I think we're still waiting for Port Hedland finishers to chime in ... #9 and #11. Anybody see who they were?
Yes Faye, it did start out with a bit of waiting for the results to get completed. Then real life caught up. No worries, as per MOFO rules the SUCK (Single Unimpeachable Centre of Knowledge) in the end determines the points. So here goes! Cheers, M.
MOFOs in the Outback It was quiet in the little town of TA1ville. It was as if the town collectively decided tot take a break from the excitement and the heavy flinging that lead to the spectacular results from Windhoek. People went about their business, caught up on stuff that had gone unattended during the duel between the Penguin and the Pope, and generally had little time for banter in the saloon. Icon got grumpy because business was slow and there was nobody to listen to his conspiracy theories, and was temporarily not on speaking terms with the editor of the MOFO Statesman & Herald after he had accused him of sleeping on the job. Such was life in the little village of TA1ville. But meanwhile, there was another event, and the crew wound its way to Port Hedland, which is Strine for Middle of Nowhere. This didn't prevent some of the heavy lifters to, well, do some heavy lifting. But there was a clear split between the Top Ten regulars who wanted to maintain position in the various cups, and the rest of us. As a result, it's been a long time since it was so easy to get into the points. Popehatz once again ruled the roost, with a deftly delivered 7,107 jobs. This time he was barely 2,000 jobs ahead of #2, Jmac, whose last time reaching the podium was London, about three months ago. Only 2,000 jobs ahead, Popester. You'd almost start to worry. Congrats to both! Last place on the podium was taken by the ever resilient Penguin, who showed the world that you can beat a Penguin but he will always come back. Congrats, polar bird! Faye scored 4th with a bit over 3,000 jobs; Lorena aka XGarriga took 5th, not far behind; and Ktc and Nalazoo followed suit in 6th and 7th. Sheriff Vic showed up in 8th; and 9th place brought us a little surprise in the person of Suvinirk, who we hadn't seen for a long time. The two MOFO points scored were also the first ever for Suvinirk. Welcome in the rarified circles of MOFO scorers, Suv! The more the merrier, we at the M S & H always say, although we generally mean subscribers when we say that. North brought up the rear in Port Hedland with an unparalleled 592 jobs. It is hard to remember when was the last time the entry ticket into the Top Ten was that cheap. (OF course we at the M S & H do. We remember everything. It was 498 jobs in Anchorage, aeons ago, scored by a very young Penguin.) So this brings us to the current standings in SY7 and GS3: 1st: Popehatz, 100 points (1st, 75); 2nd: Penguin, 55 (2nd, 40); 3rd: Faye, 40 (3rd, 28); 4th: Jmac, 37 (7th, 19); 5th: Nalazoo, 34 incl. one 3rd (4th, 28); 6th: Ktc24, 34 incl. one 5th (5th, 26); 7th: Vic, 25 (6th, 21); 8th: Nokitano, 18 (8th, 18); 9th: XGarriga, 17 (12th, 7); 10th: Green Paper, 15 (9th, 15). Popehatz shows off with a perfect score after 4 races. Is he after Gus the Swarmster, who holds the record with 5 successive wins? The world awaits with baited breath. Penguin sits in second with 55 points, his eyes riveted on Popehatz. You can just tell that the polar bird will strike when the Pope shows just one moment of inattention. Beware the wrath of a wily winged avenger! Faye the Constant sits in 3rd with 40 points, with a closely packed posse consisting of Jmac, 'Zoo and Ktc right behind her. Jmac did well and jumped three places, causing the other two to drop a place. Same for the Sheriff, who now sits in 7th with 25 points. He leads Nokitano in 8th, and Lorena aka XGarriga who jumped from 12th to 9th. Green Paper drops from 9th and hangs on to the Top Ten by his fingernails. Behind Green Paper the two tough Northerners lurk: North and Tater, with 3 and 4 points behind respectively. Rebartsch and Suvinirk, with 4 and 2, complete the now 14-some that scored MOFO points in the current Cups. And here's the Concorde: 1st: Gus, 526 1/3 (1st, 526 1/3); 2nd: Faye, 503 (2nd, 491); 3rd: North, 366 (3rd, 365); 4th: Penguin, 342 1/3 (4th, 327 1/3); 5th: Nalazoo, 288 1/3 (6th, 282 1/3); 6th: Number1Ump, 288 (5th, 288); 7th: Vic, 27 (8th, 263); 8th: Nokitano, 263 (7th, 263); 9th: Snowbird, 221 (9th, 221); 10th: Ktc24, 220 (10th, 212). Top Three unchanged. Same for Penguin in 4th. Behind him Nalazoo finally pips Ump to 5th place. The Ump's been stationary with 288 points for the longest time. Vic, and this sounds decidedly like a deja vu as his countrymen would say (Vic's countrymen are a funny lot. But I digress), is taking back his 7th place once again. He really seems attached to it. Nokitano drops another place to 8th, Snowbird stays in 9th. This could be short-lived, because behind her Ktc is rolling in, now only one point behind. Watch your back, Snowbird, before you become wintry poultry! Worth mentioning in the bowels of the Concorde League are Tater with 170 points in 12th, and certainly also Popehatz, who now sits in 13th with 125 points. Since he gathers his points 25 at time, we hope to welcome him in the Concorde Top Ten soon. Another four or five races, at the going rate. In his wake sits Jmac with 122 points in 14th. He too is worth watching. We're bound to see more of him in the ole' Concorde. And that concludes our results for Port Hedland. See y'all in Charleston, for a bit of Southern Delight! Cheers, M.
