Operation Littlefoot || my first op as intel operator.... sort of
A new playing style is on the cards for me, due to bigger financial commitments, and the ever increasing price of fuel in South Africa, It seems eminent that I'll need to take a back seat on my Ingress gameplay, or at least, how I actually "play" the game.
See, Since moving to Cape Town, I've been the Jump up and go kind of Ingress player, Plan a big field, Link the base link, and throw BAF's along a spine, nothing less than 600K MU per layer, but my predictable gameplay, and me painting a giant target on my back amongst the local Smurfs, with this SITREP Any time I try setup anything remotely bigger than a 1000m, some agent mobilizes to Neutralize the links or fields I've created.
Thus, I have decided to try my hands at the wonderful role of being an Intel operator.
I already had a fielding plan, which I'd previously executed myself which used 2 on-foot-only portals as the base link and a spine 2 portals long, A nice easy way to make AP with little over 90 minutes of required gameplay to execute.
Discussions with @Pantook weeks prior already had us leaving all the blocker links in the area to decay, and I simply had to throw some weight around on the local Smurf population (Sorry @jimbogb) to weaken the playing field to reduce risk of his interference in the Op.
a couple of rogue blockers being thrown from @cur8or and his spawn being thrown from Simons town to Somerset West kept interfering with the operation, and so plans were drawn up to block his pesky links, with the cover of blocking the Resistance from repeatedly linking to Robertson / Montagu from Grassy Park, which they had so aggressively been doing the week before.
I then realized that one of our tadpoles @P3aceK3eper was almost at level 8, and that we had an opportunity to involve him in the Operation as well, communication was made, timelines discussed, and next thing we knew, an operation was due to take place.
Friday, 16 October - D Day
The plan: myself and @BubblesVal would place hacking mods on the base portals and farm as many keys as we needed. We'd meet @Pantook and @P3aceK3eper at a local watering hole and do a key exchange and run head out to complete the operation, while myself and @BubblesVal oversee the operation on intel.
The Execution: Miserable rain hit the coastline of Gordon's bay, just as we were preparing to deploy the first base anchor. a quick retreat to the car, and 10 minutes spent redrawing the fielding plan had us ready to relocate anchors, to portals reachable by car, so off we went and started hacking. @BubblesVal decided to place a beacon and Fireworks on the portal, at which point it was decided that a stealthy op was lost so we started spamming fireworks and beacons where we stopped.
we the met up with @Pantook and @P3aceK3eper, who in his noobiness had created a field at the meetup portal which was blocking our planned final layer from going up, so 2 ADA's were wasted fixing it. but of course, no harm done, we have all made mistakes mid op.
after retreating back home @ bubblesVal and I kept an eye on intel while @pantok and @p3aceK3eper started creating a nice multi layered field out from Gordon's Bay to Strand, until one message came in from @Pantook, "For some reason We can't link to Pollock Park" I had a quick look at Intel to see why, and it turns out I'd missed a link with the redraw that was outside of out original plan, but was now blocking us, so I mobilized to flip the poral and the rest of the operation went off smoothly. @P3aceK3eper even earned his bronze & silver Illuminator badge and his silver Pioneer badge, after already making it to level 8 earlier that afternoon before the operation started.
