HCF6 Solo Norrköping, Sweden 25/2 - 2021

A few months before the pandemic started, I had developed a pursuit of making thorough field plans and going on adventures to execute them.

I use to walk or travel by bus and train, since I am not allowed to drive by car because of narcolepsy.

Fate had it that I was forced to take a break from the game for nine months, and when I could start playing again I found my self stuck in town.

There were no safe means for me to travel outside town so I could either stop playing until the pandemic ended or find my self something else to pursue other than the illuminator Onix.

After scouting the web, the homogenous control fields caught my eyes. 

A team **** of mine had been talking about them before, and a new way of fielding layers besides the traditional onion layer did spark my curiosity.

Definition of the premises

I decided to try a HCF4 at first, just to learn the new way of thinking, and 6 january 2021 my first HCF4 was standing. 

Since it did go well and I really liked the result I started planning a HCF6.

I read a few sitreps and decided to make a HCF5 to better be able to make a risk analysis. 

Identifications of the risks

11 january 2021 the last link of my first HCF5 was thrown. 

After that operation I had a much better grasp of the extent, the premises and the traps. 

Some of the things I learned:

⁃ Time would be of the essence

⁃ Anchor portals must be chosen with caution

⁃ Key farming takes a lot of time and you can't observe COMM when glyphing

⁃ It's easy to miss a link, throw the wrong link or making other mistakes during active fielding

⁃ The higher level of field, the larger area, even if portals look close to each other on the map, there might be a long way between them if you have to go around two blocks to reach them

⁃ Most of the HCF6 had been located over empty areas, or areas with few active players. Mine would go over the core of the city so it would be wise to not only plan for the field but also the danger of interruption from the RES.

Risk analysis and Proper measures

Anchors

The two anchors I had chosen were too easy to hit by car, and since I would build my field by foot I would be wise to turn my disadvantage to my advantage. 

A quick analysis over possible anchors, showed that there were places the local smurfs didn't tend to visit so often. Untouched portals that had been standing for a while or at least not one of the regular blue portals. 

The southeast anchor, was reachable by car but to be able to **** it down (if properly shielded) you would have to take a de-tour. It also used to go down once a month and could be prepared beforehand. RES seemed to target the portal only when heavily linked.

The other anchor was perfect, no smurf hade taken it down for the past year. The only problem, it was fully modded and it would be difficult to get 50 keys from it. 

I talked to the frog holding the field and owning the portal, and asked permission to make the RES take the anchor down, and for the rest of the team to save 2 mod slots for me when the portal would be recaptured. 

Then I started a small project to have the RES take down the anchor. 

I threw a few decoy-fields and used the anchor as major hub.

But unfortunately the RES didn't take the anchor down. After an hour of cursing the lazyness of humanity, I decided I had to do an even more provoking and disturbing decoy-field. This time I did two large HCF3 covering half the city to make sure to catch the RES attention. 

That did the trick and by the evening the anchor fell. 

The next day I was quick to visit the anchor after it was recaptured. When able to place hacking mods the farming of 50 keys went smooth!

Keys

I decided that I didn't want to hack the necessary keys during the fielding, it would waste precious time. To have all the keys pre-hacked, would also help me from missing out on important activites in COMM while hacking. All keys, even the reserve keys should have to be pre-hacked. 

I carefully started to farm the necessary keys from all over town. But to not alarm the RES, I also spread ”fake hacking mods” and pretended to farm keys in other places, or using a small amount of keys right away throwing fields from the portals I just farmed. 

Avoiding link disaster

I carefully planned a set field route. Dividing it into several stages, naming capsules for every stage, and only place the specific keys in the capsule that should be used on the specific stage.

Total of 27 capsules with between 7-35 keys in each, for example the last 33 links divided in 7 capsules with 2-1-2-4-8-16 keys, to make sure the outgoing links from the top portal would go in the correct order. 

Putting away all ordinary keys in lockers, this arrangement could prevent me from accessing the wrong key, throwing links in wrong order or forgetting a link. (Since I read that others before had made mistakes that way)

It could also save me some time, not having to double check every link during the fielding and making possible links faster to read for the phone.  

I changed e few portals to others because their names were to similar. And also started collecting ordinary capsules, since the quantum capsules would be a disaster to use.

Minimizing the field

Making a HCF6 over the city was kind of hard. Some places didn't have enough portals and several sketches were dismissed since I suddenly found my self without any proper portals to use in the area. 

The field had to be small and still be holding 124 portals at the right places.

Places I would have to avoid were RES-sofas and hard-to-walk-to-portals. I also wanted portals away from the main roads, to minimize the upper hand for a car traveling RES. 

There is also a river (Motala Ström) that crosses the city. It's possible to pass the river via the bridges, but there aren't that many of them, and it would be many expensive de-tours if I would have to cross the same bridge too many times. 

The field I had created at first on the drawing board, looked like a ”school example”, but to be able to make an efficent field route I would have to make some links really close-fitting. But for my untrained eye, it was hard to grasp which portal that would be a good match. 

