As the year 2021 comes to a close, Operation Ida is just months away from our fourth full year of repairing stations and as an established player group. To bring 2021 to a proper close, we thought we would do a little review on our past years worth of repairs and highlight some of our accomplishments, give the spotlight to some of our dedicated CMDRs, and share our thoughts for 2022. Without further ado, here is our 2021 year in review!

By the numbers:

Stations repaired: 46

Total tonnage delivered: 17,732,942

Total cargo deliveries: 24,384

Unique CMDR Haulers: 358

Ida carriers in active service: 65

Repaired Stations By Area

Pleiades: 20

Bubble: 12

Coalsack: 7

Witch Head: 5

California: 1

Hyades: 1

Top 10 Haulers By Tons

#1 Light027: 1,437,587

#2 Griffith Fontenot: 794,307

#3 FridrichF2L: 742,398

#4 tnks4listening: 695,774

#5 Jonne013: 644,173

#6 Penguin: 631,642

#7 YosoyHavok: 585,717

#8 Biff Cake 202: 542,809

#9 Vortex: 481,751

#10 Shouren: 417,570

Top Commodities By Tons

Beryllium: 2,418,398

Indium: 1,926,128

Synthetic Fabrics: 1,826,302

Gallium: 1,466,080

Polymers: 1,177,407

Number of times Tnks was pinged on Discord: 857

Number of Light rebuys: ∞ + 1

More words:

December 2020 ended with a bang with massive Thargoid attacks throughout the Coalsack and Witch Head nebula. The Coalsack and Witch Head based damaged stations, totaling nine stations, were repaired swiftly by late January. A break from repairs was enjoyed for a short while, until March 2021 which introduced the Elite community to the NMLA storyline and attacks. The NMLA attacks would continue for the rest of the year with another wave of Thargoids attacks occurring in May and November. The Salvation storyline helped eliminate Thargoid invasion to open up station repairs, but it remains to be seen what lasting impacts the Salvation storyline will have on the galaxy. 

December is always a special month for us as it hosts our annual Hauliday Haul where we celebrate a year of repairs with events, prizes, and jolly good fun. In 2021 we concluded our 4th Annual Hauliday Haul, which benefited Doctors Without Borders. We hosted events such as a guardian trip, Beluga limbo, SRV geyser shenanigans, CQC, David vs. Goliath, 24 hr. haul, Whale Hunt, and a Thargoid lore tour. Overall we were able to raise $2,501 dollars so a huge, huge thanks to our event participants and donators! During our 24 hr. haul we were able to move 1,030,849 tons and repaired three (and two thirds) stations which was an incredible feat by our haulers!

Also this year we hit a major milestone. With the recent repair of Rix Depot, we have now repaired 200 stations as a group. This brings the total number of stations repaired by Operation Ida and other PMFs/independent CMDRs to 255! There are still several stations burning at the time of this post so we look forward to repairing even more stations as we head further into 2022. 

Overall, 2021 was quite an eventful year for our player group. Our mission to repair the damage stations of the galaxy would not be possible without the hard work and dedication of our many haulers, staff, allies, and supporters. We appreciate all the efforts of AXI and the AX player groups as well as our PMF allies for making our repair job possible and being a friendly neighbor in the Pleiades. We want to extend our thanks to all our streamer and content creator supporters who help spread the word of Operation Ida and assist with repairs and events, such as CrispyTaytortot, YoSoyHavok, CMDR Buur, Grinning_Crow, Captain Archer, Flintlock Engineering, and many many more. Lastly we want to thank the staff at Frontier Developments for your support throughout the year. We hope you all had a very happy holiday and we look forward to what 2022 has to offer!

o7 CMDR

3305 - year in review:

This past Sunday marked the end of our 2nd Annual Hauliday Haul which served as a final flourish helping to bring 3305 to a glorious close.

We hope you all enjoyed this year’s Hauliday Haul and we thank everyone who participated. This year we once again surpassed our fundraising goal and ultimately raised an astounding $2100 for The Cancer Research Institute! We would especially like to send a huge thank you for all the generous donations from so many. During the Haul we had many new and clever events that were all well-attended and great fun for those that took part. As for the main goal of the event, we repaired a whopping three whole stations in one day and six total stations during the entirety of the Haul. We also made new friends and further educated members of the community who might not know what Op-Ida and all its friends and allies are about, what it is we do, and how we do it in a friendly, welcoming, and entertaining manner.

