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Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Operation [redacted]


Operation Summary

Field Type: Enlightened
Field Life: 9 hours
Field Size: 42,700 sq km / 16,500 sq mi
Mind Units: 28,144
Take Down Method: It is suspected that lone rogue Resistance agent osoblanco successfully bypassed Niantic security.

By Face2Face, Email2Email, G+2G+, gTalk2gTalk and COMM spam, Enlightened teams in 5 major northern California regions, working in concert overnight and over 15 hours, blasted links through 3 major metropolitan areas, cut through the ocean side cities and out across the water to the top of The Lost Coast. 1,041km of links lit up an Enlightened control field you could see from the intel world view.

The portals they captured, Cape Mendocino, the original site of the Cape Mendocino lighthouse, the First State Park, deep in the forest of Big Basin and a Post Office in Yosemite, half way to Half Dome, were chosen because they offered a certain kind of permanence, something exceedingly rare in Ingress. They were places the Resistance couldn't reach.

The acts of lighting up these special places however, was only 1% of the work performed on this mission. The other 99% was done by the planners, the map updaters, the scouters, the uninformed restrained who forged connections and opened lines of communication so that when the stars aligned, the ground teams struck under guidance from controllers and together cleared the corridors of Resistance.

By their own brand of expert organization, Blue had (and still has) a crushing dominance in all our regions, but on February 2nd we pinned them and watched them panic for 9 hours under a massive blanket of Enlightened Green.

By Ingress standards for such a high volume, high profile target, the field held for a long time, and because the portals were picked for their permanence, it was always assumed that a spoofer would take the field down first. Cheaters gonna cheat unfortunately, even when you hold out hope in human sportsmanship.

Neither team might ever know how long it would have taken to respond in a legitimate way, but for awhile at least, the Enlightened goal of a certain permanence was achieved.

All credit for Operation [redacted] goes to the agents listed below who showed remarkable patience and tenacity. Thank you all for your high spirit, your goodwill, your trust and your time.

In addition, this missions success can be credited to the many other agents of all levels, in all 5 major northern California regions who heeded the call for restraint. While your names may not appear in this roster, you are the reason the friendly lines were clear on strike night.


South Bay Area
sheepcow: Wrecked damage. Scouted portal locations. Always ready to jump in a car and drive silly distances to clear paths. Helped level junior agents.
Auryn: Spent weeks updating breaker maps for regional teams. Spent all night on strike night watching maps scanning for blockers. Sent out info and kept us all in the loop.
eidolon: Helped clear links.Woken at 4:30am by a tired pair of people and drove us in pitch dark deep into the woods safely and deployed his L8 and L7 resonators.
weasel: For continual reports and posts updating the team for links that need to be taken out, and regular portal recharge maintenance. The Keeper Of the Light.
Telos: For clearing links and being oncall for weeks leading up to strike night. Maintained the Friendly Acre Farm.

San Fransisco Area
Dextroyrawr: Who was on call for weeks for the aborted first attempt.
CGnex: Who ran out to kill a link that blocked us on the coast side.
gromit: For letting the fields in Pacifica decay and keeping it clear of blue.

San Joaquin Valley
LacedUp and Xandorcode: For driving out in the middle of the night to on portal recon missions. For working with their local players to keep the corridor clear and cleaning the last few blues on strike night.

Sacramento Valley
bemartinjr and boyuo: For clearing the corridor. For communicating with local agents and for driving 6 hours round trip to visit a Post Office at the edge of Yosemite in the dead of night to stand for an hour outside in the cold.
LAGATO and FOOD: Who spent the night running all around the greater Sacramento area keeping blue links down.
Brother: For working with the locals to keep the corridor clean and for restraint.

North Bay
BunnyJoe: Who worked to keep North Bay clear and made some valiant efforts to clear some last minute blue blockers.
DitzyHorse: Who worked to keep North Bay clear.
Yellow7: Who kept the path clean and killed that last blocking Resistance link fast.
lordofcheese / hubris415: Who both made double trips to the coast to clear the corridor during the first attempt.

Berkeley
madpickles: Who heeded an emergency call at 3am to drive and clear distant blockers.


