Excellent work everybody!!! Governors island is ours!!!

Excellent work everybody!!! Governors island is ours!!! 

Originally shared by Adam Smith

Ingress  Joe Philley  Anne Beuttenmüller  Brandon Badger  Richard McAdams   Ruth Shepherd 


Operation Supernova

This is a crazy story about people who find new ways to amuse themselves playing Ingress.  The tl;dr version is NYC Resistance set another world record on 9/21/14 by putting 1326 links on a single portal without any xfactional help.

Setting world records isn’t easy.  Operation Supernova is the result of months of planning and collaboration by members of the NYC Resistance.  I will take credit for the concept and the initial push to get the ball rolling, but any operation of this magnitude cannot be claimed as “theirs” by any single person.  So before I get into this, thank you to everyone who hacked keys, donated jarvis and other gear, gave input on operational strategy, provided intel support, and showed up on the ground at 3am...in the rain...to make this happen.

The Anchor: Picking anchor portals is serious business.  Ours also sits on some serious history.  Governor’s Island in New York City’s Harbor has been a strategic site since the early days of America.  Fortifications began on this 172 acre island during the Revolutionary war but really took hold prior to the War of 1812.  Construction of Fort Jay began in 1794 as part of a coastal defense network for the newly born America.  Castle Williams and all its cannons came later and the island housed military personnel up until the 1960s.  Governor’s Island story stretches through every important era of American history.  Confederate prisoners were held there during the Civil War.  Governors Island even served up lunch to President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988 during the Cold War.

Today Governors Island is part city park land, and part National Park...but history is still being made here.  Governors Island has been the site of numerous Ingress battles to retain control of it through the offseason and both sides have tried to hide Guardian portals here.  

The team who controls Governors Island controls a very exclusive set of anchor portals for city-wide mega fields.  While being equally accessible for for RES and ENL it isn’t just somewhere you end up while out playing Ingress.  You have to plan on going there, and on NYCs schedule.  

Planning and Prep Work:  The planning for Supernova started after making a 250 link Star in Brooklyn back in April 2014.  I proposed the idea to use Governor’s Island as the anchor location and to make a world record setting number of links from a poral there.  People thought it was a cool idea...but not feasible.  Too many keys (capsules were released a few weeks later), too many blocking links, are there even enough portals:  the general consensus was that it couldn’t be done.  Over the next 2 months I made notes about things that worked doing 250 links, things that went wrong and how to avoid them, and general game mechanics issues due to the associated scanner lag.  

Leading up to Interitus Hoboken NYC RES put all its resources and skill into planning and executing a successful anomaly strategy.  Having thoroughly crushed the ENL in Hoboken spirits were high and it was time to pitch the next big event.  I posted to our community and found that interest in another world record setting op was high (the first was Baseball and at the time was the most RP8s in a city).  Starting in early July I went to Governors Island twice a week to hack out keys to what would become the site of Supernova.  Often other players joined and over the course of 8 weeks we amassed more than 1200 keys.  

I didn’t track specifically who hacked out the most keys because I was too focused on keeping track of where they were all being stored (Thanks Excel!); however, a local agent named “pi” is probably at the top of the list.  We spent several Saturdays and Sundays doing double burnouts on the anchor.  Some weekends we got 80-90 keys each.

After picking a date for Supernova the process of collecting RSVPs, assigning teams, zones, leaders, distributing keys and Jarvis all began to unfold quite rapidly.

….and then #31 appeared in our backyard.

The Shard:  I cannot take credit for the idea to use artifact #31 as part of Supernova.  It did end up saving countless Jarvis though.  A little backstory here.. +Calvin McShard manifested on Long Island about 10 days prior to Supernova.  Long Island, Westchester, and NYC Resistance captured him and parked him in our perma farm in Cobble Hill.  Operation Supernova wasn’t a xfactional operation because the NYC Enlightened didn’t know that by trying to steal #31 away from us they were actually destroying countless blocking links that would have required as many as 100+ Jarvis to break. NYC Resistance rescued #31 twice in the 10 days or so that he’s been here, once spending an entire day to bring it back from New Jersey.

Boom:

Saturday 9/20/14:  A field covering Governor’s Island is put up over the harbor.  With anchors in Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Ellis Island it prevented n00b, rogue, and Enlightened agents from making any new links on the island.  Resistance agents begin to assemble on Governor’s Island to clear it of any links and to fully deploy our portal, also called “Governors Island.”  After the last ferry to the island arrived at 530pm COMM silence was broken and the island was secured under a blue field.  The agents there also hacked out more keys.  I don’t actually know how many people were there...but I do know it was enough that they power hacked an RP8 before departing at 7pm.

Sunday 9/21/14 Between 3 and 4am teams assembled at various rally points across the region.  Last minute gear swapping occurred and last minute discussions were had about strategy.  At 4am the field covering GI was Jarvis’d and links began streaming into the Island.

4:28am: 94 links
4:43am: 200 links
4:46am: EA WheresYourFace comes out to play.  Half the Staten Island team is diverted to Bayonne, NJ.  Face makes it clear he is out to destroy links, both on COMM and in person with JPNasty1 (the king of Staten Island).  No big deal.  We have a saying NYCR.  You can’t stop this mega field.  Or in this case world record attempt.
About the same time EA Tenshi420 in New Jersey also became active.  Intel sources put him at work though so it was considered a non-threat. 
5:17am: 404 links
5:48am: 625 links
6:16am: 823 links
6:40am: 999 links
7:03am: 1077 links
7:26am: 1191 links - first confirmation that the record was broken
7:31am: 1203 links - discussion begins about sending #31 to Governors Island.
7:45am: Mark Morris Dance Center (the location of #31) is Jarvis’d, rebuilt, and linked to Governors Island
8:00am: 1288 links - #31 arrives on the anchor portal
8:16am: 1302 links
8:50am: 1326 links and under attack in NJ.  Almost every key was used.

Roughly 265/hour for nearly 5 straight hours. 

The End:   There are a bunch of players who play locally in areas directly affected by Supernova who also deserve special thanks.  They were asked to basically not play Ingress for an entire week leading up to the Operation.  For your patience with my crazy plan I thank you.  

The following is a list of players, who I’m aware of, who either hacked keys, donated gear, ran intel, collaborated during the planning stages, and helped execute Operation Supernova.  If I missed anybody I apologize:


Worksascoded
YozhikVT
kpants
0cf
Gar
CalvinMcShard
314159265358979
savesany
DeeSkully
Heartrender
puriyuma
IPCOP
nytimes
30Mike
LadyNRG
R2Detour
Walps
BBS950
PhoenixxKing
JayXon
bloodskies
JasonH
Zhenbaoyang
essgeeheff
Senshi34
Magnus09
Wolfbane09
IGGUS
TIM3PORT
snowchyld
spacewarp
Teraquad
TheQueenB
SoapWitch
CanisMajoris
GreyCloak42
maj123
Warmonger057
JPNasty1
kurosen
rbfly
SiffEyes
malarckey
Henc
empiricalbaker
CordKyle
t3hpanda
AgentSiga
simplybarry
NumberVI
MisterMoss
infocrash
yoursbluely
blahze9
Mxx
Henric
Tr1p0t
skidplate
hahdez
abdell
thespock
kwoods
StandaloneDraco
caprica6
enYxnoYuutsu
valvarez
Figment
VozDeDeus


#Supernova   #Ingress   #Calvinball   #NYC   #Resistance   #WorldRecord   #IngressReport   #easymode