship this year. To be fair, she was… is right, but oh boy it’s such a rush!
Two races in and I’m sitting in 10th place in the Regulation Class, among legendary racers like Alec Turner, Sulu, Raiko, Sgurr and Shaye Blackwood to name a few, albeit some way behind them in pure speed. I may have destroyed a Cobra MkIII once or twice, and an Imperial Eagle at least half a dozen times, but I have a very understanding insurance company and I’ve been a loyal and generally careful customer of theirs for years now. Mostly.
Each race lasts just over a week and Regulation Class sees everyone using the same, stock Cobra MkIII, with exactly the same loadout and no engineering. Unlimited Class being, well, unlimited in ship choice, engineering, modules and such like, in order to see just how fast you actually can go.
The first race was called ‘Back to Pareco’, which saw all Buckyballers attempting a mad dash around the 6 closely situated starports in the system. Starting from Garden Ring, an outpost, we had 20 minutes to complete as many dockings as possible in the six stations in a specific order- Garden Ring, Crown Orbital, Asire Dock, Webb Station, Philips Market, Neville Ring and back to the start of the loop again. ‘GCAPWN’ became my repeated mantra for that week. If you managed to dock just before the clock ran out, you could take off and head to the next station which stopped the clock as you landed there. I came a very respectable 9th in Regulation, with all the top ten managing 15 stops between 1st place’s 20:03 (Shaye Blackwood) and 21:32 (Sulu) in 10th. A fantastic 39 CMDRs raced that week and I saw many of them blasting around from port to port during the event.
Despite managing a healthy 7th in Unlimited Class, with 18 stops in 20:21 flying my heavily modified Imperial Eagle which can hit over 900m/s, I was nowhere near the legendary levels of those using Vipers above me (and one Imperial Courier) with Shaye topping the leaderboard again, managing a frankly mindblowing 21 stops in 20:55! His Viper must have been glowing from the heat.
There were one or two mishaps as you can imagine, and a few CMDRs felt the full wrath of the authorities when they were apprehended for various incursions (usually after blowing up and allowing said authorities to actually catch up to them and their escape pod) and spent some time in the suddenly busier than usual prison ship stationed nearby.
I may or may not have been there myself, but my court order does not allow me to discuss it.
The second race ‘The Aquarian Job’ in reference to some ancient, almost forgotten Earth movie about some sort of bank heist in tiny land vehicles (I think they were literally called ‘Mini’s’) involved jumping (entirely shieldless) through a few systems and landing at a couple of planetary settlements. One of which required the deployment of an SRV which then had to travel 8km to the base, scan a data point, then race 5km away from the base before jumping back in the ship and heading back to the start again. Extra points were given for having your ship in a very poor state of repair at the end. Various other commitments kept me from competing in Unlimited Class, but I did manage a less than optimal entry in Regulation which placed me in 10th. Building up to that I had a frustrating few runs which saw planetary alignment not working out in my favour (the next system en-route was eclipsed), mis-timed attempts at orbital insertion that dumped me out of supercruise 100’s of km above the surface, several suicidal ship computers that must have thought it would be great fun to boost into the hillside after being recalled, which destroyed about five ships whilst I looked on helplessly from my SRV. That must have been a bad batch from Faulcon Delacy I can only assume... I did manage to blow up a few SRVs myself too, one of which despite my intense frustration in my lack of general pace, caused me to laugh through the pain. I have footage of it here as all runs were recorded for judging purposes. There's a bit of a punchline after the initial explosion.
So! Two races down with the next one only 10 days or so away and yes, my good lady is 100% correct.
They are reckless. They do (regrettably) cause accidents. They do cause mayhem. They definitely do hoon about. I am definitely a grown man, but now also something else.
We are Buckyball Racers. Catch us if you can
