Operation Unley Lunacy
It began, like most unlikely projects, with a misunderstanding. In this particular case, a simple one, between ‘Uley Road’ and ‘Unley Road’. Two roads in Adelaide, both with more than their share of portals in a nice placement for easy layering, but one in a fairly uncluttered area, the other in the inner southern suburbs jammed full of portals.
@cruxerror and @minty had constructed a lovely set of layered fields on Uley Road, and were getting their well-deserved congratulations, when one commenter mentioned they thought they had said Unley Road. Being a slow day at work, I quickly knocked up a plan for a similar set of fields, except using Unley Road. I didn’t pay any attention to the dozens of green links that it crossed, or the utter decimation of a prime farming area that would need to happen to make the fields work. Why would I? It was all a joke. It was duly posted, and much laughs were had.
This triggered a memory of a set of layers that were constructed using Goodwood Road, a closely paralleling road with Unley Road, and a screenshot was posted showing the fields.
Then the fateful words were spoken…
@thewiseone: “Bonus points for joining them together!”
Never being one for turning away bonus points, a few minutes of frantic clicking produced a set of layered fields stretching up both Goodwood and Unley Roads, and another set in between, heading in the opposite direction, sewing the fields together. Again, it all ran roughshod over many, many green links, smashed farming areas into nothing, and generally ignored all common sense about inner city fielding operations. I posted it, and sat back, waiting for the laughs…
The posts started rolling in.
“That’s awesome, let’s do it!”
“Fantastic, when do we start?”
“I’ll start farming keys, let’s get this going!”
Meanwhile, I was staring at my screen in disbelief. “Oh dear god, they’re serious…”
Next thing I knew, a slack group had been formed for the operation, and things swung into action.
Nannydeb, @altotude, @Mdxr, and @kiwikirk started farming the keys required, while debate began on the best time to attempt such a dopey idea. Being two main roads heading into the CDB, many smurfs travel these roads every day. A weekend therefore seemed like the logical time to try, preferably late at night to maximise any possible response time. An extra wrinkle was that a local smurf lives right next to Goodwood road, and could easily sink the whole thing before it was complete. In the end, Saturday the 6th of October was chosen, starting late at night. We weren’t that fussed about CP times, this whole thing wouldn’t amount to any significant amount of MU, and it’s not like we needed the numbers to help win Sierra-08.
@mdxr and @kiwikirk summoned the necessary willpower and sat on their hands during their usual bus travel and stopped recharging the Unley area to allow links to drop, and we recruited/shanghaied several more members to the team to allow for faster fielding.
The actual night of fielding went amazingly smoothly, aided by the experience of the agents on the ground, leaving our operator Airman @mukkie free to continue playing computer games and his pursuit of intergalactic domination, with only the occasional request for a blocking portal to be identified.
Once the area had been cleared, @kiwikirk and @Sloth35 took Goodwood Road, @mdxr and @Shimjb headed to Unley Road, while @altotude took on the job of the central triangles. Within an hour, the job was complete:
The feared intervention of the local smurf did not eventuate until well after the fields were complete, and even then, just the top anchor on Goodwood Road was dropped, with everything else being left alone. With 71 fields hanging off the bottom central anchor, that would have been the logical place to attack, but #SmurfLogic…
The remaining fields lasted well into the next day, before a non-local smurf brought them down
What started as a joke, ended up being a massive exercise in teamwork and planning, and I can’t think of any team that could have pulled off something like this so smoothly as ENLSA.
As for what’s next, I have some ideas, but this time they will be clearly labelled as a joke and not to be taken at all seriously!
Operation Unley Lunacy members:
Key Farming: Nannydeb
Fielding: @kiwikirk
@Sloth35
@altotude
@mdxr
@ShimJB
Operator: Airman @Mukkie
