The Ironrat Cup
 

Cuba to Padres Run

When:10am PST Saturday September 6th
Hassaba Server

races will start every 1/2 hour as long as we have participants

This competition is a sailing race from Cuba to Padres. The course will wind its way through several islands and should take about 20 minutes to complete. There are no prizes here…this is just designed for fun. *hint* print and review map before the race.

http://www.piratesonlineforums.com/g.../potco_map.jpg

*hint 2* print and review the map before the race.

There are just a few rules which hopefully will make it more interesting and challenging.

1. Each race will consist of 6 boats all of the same ship class. (Ideally it would work this way, but the first weekend will be a free for all)

2. All pirates will start on the broken dock where Tia Dahlma is located in the swamps of Cuba. I will crew all those racing so you can give me updates during the race as needed.

3. At the start of the race each pirate will need to run to the dinghy on the beach to launch their ship.

4. Once launched you will need to follow the course as outlined on the map. Any deviation to the course and you will be DQ’d.

5. You are NOT allowed to use Full Sail or Ramming speed during the race. Anyone caught using these sailing aides will be DQ’d.

6. Before you port on Padres you must have a FULL cargo load. Since you will be crewed you must report to me when your cargo hold is full. If you do not report to me that your cargo is full upon completion of the race you will be DQ’d. Of course this will be on the honor system but it should be clear to each of the racers if the other boats are not engaging enemy ships. It’s a long race so pick your spots wisely.

7. If you sink you are out of the race.

8. Once you’ve ported you will need to run to the fountain in the square and ATTUNE me with your doll. First one to do so wins.


I have no idea what kind of response this will get so i'm going to start with a War Sloop race (as noted above this first weekend will be a free for all). reply to this post or PM me if you are interested. first come first served.

Let me know if you have any questions. This is my first shot at organizing anything like this so suggestions are welcome.

10:00 am PST (Open Ship Class)
1. Swashbuckler II - War Sloop
2. Sammyh ?
3. Rackat - War Sloop
4. Diego ?
5. Redflint ?
6. Tuefenhandel ?
7. Edgemenace
8. Maximvs - Light sloop
9. Andrew - War Sloop
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

These seems fun sign me up
Swashbuckler II
And if im not there im prob sleeping lol'

Sounds like fun.

Ahhh why no full sail or ramming speed? :(
Some will have windcatcher and tacking maxed. (not me though.. )


Dont know if i'll be around, so can't 'sign up' at the moment.

lol i dont have a war sloop :( all i have a a normal, old, sloop. saving up, though.

I cant sign up yet... but this does sound fun! I am very interested and will sign up if time allows it :D

I espically like the part about having to fill cargo before docking... makes you stop like in target shooting while racing to the finish (and of course you want to hit targets close).

Two Questions:

1) As unfortunately a player can only carry three ships, what will determine the class / type of ship (selling a ship just to get one for the contest isn't really an option :) ).

EDIT: See my next post for a possible solution to this if ya like it :D

2) Any ammo type used when getting ships?

Sign me up for the first race. I think I have a war sloop on one of my pirates, if not, I will buy one.

From the map provided it looks like you MAY need to adjust the course to account for Cuba's new location.

Does the value of your hold's contents factor into scoring for the race?

I sail a war galleon. I would participate in a WG race if the time worked for me.

aye let me know when u do war frigate, or galleon and of course the lite sloop no war sloops in the redflint family lol

I just thought of the solution for ya from my own question :D

Instead of trying to run one race class of ship at one time...

Pick one time, allow anyone to race whatever they want for that class, then they can all launch at once and winners are chosen by class (thereby there could be 9 winners for each race time by class of ship)

So for the 9pm race lets say 25 people sign up - 4 are racing light sloops, 3 are racing galeons, 3 are racing frigates, 7 are racing war sloops, 4 are racing war galeons and 4 are racing war frigates... there would be 6 winners (one in each ship class) all racing at the same time - just like in around the world real sailing where ships are put into classes (and this would look WAY COOL seeing so many different ships of different makes and classes going in one direction at once :D ).

Just a thought :)

thanks for the responses
 

since this is a work in progress let's see what we can make of this.

Ahhh why no full sail or ramming speed?