Remember who invented darkening the skies of Africa and Asia with scores of blimps? Google eat your heart out! Cheers, M.
How many blimps are you flying these days? I'd love to give your strategy a try but then I would not have any chance to compete in the MOFOs ... maybe I'll slowly stock up on blimps and give it a try when I'm ready "retire" to a slower way of life ... it sounds more fun than going fishing.
That's right kids, sometimes TA1 is not all TA-FUN and GAMES! It takes dedication to fling forth to second, so let's get on it!
Here's 62 planes in the air, a couple of months ago. Many of them Blimps of course, but hey! Planes are planes Cheers, M.
Most of the time around 30. Sometimes up to 40 but then I usually run into a bux layover shortage, which means getting some Class 3s back in action. Cheers, M.
Nice! I guess I won't beat you with my 63 planes. Speed upgraded Cyclones are not easy beasts, they tend to get on the ground a bit faster than I can put them back in the air
Charleston finish in my little corner of the world ... suffering from burn out, hangared a bunch of planes and took it easy on this event. Next event: Chemical Spill in Berlin. Prize: 35 Bux
Pope's bux collection method A couple people have asked in PM for help setting up a bux collection strategy, so figured it might be helpful for others if I just detailed it in a forum post. So here goes! First - credit where credit is due. The core of this plan is very similar to others listed in Faye's consolidation post. I haven't really invented anything new, just combined and adjusted stuff previously outlined by people like Pezmage, Flysher, Castlepage, Vic, Merlion, etc. The details below cover what I used to get from ~20 to 36 slots, then again from 36 to 50 slots. An obvious caveat - don't expect to compete in events using this strategy, since all of your planes should be either collecting bux or transporting bux. A couple of core concepts: * This strategy assumes you've turned in bux before, planned ahead and have a healthy amount of coins in the bank. A few million is a good start, but the more the better. * Coin profit and the 25% bonus is insignificant. Period. If you happen to fill a plane and get the bonus, understand that it means you gained maybe .5 bux worth of coins at most. * Don't spend bux to upgrade planes for weight reduction. Remember that each bux is worth an incredible amount when exchange in bulk (over 22k for my last turn-in). It doesn't take a lot of math to realize that spending 24 bux for each Sequoia weight reduction level is a ridiculous expenditure when compared to the number of coins you "save". * Single bux jobs are nearly meaningless. The time (and seat) it takes to capture 1 bux is time lost collecting the 4-8 bux jobs you are likely to get on next refresh or from the next city. * Jobs sometimes get sent the opposite direction they are heading. Have them complain to management * Cyclones are better than Sequoias. They are faster and have 2 extra slots. Again, we're not worried about how much it costs to fly. We're more concerned with getting bux delivered and having a plane sitting in each city the entire time you are able to play. I think of it like this - you make more money with your planes on the ground than actually flying them. Primary cities: LA, Chicago, NY, London, Paris, Tehran, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai. If you have enough slots, add-on San Francisco, Phoenix, Osaka (in that order). These are the secondary cities. SF and Phx help to balance out jobs coming from the 4 Class 3 cities in EA. If you have enough slots, add-on Sao Paulo and Rio, and Honolulu if you like. I tried several layouts using Class 1 cities but found they were a less profitable use of plane slots and a bit of a hassle. If you have even more slots, figure out the next cities on your own - you already know what you are doing. Just be aware that adding more cities does not always equal more bux. In other words, if you can't hit every one of your current cities reliably within the refresh, you have no need to add even more middle-of-the-map cities that will get missed more often than not. Why did I choose Tehran instead of Istanbul? Well, Istanbul is good if you care about straight lines and coin income. I didn't care about coin income (see note above) and already had Tehran open. Plus, at one point I tested using Istanbul and found I produced less bux overall due to the proximity of each city. i.e. You gain 1 bux by using Ist with jobs from EA, but lose 1 with jobs from NA and SA. Or something like that. All I clearly remember is that Tehran seemed better, I tested it, and it confirmed what I thought so I stuck with it. Why didn't I choose this/that/the other city? Well, I stuck with cities at the far ends of the map and tried to balance out jobs heading east and west. SP and Rio are the exceptions since they have a great synergy due to their proximity to each other. Apart from London and Paris, each primary city is assigned 2 Cyclone M's. These planes are named according to the city, i.e. LABX1, LABX2. London and Paris each have