So I once again drew a HCF4, but this time made it with as tight-fittning links as possible, making me able to field the HCF4 by walking in an almost straight line (Picture B). 

After practicing that field for a few times, I started to see and get used to the tight angles. 

I also visited some portals to make sure I would be able to access them coming from a certain direction to make sure de-tours around blocks wouldn't be a hindrance. Also so that waters, magnetic fields etc wouldn't disturb my action range. We have several places like that in Norrköping. 

Fielding over a high activity area

There are somewhere around 15 active agents playing every day and even more agents playing sporadically.

RES-fields and RES-links would not be an immediately problem, only direct hindrance-links would disturb during active fielding. Of course it would be a major problem if the smurf would open fire during the active fielding, hence why the operation from the beginning was planned to take place during the night.

To avoid hindrance-links I started looking for portals that would do as good blockers. Good blockers in my eyes, don't have to be impossible to take down, but rather uncomfortable to take down. That way, the portal could be prepared beforehand and not taken down before they've filled the planned purpose. 

I found two, one that's hard to strike, and both unreachable from the car (people tend to be uncomfortable leaving their car, especially during the winter)

After capturing the potential blocker, a quick test field would determine the blockers durability. When taking down the field, the smurfs would take down the two other anchors rather than the blocker. The blocker would not be taken down until the smurfs found the blocker more uncomfortable than the trip to the blocker.

The same evening as the start of the operation I also checked for blue portals that could be used by smurfs to anchor hindrance-links, and how I could block those without causing trouble for myself.

Portals that could not be blocked in a efficent way, would have to be terminated.

But the town where I live is dominated by the ENL, and ENL yolo-links or fields that no RES had been able to take down would be extremely more expensive to handle.

To be sure to not waste refractors unnecessarily, I did a profound analysis of the activity of the RES and ENL to find a pattern. After a month I saw that the perfect day for fielding would be Wednesday every other week. Every other week, Monday evening the RES would try to **** our farm, wipe out the majority of the green fields inside town and then field for MU. Monday night the ENL would be busy taking the whole thing down and rebuild the farm.

Tuesday would be some fielding from both teams, but that would all be cleansed during night time. Then something mysteriously would happen, it would become quiet from the RES. A few activities in COMM, but nothing longlasting, and the same for the ENL. The activity would spike from the RES during Thursday, and the ENL would respond properly during Friday and the whole weekend to come. Then a quiet Sunday would come, with low activity but a bunch of green fields and links. 

I can not say why but that's the pattern I saw during the analyze, a pattern that might change of course. 

When the Wednesday during the event with double modding came, I'd asked the local frogs for permission to execute the operation and got their confirmation. 

Preparations

When the news of the flashevent reached me, I was almoust finished with the keyfarming. All I needed to do was collecting the reserveset of keys, put the fieldplan in print and fill the capsules with right amount of keys.

But something unexpected happend, a miss in the communication. My husband thought the event was the best time ever to go for his Engineer-medal, so he went out and fielded every portal close to home, in nice HCF3 and a delicate amount of links into every portal outside home. Covering a large piece of the area where the field would go. He was certain the RES would come to take it down, but they didn't. Monday evening passed, but the green fields were standing. When the night came my husband said, cover them in green, and so I did. I threw a decoyfield, right above the closest RES-sofa. 

The response from the Resistance came quick, but they still didn't take down all the fields, so I started to lose hope.

24 february came, the long awaited Wednesday.

The green fields outside was still standing when the clock struck 18, but then salvation came. I dont think I ever been so glad for a RES to take down green fields. That cleansing by the RES meant less ADA on green portals, and more ADA for correcting possible mistakes. 

23:30 I left my home, with double powerbanks, redbull and a package of napkins. 

First thing on the agenda was to pre-prepp two links that was closest to the southeast anchor. That went very smooth, and I started working on the next step.

Pre-prepp portals to use later on, cleanse the city from blue portals, and throw the southern blocker. The RES living south of the field, were indeed the furthest away but also the agents with most experience. Those were the agents that posed the greatest ”threat” to my plans. Would both of them start moving, I would be wise to postpone my plans.

Everything went as planned and I started to walk in the direction of my home, where one portal still was holding a link that would block the field. It was a little bit too early, and I was afraid that the use of ADA would trigger the smurfs attention. But it would be a detour if it was left behind.

00:50 it was time to cross the bridge and head for the anchor, and get rid of two green portals that held blocking links.

But the RES-agent of the eastside had started fielding from his sofa, and modded with ito-minus. 

I stopped for a minute to take a quick glance at intel, to make sure I wouldn't put hindrance to my self, if I needed to throw temporary blockers on my way to throw the pre-preped blocker from portals outside the fieldrange. But I also wanted to make sure the RES in the East didnt have any possible blue portals to throw hindrance links to, that I didnt know about. 

But thinking about it, the RES would sure be in need of weapons later on, but I needed to cut the links.

So I went to work and prepared three portals close to the RES of the East, that would later would be a part of the field. Since they were positioned less than 168 m from one of the RES-agents sofa, I modded them with vr-shields so that they wouldnt be targeted by the RES-agent sitting at home. He must get up and walk outside to be able to knock’em down.