I understand some will have skill points in windcatcher and tacking. I was thinking about that and while i think most haven't put many skill points in those we could stagger the start to off set the imbalance.

no ramming speed or full sail is the closest i could come to leveling the playing field and it makes it much more interesting when approaching high level bad guys. You can't just "run away" you have to outsail them.

what will determine the class / type of ship

i was going to offer different ship class races...thought i'd start with the war sloop. I think i'll adjust the second race to be for sloops.

allow anyone to race whatever they want for that class, then they can all launch at once and winners are chosen by class

i had a hard time figuring out how to police the race so i came up with the six boats per race and all participants could be crewed so we all could communicate. stuff like "hey i just saw so and so using full sail". but more importantly so participants could report when their cargo hold was full.

since there is really no way to know other than putting a judge on each ship that's the solution i came up with.

i think with making the second race a sloop race more will be able to participate.

i may make a war galleon race as well. that will be the toughest race in my opinion. huge cargo hold and those ships are are painfully slow. so with no full sail or ramming speed it should make for a fine spectacle.

Any ammo type used when getting ships?

well, yes! if you are willing to stop sailing and man a cannon. all up to the participant.

adjust the course to account for Cuba's new location

the move of cuba really didn't have much impact when i sailed the route.

Does the value of your hold's contents factor into scoring for the race?

ahhhh, excellent question. i was thinking how that could come into play. In these early stages i'd say they will have no impact other than you must fill your cargo hold. perhaps at a later stage if this should catch on i could set up some sort of scoring table (i.e. under 100 cargo reduces your time by 10 seconds, 100-200 by 15 seconds, etc)


Now if i don't get much repsonse this week i may push it off a week.

Oh, and if any guilds want to steal my idea for guild events please feel free!

Can the ship have it's own crew?

I am pretty sure I'll make it - will get a hold of you if I do........


Max - you mention 9 PM in your response. The original post indicates 9 AM (a brutal hour if not for the time difference).

Sign me up for light sloop and light galleon segments. :-)

Any chance you could have everyone launch first, announce their ship name, THEN land on cuba and get ready to start? (That way, if you launch the wrong type of boat, you know beforehand.)

The 9pm reference was just an example - the times will be set by mlratto :)

As I own a War Frigate, War Galeon and a Light Sloop - I guess if there is a Light Sloop and a War Galeon race I can be in those :)

EDIT: Since a sloop is only 1k - I could sell the LS and get a sloop for the race then sell it back later :D

Yea - the downside to the idea would be the crewing up probably wouldnt work and it would be on players word... and I can understand the issues there :)

Yea, too bad cargo is random... cause then you could do this but with random drops and Treasure Sense... filling the hold I think is your only extra option - but a great idea :D

race update
 

Can the ship have it's own crew?

sure, but they will not be allowed to use cannons so not sure what good they would do. maybe blow on the sails?

since this is the first race i'll say any ship class that would like to particpate is welcome. heck, i may even get in there if the numbers are small enough?

I'm also moving the start time to 10am PST.

However i'm secretly hoping it will be a lot. i'm picturing 20 pirates fighting their way out of tia dahlma's swamp on that tiny walkway. lol not to mention how cool it will look with all those boats on the water at the same time.

anyone know what the maximum number of people you can crew is?

A dozen is the max crew.

Six boats is reasonable. You, the "judge" can board each ship as it "finishes" and gets to PDF to make sure the cargo hold is full before they land. You can also randomly (or not so randomly) GO TO each captain to make sure nothing fishy seems to be going on.

I can't wait to see how well random broadsides work in this race. Even in normal sailing, I pick up a fair amount of cargo from taking single pot shots at passing navy and eitc boats. (Others finish them off for me, to give me the cargo!) If it doesn't work, there are always plenty of targets right near PDF.

If you want, I can park my boat at Devil's Anvil, to officiate one of the check-points, in any race I am NOT in. (Is that one or two checkpoints, there?)

Ok I'm in - sign me up! :) I'll trade in the LS for a S if need be (whats 500 gold amongs friends :D )

I pick up a fair amount of cargo from taking single pot shots at passing navy and eitc boats

aye, a smart strategy if you have smaller ship.

I'd love to have help officiating and i like the idea of ship hoping. "oh oh, race official coming" LOL

Maximvs - your light sloop is more than welcome! first race is open ship class just o see how it goes. if we get enough interest (i.e. you guys rave about the event on POF...heh heh heh) we can start to do it by class and maybe even try to figure out some prize as incentive.

i'm dying to see a war galleon race. with no full sail or ramming speed thise big sloths might not even finish!

AS part of the signup sheet - players should indicate what ship they will be using now that its open (in this case I'll use the Light SLoop Then) so if there only one of that class then maybe another player can switch so theres at least two racers for that class :)

So for me it would be:

Maximvs Decimvs - Light Sloop (backup: War Frigate)

I did me a dry run in my war galleon, just for entertainment value.