a dedicated Aeroeagle M. If you don't have enough Cyclones to outfit each city and need to fall back to Sequoias, give preference to LA and Tokyo. On each refresh, run thru the list of jobs and load up all of the 2+ bux jobs. When you get to the jobs that only offer 1 bux, close out and move to the next city. Again, that single is not worth the time it takes to deliver it. London/Paris will load up whatever bux jobs are available and then fill with whatever jobs go to the opposite city. It's important that each Aero makes the switch every refresh. I've tried using Seq's and Cyclones for this swap and it becomes too much hassle keeping track of which plane is close enough to full to make the swap. Keep it simple and use Aeros and just make the swap every refresh. All jobs from every other city go to London or Paris. The same applies to Tehran, even if you pick up jobs going to EA. Don't try to overthink it and send those jobs east. Not worth the trouble and time it takes to make a full run to Tokyo, Beijing, etc and back to Tehran. Once Cyclones hit London or Paris, fill them with jobs The only exceptions are jobs in NY and Chi going to LA and its Class 2 little sister cities (SF and Phx). I ended up having another Aero M in NY/Chi to pick up the 2 bux jobs (time allowing) going to LA and would send them round trip. If you have enough slots, assign each of the other cities, apart from Tehran, with an Aero M to use as a fill-in just in case you are waiting for a Cyclone to return home. Here is the concept which made things very easy for me - you need to deploy your planes in order so that you can easily keep track of which cities have already been scanned. I've not seen it posted anywhere, and it may be self-evident, but when using the arrow buttons to flip through your planes, it goes in the order that the plane was put into service. So for example, lets say you start with a plane located in London. You fill that plane with bux jobs and send it to Paris. Then you click the right arrow button and you'll be looking at the plane in Paris. Fill it and send to London. Then click again and you'll see Tehran planes and so on. This setup makes it very easy to quickly scan the list (west to east) and move to the next city without needing to remember if you've already scanned through that city. By the time I had finished refining my setup, each city ended up having 2 Cyclones and an Aero M. So when flipping through the list of planes, it looked like this: LA: Cyc M, Cyc M, Aero M SF: Aero M Phx: Aero M Chi: Cyc M, Cyc M, Aero M NY: Cyc M, Cyc M, Aero M London: Aero M Paris: Aero M Tehran: Cyc M, Cyc M etc etc etc SF/Phx jobs layover in LA, Osaka jobs in Tokyo. I tended to let them pile up and then distribute them all at once to keep the Aero bux sitters in their assigned city as long as possible. As I alluded to before, SP and Rio have great synergy. I was able to devote just 1 Cyclone each and do a similar swap like in London and Paris and hoard bux in each city. This allowed me to use the last 2 slots available as MISC planes. The misc planes would help deliver the inevitable layover build-up in Lon/Par and then switch out and cover SP/Rio as bux sitters as needed. Since SP and Rio planes were the last ones deployed, I painlessly added the MISC planes at the end of the line so it was easy to switch out roles as needed without needing to flip thru the vertical list to find them. Just remember to keep it simple. Simple = fast = efficient = loads of bux = lots of slots and fast planes. Bux spent making things simple will certainly help you reap more than enough bux to make up for whatever it costs to deploy them in the right order. I'm sure I've forgotten bits and pieces (bourbon tends to do that) so if something doesn't make sense, let me know and I'l try to clarify. Hope it helps, and happy flinging! Edit: Forgot to add. With the full setup (all 36 slots) I was able to easily bring in 5000+ bux per day. This was with a decent amount of time devoted to scanning, scrolling, tapping and scrolling. But the bux rolled in so easily that I quickly surpassed my initial goal of 28k to get 45 slots and went all the way to 43k to get 50, with enough leftover to buy a few planes worth of parts and have enough coins to fund an almost endless number of flights and city buying. My current setup allows me to switch back and forth between events and bux collection without needing to redeploy anything. Basically, all Cyclones (enough to cover the primary cities I listed plus SP, Rio and 2 MISC planes) are deployed in order, with the London/Paris Aero M's stuck in the middle of the list. The Class 2 cities are not covered. The remaining Cyclones are deployed after that, leaving room for just over 20 slots dedicated to whatever specific planes are needed for an event. Trying to collect bux and compete in events in tandem isn't really effective, so the bux sitters get renamed and moved to wherever they are needed. And since the expensive planes are already out of the hangar and deployed in an orderly fashion, it makes changing gears to suit the event relatively cheap.