Operation Timeline

Early December: A plan is hatched and a small number of high level agents start scouring the Califorian playfield for suitable portals.

Mid December: One portal is chosen and a handful of other portals are under consideration.Trip preparations start.

Late December: Portal bring-up begins. The Cape Mendocino Lighthouse, lit up on December 30th, is first.

Early January: Two Bay Area portals are inspected and rejected. A third portal, the First State Park in Big Basin is investigated and brought up on January 12th. Reaching out to local teams begins in earnest. Mission information begins to be disseminated.

Mid January: Mother Nature makes the [redacted] portal unreachable. Plans change. More and more agents are contacted. Listserv ranks grow. Mission information update frequency  ramps up, Agents in all regions respond to action requests. Sub-missions are run. The corridors are trending clear.

Mid January: A start is scuttled at the last minute by an new and unknown Enlightened agent linking across a corridor. The corridors are clear now most of the time.

Late January: San Joaquin agents visit the Yosemite Post Office portal to verify it meets the mission criteria. The corridors are holding.

Feb 1st 8pm: Go time. CGNex clears a lone blue blocker to the coast. Moritz and Thrakazog head toward Yosemite. bemartinjr and boyuo leave Sacramento for the same destination. The San Jose, Sacramento Valley and San Joaquin Valley strike teams start downing Resistance links.

Feb 1st 11:50 pm:  AliceInDlbrtlnd shows restraint. The corridors are still clear, The strikes continue.

Feb 2nd 12:30am: bemartinjr, boyuo, Moritz and Thrakazog capture the Yosemite Post Office at 12:13 am. They throw the first link to Cape Mendocino through the Sacramento Valley. They throw the second link to the First State Park in Big Basin through San Joaquin Valley and the heart of San Jose at 12:39 am. Moritz and Thrakazog head back towards Big Basin.

Feb 2nd 3:00am: What is believed to be the final blocking link in the NorthBay is identified, madpickles is recruited from COMM and drives out from Berkeley to take it down.

Feb 2nd 4:30am: Thrakazog and Moritz arrive back in the South Bay. They raise eidolon. With the blocking blue link in the North still up, eidolon drives them all carefully down 17 into the darkness,

Feb 2nd 6:30am: The First State Park is upgraded. Madpickles has taken out the last known blocker, but another unidentified blocker exists. Half a dozen agents load up intel maps, Google earth and other tools. The blocking link is identified a call goes out for agents.

Feb 2nd 8:45am: Yellow7 takes out the blocking link, Moritiz and Thrakazog head back to the First State Park.

Feb 2nd 10:50am: The final link is thrown and the control field comes up.


Thank you to everyone that played a role in making this field possible.
It was a thrilling experience and an incredible organizational triumph from beginning to end.
Keep reaching out. Keep leveling up. Stay enlightened, and stay tuned for more.


- NorCal Enlightened







12 comments:

  1. All I want to know is why the MU count wasn't higher because of the sheer size and density of the area under the field.

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    1. Well it is in closed beta. Probably to specifically find issues like this.

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    2. It encapsulated the capital, which is known for having a high concentration of negative mind units.

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    3. Forgive my ignorance. I've never heard of a negative mind unit, how does that work? Does it deal with the amount of opposition fields?

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    4. Jeff was just being funny. There is no such in game element.

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  2. What connectivity option was utilized for making the link in Big Basin?

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    1. This. How was data service achieved, and why was it assumed that the same method could not be used by the Resistance?

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    2. While I'd like to know too, perhaps the mailing lists might be a better place to discuss specific tactics, gear, etc. rather than out in the open.

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    3. We have a custom implementation of RFC1149 modified to work over wild carriers. The lack of RFC2549 support in our implementation did hamper the speed of hacking portals. Luckily most of the portals where in densely forested areas so we could achieve a very high retry rate.

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    4. Funny. Though I highly doubt the use of carrier pigeons could achieve this. I suspect you must have spoofed your GPS in order to obtain this portal.

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  3. I look forward to the next big mission. If you need more Agents down south, we have a large team in and around Fresno that will be glad to put in some work.

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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