Times: MM:SS

Tormenta at 4:30 (2/16 cargo)
Devils Anvil 12:00 (12/16 cargo)
Tortuga (leaving) 16:30 (13/16 cargo) (Still have over 3/4 hull, and no sail damage)
Cutthroat (arriving) 20:30 (14/16 cargo) (Still have over 3/4 hull, and no sail damage)
Kingshead (arriving) 22:36 (14/16 cargo) (Just under 1/2 hull, cerberus caught me with explosives a few time as a drove by)
Padres (at fountain) 27:33 (16/16 cargo, sunk a phantom on the last leg to fill up)

400+ gold

Im sure there was a faster line, I veered off course at 90 degrees one time to finish off a ship before going back on course. May be a quicker way to skirt around islands than how I sailed.

I had 1 pt in windcatcher and 1 in taskmaster on the pirate I did the run on (with sailing mastered).

do you think the ammount of people should be cut to 10 or 11 to fit everyone in a crew.

My test runs in a light sloop and in a light galleon were 22:11 and 23:11. I know the last time I measured them for speed, light galleon was slower than either a galleon or a war galleon. So I don't understand why you were so slow. Stopping to smell the roses? :-)

The crew thing is probably going to be important. I had a friend come to me during the second run and shoot the colossus flag - and grapple - and board it! Had to just start that time-test over. One or two officials for every 6 to 10 racers...if we have a lot more participants than that, we can have separate heats.

I wonder if you should add the rule that you are not allowed to shoot at flag ships at all, during this race? Boarding a flagship is a least a minute off your time. NOT boarding it would put you in the invisible sailing glitch. Actually, I'm not sure what we can say about this. You can't use full sail or ramming speed to get clear of a Spanish blood scourge...maybe the best option IS to board it? ---ponders the quandary---

If one ship is DQ/incapacitated by the sentinel flagship, one ship for the colossus flag, one for the kingsfisher flag, one for the French blood scourge, one for the Spanish shadow crow, Spanish blood scourge, Spanish cerberus, corvette, man-o-war then only 9 ships will be out of the race. (Only 6 boats racing?)

Well, OK, let's not get silly. Hitting a flagship with a volley isn't so bad - if you keep running. Crippling it is a problem. But there will be enough witnesses screaming bloody murder, if someone tries to glitch off a flagship (obvious disqualification) so anyone unlucky enough to cripple a flagship will have to go back and board it. Maybe give a one minute bonus if you board a flagship? (maximum bonus = 1 minute.) You'd have to call for an official, to board with you, of course. Or maybe just credit the time from when they call out "Flagship boarding - HELP!" to the time when the official is back on their boat after a successful boarding and hears the sails unfurl. (A corvette takes ten seconds - a colossus can take several minutes. And they may need to turn their boat back around or come back from jail.)

First of all thanks to those who have taken an interest in this race and done a few test run. Wise pirate ye be.

My son and I did a test run in light frigates last night. Upside - less cargo to fill up. Downside - getting pummeled by big enemy ships.

I did me a dry run in my war galleon

you are a brave pirate! I'm thinking that's going to be the toughest ship class to race given the speed, huge target and huge cargo capacity.

One or two officials for every 6 to 10 racers

I agree. at least 1 per 6-10. that way you could start the race then boat hop or island hop to keep tabs on things then tp to padres for the finish. So we'll see how many we get saturday and i'll ask for volunteers if it looks like we'll need them.

maybe the best option IS to board it?

In my opinion boarding a flagship is very risky. takes time and you could get whacked, especially on the collosus. If we get to the point where there are bonuses for amount of cargo this may change but for the initial race i think boarding a ship makes little sense....unless you have a huge lead.

It would be great if we could make this a monthly event. switch up the course periodically and get to the point where we could schedule races by ship class.

but for now i'm pleased as punch this idea has actually gotten some interest!:dancetl6:

If you have signed up please let me know what type of ship you will be using.

ok im coming for sure
War sloop for me.
It would be cool to meet some on the forums
Everyone month?
I would do this every week lol

Good idea, sounds like fun, sign me up!, my pirates name is Andrew, lvl 40. Ill be there, what server?, ill be using a war sloop

what server?

It's on the original post, time server and participants. glad to have you aboard matey!

If we get more i may be breaking it up into two races.

One major reason.
16 cargo vs 3 cargo One lucky shot with a light sloop and you dont have to worry about cargo ever, and you have the faster ship.

I had to go off course occasionally, although not far to finish off a ship I did battle with. The War Galleon is also a bit slower.