I had actually experimented how many bursters that it would take to knock the portals down for him, while sitting at home. And what shield would be sufficient to prevent him from doing so, though I suspect the RES-agents wife didnt like my experiments since it was her I disturbed during fielding several times.

But in the name of science I proudly defend my actions! 😆

One portal only got one shield, it would be the hubportal for the first HCF4, but the portals position both geographically and inside the fielding structure made it suitable as a temporary blocker against this RES agent. I had taken some spare keys but wanted to make sure I could easily farm some more.

Passing the RES-agents three sofas I put Jarvis on the one with the multihack.

It made it possible for him to keep farming weapons, but impossible for him to throw hindrance-links. 

The RES-agent didnt go along with my plans. He took down the green portal, rebuilded and immediately threw two hindrance-links. The hindrance-portals were positioned 3 km away in separate positions, so I didnt take them out beforhand, since it would be a too expensive detour. But the locations were places were I suspected him to have a massive amount of keys to. So force him out of keys were out of the question.

But as I had calculated he was low on the small resos. That meant that if he would try to rebuild and rethrow, somewhere along the way he would run out of small resos and would be forced to hack new ones before he could link. Thats all the time I would need to cut him of with the pre-prepped portals.

I took down the portal again, and stayed silent for some time to see the RES-agents response. There was none, so I walked over to my pre-prepped portals and trow a tiny link (50 m). 

Then I took haste for about 200 m to throw the real blocker. (Picture C)

01:18 I reached the northern anchor and took down two green portals that would get in the way. But to my horror I noticed movements from both the RES in the East and the RES in the South. So I didnt throw the baseline between the northern and southeast anchors.

I went quiet, made sure my hypercube were still intact och just watched. Part of my plan was go conceal my self by having a hypercube active during the fielding. Only showing my selfs when active in com. 

The RES in the east throw new hindrance-links, but not in a direction were they would affect the field until i reached his sofa again. 

But the RES in the south, started moving towards town.

I sat for one hour, quietly and waited. But lucky for me there were still hackingmodds in the anchor so I farmed another set of spare keys. I had also placed hackingmods in the two portals I took down and rebuilded, it was meant to confuse.

But they were still farmable! 

02:27 The movements of the RES in the south finally were moving back towards his closest portal the relief was huge!

I decided to take a shot, if the RES in the east would bother me to much I could easily abort the operation without heavy damage done, since I now got even more keys to the northern anchor.

There were still some time left, until I were suspecting new movements from any other RES. 

I threw the baseline and went into action.

Walking alongside of the river preparing links to the northern anchor, and other links that could be preprepped. (Picture D)

Everything went quite smooth from that on, except for a mistake at the top of the first HCF4. For some reason the scanner didnt send a link, when sending many of them without pause. Luckily my capsule system made me discover the error while still standing next to the portal. I had a key left in my inventory, when I was to unload the next capsule. So I ended up having to put ADA on the portal and rethrow all the links. After that I was more cautious, and checked after every thrown link, that i also been made. 

04:38 the first h5 was finished, and I could start with the last two. 

06:13 I discorvered an error when linking. Since the field plan was written on notes in iPhone, I could easily check off my field route after every portal. But I had one key left, and wasnt able to throw any more links. After checking, I realized that I had put the wrong key in the capsule. Instead of the steelwork of fire, I had the steelwork of water. But that was easily fixed. 

05:50 I started getting worried. There were still a little part left of the field, and the according to my past observations the RES would soon be on the move.

And suddenly I got the scanner picced up disturbence close to the northern anchor. 

A well known local RES-agent had just neutralized a portal, but luckily not a portal in the field. 

That got me really stressed, and I picked up the pace. Instead of taking down portals I used jarvis to more quickly get to the final portal. 

I was real tired when closing in to the final portal but the cheering on discord and messenger from my local teammates really encouraged me.

06:45 I successfully threw the final links closing the HCF6.

Aftermath

The capsule system made the final linking very easy, since it made it almost impossible to throw the links in the wrong order. It also saved me from making mistakes during fielding, or discover errors quickly. So for situations like this, ordinary capsules are underrated.

To do a second HCF4 and learn how to design the links more close-fitting was worth the effort, since I learned a lot from it. But the HCF-fields are really fun to do. This fieldplan for HCF6 really did spark my interest for the game again. 

Even if the field was made totally solo (during event so I could modd the softbanks myself) I could never have done it without the guidance and support of others.

Xenon-Clarus

For introducing me to the world of homogeneous fields 

Gorandotdot

For teaching me how to design, plan and structure a field

TeIevinken

For always believing and encouraging me

Noworreez

For taking care of things at the HQ 

Aquinaalba 

For donation of the refractors, I used a lot of them

MrGuffa

For giving me the capsules to make my capsulesystem

RES-agents in the south

For your persistent gameplay, always wiping the city clean and playable. You live up to the name of your faction.

And the rest of the wonderful local ENL-team, always so supportive and joyful! 

Thank you!