Alphabet Contest?

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Dugway

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I have an idea for an informal contest at that involves flyers launching the most "letters" of motors (1/4A - M?) on the fewest possible rockets. I need a formula that works out so that launching a single rocket (say an Alpha) on a single class of motor (say an A), doesn't help your score much, but if you also launch the exact same rocket with a B and C motor, your score would go up significantly. The flyer could choose a different rocket to launch D, E, and F motors and maybe something bigger for G, H, I, J, and so on.

The launches wouldn't need to be done in alphabetical order. There is no need to have any rules about condition of rocket after the flight, since not being able to launch it again on a different motor is its own penalty. The contest would encourage people to launch a bunch of different motors and to stretch the limits of what they normally fly.

Playing around in Excel, the best formula that I have come up with so far is (motors^1.5)/rockets, which works but is hard to explain and seems needlessly complex.

Can someone out there with a more analytical mind come up with something better/simpler, or has something like this already been done?

Thanks!
 
Here's an alternative, shamelessly ripped off from the board game 7 Wonders (which is excellent):

Total score = sum of your rocket scores.
Rocket score = (number of impulse classes flown in it)^2

Two examples:

Rocket A has flown 1/4A and 1/2A = 4 points
Rocket B has flown A, B, C, and D = 16 points (those 18mm composite D's are a godsend here!)
Rocket C has flown E, F, and G = 9 points
Total 29 points over 9 impulse classes

Rocket X has flown G, H, and I = 9 points
Rocket Y has flown J and K = 2 points
Rocket Z has flown L, M, and N = 9 points
Total 20 points over 8 impulse classes

This really advantages people who can figure out how to fly on 4 or more classes on a single rocket, and maybe weights a little more toward the LPR/MPR side since the motor sizes get so much bigger as you get into the higher letters.
 
I may use this, I love the game but have trouble getting my head around the "Science" scoring. I think your example has a slight error, the second example should be 22 points, J+K = 4 points, correct?

It's a little more difficult to put in a spreadsheet but I just added a column for each rocket to keep the intermediate scores and then sum them for the total scores.

It looks like a "perfect" score would be 256 points with 16 motor types, a good score for a multi-day launch would be more like 45. I like that the results are integers.
 
How is this impacted by a cluster rocket, or a multistage? What if you had a F booster to a C 2nd Stage to a 1/2 A sustainer? Are there bonus points for such an arrangement?
 
Great questions!

I would count each component separately for multistage. The booster would count as rocket #1 flown on an F, the 2nd stage as rocket #2 on a C, and the sustainer as rocket #3 on a 1/2A. If you flew the whole stack again with the motors being E/B/A, that would be the same three rockets, each on their second motors.

For clusters I would just count the total impulse, just like they do for NAR contests. Only the motors that actually lit could be counted as having flown.
 
If it was me, I'd count each staged rocket flying multiple classes as a single rocket. That way you give credit to the extra difficulty of staging, especially wildly different motor classes.
 
The fact that this contest would be limited to Cert 3 flyers is going to reduce the number of participants at any given event.

Can a motor adapter be used?

If so them I think it would be possible to build a single rocket that could fly from an “A” to an “F” without much difficulty, assuming a BP “F” and you’re not concerned about setting any altitude records when you’re flying that “A”. A single rocket could then be used to fly anything between a “G” to “J” and another for “K” through “M”.

Assuming another very light rocket for the ¼ A and ½ A motors and it looks to me that a minimum of four rocket could be used.
 
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