Personally, I think that if you took a light sloop (fastest ship and holds least), and only beat me (slowest ship holding most cargo) by 5 minutes, you must have stopped for some rum along the way!!!! ;)

I may have been able to skirt islands faster, im not sure how much 'hitting' the shore slows you down. I know it does using ramming speed, and full sail, but I wasnt using those obviously.

Crews are allowed, but not allowed to man a cannon, therefore I dont see any purpose for a crew. Friends TP'ing to you while your sailing could be a problem, part of testing the "captains" abilities, so we'll just have to deal with it I think.


How you deal with this is really up to the individual captain as I see it. Personally I would consider it a detriment my race to encounter any flagships that require any of my time, and glitching would just make that even more an issue.

Last night me and my guildies boarded a barracuda, one of the mercs on board ran off half way to Port Royal (from Perdida). We couldnt get him back on board to finish the ship, I even glitched off the ship, but couldnt attack him as I was in the water. I was stuck there until I logged out.... I think I would avoid flagships period.

Regarding Glitching a flagship.
If I compete against you, please by all means take the time to glitch.
By doing so you are:

A. Taking the time to attack/defeat a ship that you will get NO cargo from
B. You will have to now chase every ship you want to sink.

The more opportunities I have to catch, pass, and/or pull away from my opponents. the better.


Was fun to try out, but I dont think I will hava a chance to compete.

I have to say that a flagship in the right place might be a tasty target. My experience is that they give more cargo (items) and most of the time my ugly walking stick (oh, okay - staff) can wipe out a deck full of badies in a jiffy.

This is a "game time decision" that would be helpful in particular if one is trying to fill the hold of a war galleon.

The latitude to make such a call on the fly is what makes these events so interesting.

<hiccup> wat sher mean thar, matey! 'Jes helpin' me mate Gunner...

While I learned to let others finish off Navy for me, in my light sloop, I all but forgot about it, once I had a war galleon. The astonishing number of guns on a war galleon ensure that only really big tough targets can ever survive more than one of my broadsides. YMMV. With all the juicy targets near PDF, I wouldn't go out of my way.

I meant, being in a crew (so that friends have a harder time TPing to you) is an important factor. <shrug> Using the crew system to prevent that kind of nonsense is a great idea - bravo Ironrat. But that does mean that anyone in the race has to be in the racing crew (therefore can't have their own.) Everyone gets to see the launch messages and they are able to communicate with the other players and offical(s).

Sigh. Excellent points. So instead of calling foul, we just sit back and laugh at them? Sounds like a plan!

:-(

One last question then: is it OK to glitch through Cuba and/or Port Royal? If someone is inside an island, it is really hard to see if they hit full sail.

i'll try to be ther if u need help, i can referee with u or race. either way sound like fun, with rum

Whoa, less than three hours from now...and Hassaba server is already "Ideal"...

If anyone needs gold to buy a certain ship type for the race, let me know. I can play poker with you now, before the race, to get you to max gold.

Mlratto
I cannot wait so im just going to hang out in cuba for 3 hours lol

I cannot wait so im just going to hang out in cuba for 3 hours lol

LOL okay race time is at 10am PST i'll stop by at 9am for those that didn't get the time change message.

ok bored just going to svs for a bit ill be back round 9

Sign me up too Sven!

Watch out for the Victory Shark War Sloop, everyone.... :piratewheelgo2:

Hey Sven can u sign Sven up? lol

Judging by how many people are there early (early for the early race) I think we may have a pretty high turnout. Good thing we can split the race up into separate groups of ten racers!

was fun race Ed won
I came in second (barly)
Max in third and so on.

Me and max landed at same time
Was a foot race.
until max went wrong way
Next race in 15 min
Meet us in cuba to come

I think you guys already raced or whatever but to this.. i'd have to step back a second.

I know how to glitch through an island, but the steps it takes would again take longer than any amount of time I might have saved.



As far as the reference to going out of my way... When i said I had to veer off course etc.. even in a war galleon you would not be able to sink any ship around PDF by a simple broadside as you pass heading to PDF. I never left course, I steered left and/or right momentarily to throw a finishing broadside at a ship.

I didnt go more than 2 boat lengths off a straight course EVER in my entire run.

zep wanna join us were doing another race
in 9 min
Ok second race results
Max wins. (barly)
I came in second (again barly)
Sven in 3rd
And savvy Sank

Woop! Who owned race two!!!! I did :D

Kudos goes to Edward (who totally cooked us in race 1) and Swash in racee two.... I was way ahead and that was a nice comeback! (I TOTALLY forgot aout the tuning thing though LOL :D )

Congrats to everyone who raced today... I'll await the details for the next 'won' LOL! :D

In celebration of everyone who raced today (and tried to get me to pull over with my signal lights into Toug LOL) this pic is for you...

http://i421.photobucket.com/albums/p...xximvs/026.jpg

lol max you left your turn signal on
Ps i started the turn signal thingy lol

thanks you guys that was a hoot. and thanks to edward who officiated the second race so i could participate.

