When the Thargoids first reared their corrosive pseudopodia and set honest human stations aflame, it’s safe to say that many were shocked. The good news was we all had a common enemy to rally against and many AX groups were formed to push them back and to put the fires out by rescuing people from the infernos.
But what of the station once the flames were out? Frontier let us know all we had to do was deliver some commodities to the stations and they would be repaired! And so Operation Ida was formed, named after the mountain in Crete that features several times in Greek mythology – notably, when Zeus stood on Mount Ida and shook the Aegis, it created thunder. We then set out to move the required mountains of materials and goods that were needed to repair every station, first in the Pleiades and later in the Bubble and even the Witch Head Nebula.
Since we started two and a half years ago, we’ve repaired around 70% of the damaged stations ourselves and aided several PMFs that invited us to help repair the station(s) of their home systems. Now the unthinkable has happened and we now only have six (6!) stations remaining. With the power of fleet carriers and your help, we believe that we can finish these six in a week. We are planning a huge weekend with assorted events and prizes for top haulers, so please bring your ships and your cargo racks so we can "Haul to End it All"! The work starts NOW and hopefully will be done before the weekly server maintenance on July 23 so all the stations will come online together.
The original Pleiades repair requirements. Source: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/station-repair-totals.398977/post-6286153
As you can see, the early stations were tough; the remaining stations total less than half of the original requirements for the smallest station, and roughly equal the amount that was delivered to The Oracle before Frontier reduced the requirements to more reasonable numbers. Yet with careful coordination, an ever expanding spreadsheet, the addition of automatic delivery logging, and finally fleet carriers, we are actually reaching the end. That’s right, we’re down to the last few stations and we would like YOU to join us in finishing this mammoth task! We estimate it will take one week to finish everything, and with your help, it will be even shorter.
Operation Ida's hauling stats, from August 3304 (aka 2018) to today
So please come along and celebrate our final deliveries! It doesn’t matter what ship you bring as long as you have some cargo space. Just remember that damaged stations have no ship repair facilities or contacts, boosting through the slot is encouraged, and the beryllium waffles are all-you-can-eat
Logistics
Please join the Operation Ida Discord server (http://operationida.com, click Discord at the top) for delivery coordination and stats tracking (note: please read the server rules in #read-this-first; the off-topic/memes channel is #ida-waffle-bar).
The actual repair work is very simple: Buy a needed commodity from a non-damaged station, then sell it to the damaged station. We have extensive tracking systems set up to make this even easier and to avoid over-delivery of commodities (some of them are annoying to find in large-enough quantities). Please note that damaged stations do not have hull-repair facilities (they do still have fuel), and Contacts are unavailable so you can’t pay fines there! (we locate nearby Interstellar Factors and post them on our spreadsheets)
We are using carriers to increase our efficiency (not exaggerating, 50% increase over pre-carrier hauling, even for short-supercruise stations) and reduce interdiction/hyperdiction rates. The #find-a-carrier channel will list active fleet carriers, their locations, and what commodity they are loading or unloading. Simply show up to any of those systems in a ship that has cargo racks and start moving cargo to or from a carrier as indicated. It doesn’t matter what game mode or platform you’re on, it all counts. Once full/empty, you can jump along with the carriers to help move cargo again at the other end or you can remain in the same system and work on another carrier.
If you wish to use your carrier for hauling, that’s awesome and we’re very grateful and happy to have you help, but PLEASE contact Operation Ida staff FIRST so we can coordinate what each carrier is picking up and avoid duplicate efforts; it takes a while to load and unload twenty to twenty-five thousand tons of cargo and we don’t want anyone to feel they wasted their time because somebody else managed to load and unload faster.
We have cross-platform automated delivery logging that handles both the carrier and station ends. Make an account on https://app.operationida.com, link your Frontier and Discord accounts, and start hauling! If you don’t want to link your Frontier account for some reason, you can still manually log deliveries to the repair target on the Discord server. Note that the automated logging stops after 90 mins of inactivity (across the website and hauling); simply open the app again to start it logging again.
EDIT: Also posted to the subreddit.
