Operation Teal Star

Sometimes, it’s nice to test the edge of the impossible.

On October 5th, 2019, we held an Ingress First Saturday event in Perth, Western Australia. We decided to do something special – a cross-faction link star – not just a pair of stars near each other, but a full 360 degrees of green and blue links from all directions.

Most cross-faction link stars have the green and blue teams linking in from two directions. To cross even a handful of links would need links thrown with very careful synchrony in time. To cross hundreds and hundreds would need hundreds and hundreds of agents – or, instead, a different idea.

Instead of synchrony in time, we used synchrony in space. We found two portals in exactly the same location – Cheshire Cat, and City Farm, in East Perth, Western Australia. We confirmed that links into one of these do not block links into the other. The links don’t cross, they merely kiss, gently brushing end to end, neither one hindering the other, no matter how far apart in time they were thrown, no matter what their factional alignment.

We planned an Ingress First Saturday, and people who registered for the event were asked if they wanted to join “a ‘special’ xfac link art op”. We farmed hundreds of keys to the two portals in East Perth, but placed the registration and restock portals in West Perth, so IFS attendees who didn’t want to join the op would be free to play as they pleased.

On Saturday October 5, 2019, the registration portal went live at 9:30am. Operation participants quickly hacked it, then made their way to City Farm for last-minute additional key farming, and final instructions. Finally, shortly after 10:30am, six teams each of one Resistance and one Enlightened agent started tracing pre-planned routes through the city, with simple instructions: Smash all blockers, capture all portals, link back to the hub.

The enthusiastic agents continued to link in well after the two-hour IFS double AP window. By the time they returned to the victory celebration near the IFS restock portal, exactly 400 links had been thrown into the two hub portals (although one had to be Ada’d away when a field was accidentally closed).

Many of us still had keys in hand, and the number of links grew to a peak of 483 over the course of the weekend.

It was an incredibly enjoyable day, an incredibly fun way to play at an Ingress First Saturday, and, though many of us wish we could see it in REDACTED, we do agree that the Prime scanner shows the link star as a thing of real beauty.

Congratulations and thanks to the agents involved: 57Cell, Alien6661, bluesfemme, Danastre, infinitebacon, miiichael, Nevinator, octarine, scyrma, SerMochi, tansymoon and thestarfigment

8 Replies to “Operation Teal Star”

  1. Yesterday I was thrilled to have had the opportunity to have been part of a team creating some very unique digital art within a game which has an entire world game community buzzing. I was especially excited once I realised I’d thrown the very first link in the ‘art’. Each line represents one person sending a link to a specific location. We worked in teams of two following the specific directions of our Art Designer- Planner, (57Cell) around the City of Perth, to create this. My team partner and I walked for close on 3 hours to create our section of the design. . But you get the idea. By tonight, 32 hours after most of us had stopped, some of the links are now down but most are still up. There are only a few places in the world where this can be done and we were lucky enough to have one of those locations in Perth. Thank you to allowing me to be part of this.

  2. Why was there a plan required? I would assume capturing any portal, destroying any blocker and just slowly moving away from the portals would be enough (as long as everybody spreads away from it).

    However, it does look awesome.

    1. I guess that if you want to make the most links in the double AP window you need some planning. Also to avoid missing some portals as some teams may take the same random route, to make the drawing more round and to give all agents a similar distance to cover.
      Also you need to plan the clean up carefully so all teams can start at about the same time.

      I never planned a star like this but some XF and green ones and those were some of my considerations. Now this… This is from another planet! Amazing! I can’t believe someone found this and turned it into something so great! I’m astonished! Big kudos to the ones involved! Awesome!

  3. What a beautiful piece of art you’ve made here! Good job! This should be madea worldwide event. Players from the whole globe linking to those portals. Would be a lot of preparation and a lot of People involved. But it would be a beautiful result. Even more then this Jewel.

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