I'll see if i can come up with a new challenging route for next week and put up a sign up sheet.

That was FUN. It was almost more fun being the "official" for the second race, jumping from boat to boat. It would be way cool with two officials (one to park boat at DA, one to boat-hop) but it makes more sense to let more people race. (It is a nice custom, to have the winner of each race be the official for the next race.)

The third race was the closest of all. Davy Redflint and I traded the lead about five times. Just holding to my route, taking only pot-shots worked great. When I tried it in Swashbuckler II's war galleon, it almost worked. If Swashbuckler II had been back in time to click BOARD, I probably would have gotten three (or more) from that Man-o-war, to get full cargo. (No bets on how long the officers would have taken!)

So, we are doing this again next week? Same time? One hour later? Earlier? The first race being open to all boat classes was cool. But the war galleon race and the war sloop races were more exciting - being so much closer. Who is making the map for next week?

lol - I did time it as a practice run - almost exactly the same. I asked before the race started and someone said no glitch, so I didn't bother. Probably would have lost if I had tried.

aye was fun, i miss the start of the warsloop race but was in my war frigate, testin the route and found u guys. yea edward had me till he try to board the flag cargo issue. lol

It was a great time :D If the route is gonna change we'll need that map soon (cause I GOTTA practice this time LOL ;) )

I would be happy to do nother race next week

I so missed this. I thought it was this morning for some reason.....grog perhaps.

Congratz to the winners!

Good thing you took care of the grog - that ballast would have slowed your boat way down! :buds:

We did have room for more racers in all three races - it probably would have been even better with a few more people. (Each hour, on the hour.) We'll see if it will take off as a weekly event...

I should have done this :) I maxed speed rather than power so i'm like a bullet when i sail, always beating my friends when they try and race me sailing :p They always refuse to admit i was just awesome and come up with some excuse as to why they lost lol. Unfortunately i'm awful at directions and nearly always have to look a the map to see where i'm going...so i'd end up completely off course, probably get frustrated with falling off course and end up going plundering or something. :p

I hope there is enough interest to keep this going as a weekly event. I'll warn you though: you will never catch my light sloop (at least, not until they fix windcatcher!)

The route wasn't too bad - the only person that got lost was the person who joined late, in the game (and never actually saw the map.)

It might be nice if the route for next week's race is made simple enough to be explained in chat.

Some race ideas:
1) Start from Padres, do five figure eights around outcast/padres; going clockwise around outcast; finish race at Cuba; cargo must be full when done.

2) Start from French or Spanish island. Sail around Driftwood, then Devil's Anvil, then end at Driftwood. Teams don't have to be exactly equal, but should approximately be an even match.

3) Death Omen cup: Start at Cuba, go left (West) around Perdida, pass North side of Cangrejos, go on East side of Porc/Avaricia, East of Kingshead, South of Padres, Outcast and Tormenta, land at Cuba.

4) Behemoth Barrel: Start at Padres, East of Kingshead, North of Cangrejos, West of Perdida, 1st point off map West of where Cuba used to be (official is parked at edge of map,) South of Padres, land at Port Royal.

5) Wild World: Start at Devil's Anvil, sail to Cutthroat, Outcast, Tormenta, Driftwood, Perdida, Rumrunner's, Cangrejos, end at Devil's Anvil. Land and launch from each, no cargo.

The one with cargo having to be full is a good one, you'd have to have people onboard watching the cargo number, might be interesting because sometimes you get lots other times it's like one crate :) But then you'd have to decide whether it counts if you sink it with someone else who's in the race too, or is it first come first serve lol. Also the bigger your ship the slower it is, but the faster it will sink passing ships to fill cargo, but the little light sloopies however may take longer, but are generally faster. lol Interesting to see ship choices or whether it's all the same.

Sorry I missed the event. I had a crew in doing drywall in my new kitchen and couldn't break away long enuff to participate. I will keep a weather eye out for more races and catch one when the workers are finished "plunderin' me galley".

aye...be keepin your good eye out matey. from the minds of edgemenace and ironrat we are putting a little something together that should be quite entertaining.

will post soon...still hammering out the details.

i joined just because of this race... when are we having another race?

hasn't been another in a while.......maybe there should though

yes i agree...let me see what i can put together!

Mlratto your good at this sooooo......wanna try that idea I pm'd ya a while back? lol