EDIT 2: We weren't clear about when this is happening. It starts now and goes until we finish, which will hopefully be before next Thargsday so all the stations come online at the same time.
But what of the station once the flames were out? Frontier let us know all we had to do was deliver some commodities to the stations and they would be repaired! And so Operation Ida was formed, named after the mountain in Crete that features several times in Greek mythology – notably, when Zeus stood on Mount Ida and shook the Aegis, it created thunder. We then set out to move the required mountains of materials and goods that were needed to repair every station, first in the Pleiades and later in the Bubble and even the Witch Head Nebula.
Since we started two and a half years ago, we’ve repaired around 70% of the damaged stations ourselves and aided several PMFs that invited us to help repair the station(s) of their home systems. Now the unthinkable has happened and we now only have six (6!) stations remaining. With the power of fleet carriers and your help, we believe that we can finish these six in a week. We are planning a huge weekend with assorted events and prizes for top haulers, so please bring your ships and your cargo racks so we can "Haul to End it All"! The work starts NOW and hopefully will be done before the weekly server maintenance on July 23 so all the stations will come online together.
The original Pleiades repair requirements. Source: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/station-repair-totals.398977/post-6286153
As you can see, the early stations were tough; the remaining stations total less than half of the original requirements for the smallest station, and roughly equal the amount that was delivered to The Oracle before Frontier reduced the requirements to more reasonable numbers. Yet with careful coordination, an ever expanding spreadsheet, the addition of automatic delivery logging, and finally fleet carriers, we are actually reaching the end. That’s right, we’re down to the last few stations and we would like YOU to join us in finishing this mammoth task! We estimate it will take one week to finish everything, and with your help, it will be even shorter.
Operation Ida's hauling stats, from August 3304 (aka 2018) to today
So please come along and celebrate our final deliveries! It doesn’t matter what ship you bring as long as you have some cargo space. Just remember that damaged stations have no ship repair facilities or contacts, boosting through the slot is encouraged, and the beryllium waffles are all-you-can-eat
Logistics
Please join the Operation Ida Discord server (http://operationida.com, click Discord at the top) for delivery coordination and stats tracking (note: please read the server rules in #read-this-first; the off-topic/memes channel is #ida-waffle-bar).
The actual repair work is very simple: Buy a needed commodity from a non-damaged station, then sell it to the damaged station. We have extensive tracking systems set up to make this even easier and to avoid over-delivery of commodities (some of them are annoying to find in large-enough quantities). Please note that damaged stations do not have hull-repair facilities (they do still have fuel), and Contacts are unavailable so you can’t pay fines there! (we locate nearby Interstellar Factors and post them on our spreadsheets)
We are using carriers to increase our efficiency (not exaggerating, 50% increase over pre-carrier hauling, even for short-supercruise stations) and reduce interdiction/hyperdiction rates. The #find-a-carrier channel will list active fleet carriers, their locations, and what commodity they are loading or unloading. Simply show up to any of those systems in a ship that has cargo racks and start moving cargo to or from a carrier as indicated. It doesn’t matter what game mode or platform you’re on, it all counts. Once full/empty, you can jump along with the carriers to help move cargo again at the other end or you can remain in the same system and work on another carrier.
If you wish to use your carrier for hauling, that’s awesome and we’re very grateful and happy to have you help, but PLEASE contact Operation Ida staff FIRST so we can coordinate what each carrier is picking up and avoid duplicate efforts; it takes a while to load and unload twenty to twenty-five thousand tons of cargo and we don’t want anyone to feel they wasted their time because somebody else managed to load and unload faster.
We have cross-platform automated delivery logging that handles both the carrier and station ends. Make an account on https://app.operationida.com, link your Frontier and Discord accounts, and start hauling! If you don’t want to link your Frontier account for some reason, you can still manually log deliveries to the repair target on the Discord server. Note that the automated logging stops after 90 mins of inactivity (across the website and hauling); simply open the app again to start it logging again.
EDIT: Also posted to the subreddit.
EDIT 2: We weren't clear about when this is happening. It starts now and goes until we finish, which will hopefully be before next Thargsday so all the stations come online at the same time.
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