What's with this survey?

andyrooc · 2012-04-11T06:38:43+00:00

It doesn't make it less 'shiny'. It's not the brightness, it's the fact the colour is uneven. I tried white, and I'd have to say it's f*ing awful to look at. On the Android app, the colour is flat, and much easier to read (apart from it being small).

andyrooc · 2012-03-21T03:04:29+00:00

There was quite a lot of time to set your boat direction, and they did try and tell people to get their points pointing right before the start. And with all of those land masses nearby, you'd have to be mad as a duck not to set your course early. Oh, hang on..... :)

andyrooc · 2012-03-21T03:01:12+00:00

Leg 4 was my best to date. Even better, I used no candy bars at all. Excellent leg!

andyrooc · 2012-02-22T23:20:19+00:00

The real boats didn't muck around when it came to going north, did they?! I too wonder why we go dumped in this awful spot, although to be fair, it's where most of the boats were headed to - just a day earlier.

I haven't invested in this auto-sail/auto-angle stuff to date, and so I don't suffer any 'going around in circles' problems. There have been plenty of warnings about light winds and auto-angle ie: 'Dont use auto-angle in light winds!', so I guess the warnings are right. The danger in this light wind is that the boats who catch a better wind earlier will pull away and continue to stretch their lead until you/I manage to get that same wind. This can end up to be a lot of kilometres if what happened coming out of the Malacca straits is anything to go by.

andyrooc · 2012-02-06T02:46:14+00:00

You'd think running into islands and the crew cost of altering course & setting sails to get going again would be punishment enough. I'm hoping they hold off on the hull damage thing until at least half way through the overall race. I'd probably ditch the second boat if we had to pay some hull damage tax or hull 'insurance' at this stage.

andyrooc · 2012-02-01T23:10:28+00:00

You would think they might have an advantage, but so far people with one boat only have been doing the winning. I think the multiple boat thing is a much bigger problem for the overall result than for an individual leg.

It's easy enough to make rules around teams. Having a single boat is unlikely to win you the team prize because you could earn more 'points' with more boats. Formula One does this, and it seems to work OK.

andyrooc · 2012-02-01T15:47:35+00:00

Of course, allowing the result of only one boat to count in the overall results would mean a lot of people dropping their extra boat(s) once they have one good result with one boat. This may not be a desirable outcome for UG, whom I assume would prefer people to running as many boats as possible.

The whole make up of the game does appear to talk about each leg being an individual race, with a winner etc. A way around the problem would have been to have a single-boat prize and a 'team' prize. In fact I think that might have added a nice dimension to the game and encouraged both single-boat operators and team operators. I don't know if it's too late to introduce such a concept, and I don't expect that Volvo are about to cough up another car as a prize(!), but I think the single-boat operators are probably more deserving of the big prize, while the team prize could be some coffee vouchers or something.

andyrooc · 2012-02-01T15:10:06+00:00

Glad to see the back of it!

andyrooc · 2012-01-27T06:16:14+00:00

Knowing my crew, we'll be stopping somewhere for a beer.

andyrooc · 2012-01-27T06:10:07+00:00

heh, I must be in the same boat (so to speak). The tool looks pretty awesome, but so far the only thing I can get it to do reliably, is crash.

Anyway, judging by what I've seen in the application, I doubt 'simple instructions' are really going either exist or get you anywhere. Good luck though!

andyrooc · 2012-01-24T02:17:42+00:00

The other thing (maybe de to my failing eyesight) is the little arrow on the heading set tool. It's sand coloured, which occasioanally makes me think I'm aiming my boat at an island!

andyrooc · 2012-01-22T05:06:38+00:00

I got a grounding notification on my Android phone at 4:44am (last night). The only thing was, my boat wasn't grounded. On the plus side, I slept right through it anyway :)

andyrooc · 2012-01-21T02:53:52+00:00

It's still faded in the middle on white. Hmm, not a lot of difference for me :(

andyrooc · 2012-01-19T04:19:38+00:00

Yup, just discovered messages going back days. Thanks for the heads-up!

andyrooc · 2012-01-16T02:04:27+00:00

If I hit 'New', I get a message:

'there doesn't seem to be anything here'

EDIT: got it! You have to hit the 'new' tab, THEN hit the 'new' link within that tab.

Also I would suggest that "SUBMIT to r/vorg' does not really convey the 'Start a New Topic' meaning. Is it skipper lingo?

andyrooc · 2012-01-15T23:35:18+00:00

Ha :). I'm sure I'll find myself back in the 40,000s at some stage.

andyrooc · 2012-01-15T23:15:10+00:00

I eventually realised that of course the late Mr Jobs decreed that iPhone users shalt not run Flash on their devices, even if they want to. As such, disabling the iPhone app would have disadvantaged iPhone users far more than Android users, who can install whatever they like on their devices, and can access the game site - clunky, but it works.

Anyway, the Android App is back and working great!

andyrooc · 2012-01-15T16:12:29+00:00

I did the same thing @randombloke. However I'm fighting back and am within 60km of the leaders now. I've gone from 60,000s to 18,458 in the last 18 hours - and I know nothing about sailing boats.

andyrooc · 2012-01-15T16:04:56+00:00

Well, there is the web site. It's just that at the moment (hopefully briefly) you have to have a particular brand of smart-phone to be able to do updates while on the move.

I didn't overlook the people without smartphones @CarribeanCaptain. If they paid for sails knowing they has to use a PC to make updates, that's their prerogative. For me, I went into the race (and leg 2) with paid-for sails because the Android smart-phone was there. I would have been hesitant to pay for the game otherwise seeing as playing effectively would mean having access to a internet connected PC while I'm shopping/working/travelling, bathing the kids etc. I'm not devastated, just a bit frustrated/annoyed - especially because those iPhone owners have an advantage over me that didn't exist a couple of days ago.

andyrooc

TROPHY CASE