3305 overall was an exciting year for Operation Ida and we accomplished so much together.

From the get go, 3305 started off like a rocket and never slowed down. We defended the Pleiades after renewed attacks, then finally finished repairs on all of the Thargoid attacked stations in the Pleiades allowing us to enter the Bubble with a new sense of purpose and immediately began repairing stations at a record pace!

Along the way we’ve been joined by new friends and new allies, we hosted our first One and Done 24-hour full station repair event, once again returned to the Pleiades to re-repair stations after yet another series of attacks before then returning back to the Bubble to resume our firefighting duties. Simultaneously, we worked with our Pleiades neighbors to secure control of the remaining two refineries to ensure the safety of our home cluster and all who call it home against future Thargoid incursions. 

Behind the scenes we added new staff, each whom have worked to further all things Op-Ida with new ideas, energy, and integrity to the operation. We tweaked and added new processes and data gathering methods to further help record and document our efforts, as well as improved traditional hauling practices that we’ve always done, making these tasks more efficient.

Through it all, our traveling band of merry volunteer station repair magicians have done all of the above with dedication, humor, and great empathy. Our job can often be a thankless one and it says a lot that each of you not only happily haul as hard as you do, but also always strive to be supportive and helpful not just to our own members and friends, but the entire community at large!

Operation Ida has now reached Two years as a group, and as we enter year three, we want to thank everyone who has ever been involved in our peculiar brand of game-play and wish all of you the best for 3306 and the coming years!

With great pride,

o7 CMDRs

Our 2nd Annual Holiday/Hauliday Haul™ is coming this month and will begin Dec 14th and continue through Jan 5th.

The Haul commemorates the attacks on humanity and star ports which began on Dec 14th 3303 in the Pleiades and which also marks the beginning of the 2nd Thargoid / Human war.

It also commemorates the origins of Operation Ida.

We're coming up on 2 years as a group comprised of so many who have been working so relentlessly & diligently, determined to repair the enormous amount of damaged stations in the aftermath of the Thargoid attacks.

Like last years Haul, we'll have weekend convoys, fun and diverse events, streaming and prizes as well as raising money for a worthy charity.

This year in honor of our fallen comrade CMDR Ra'kaan who lost his fight with cancer a few short months ago, we'll be raising money for The Cancer Research Institute, an excellent organization involved in all things cancer related. Our goal this year is $1000.

We'll be kicking off the Hauliday Haul™ on Dec 14th with a One & Done Event where we once again attempt to repair a damaged station from start to finish in 24 Hours.

We will share the location of this event the day prior as to ensure ourselves and our allies the opportunity to do this properly from start to finish.

Our intent again this year during the haul is to bring further awareness to the community about what we do and what's involved as well as celebrate our history & have fun. We're also looking forward to meeting new CMDRs and potentially welcoming them to our Amazing Traveling Circus of Hauling Mania.

Click below to donate to our GoFundme for The Cancer Research Institute:

Click below to visit new Op-Ida Calendar of Events detailing the various activities and dates during the Haul:

Note: Extra Waffles will be made available during the entirety of The Hauliday Haul™

On behalf of the entire Op-Ida staff, Thank you all for your dedication and hard work.

o7

We thought now would be a good time to inform all of our people what’s been happening in our home back in The Pleiades as the repair effort continues.

Back in June amidst rumblings of game plot advancement by FDev regarding The Witch Head Nebula, a few of us at Operation Ida HQ started to look at the big picture & decided we should control the remaining 2 refineries in The Pleiades.

We’ve always known the importance of The Pleiades in the story.

It’s where humanity again encountered the Thargoids & discovered Thargoid bases, barnacle sites, crashed vessels, the Thargoid spectrometer map & where The 2nd Thargoid war began with the attacks in 3303.

Operation Ida was formed in The Pleiades to repair the damage & we’ve been doing it for going on 2 years now.

Early this year we were on the verge of finally repairing all stations in The Pleiades when once again the cluster came under siege for a 2nd time as multiple systems were encroached upon in December of 3304 through this past February.

We fought with our allies to ward the attacks off but in the end 3 more stations needed additional repairs.

We’ve always known The Thargoids would revisit the Pleiades.

The Pleiades, Witch Head & California Nebula’s have always had the most speculation as to presence & potential home world space of The Thargoids.

With the story-line regarding The Witch Head starting to creep into Galnet, we understood that control of the 3 Refineries in The Pleiades would benefit us strategically due to who we are as a group. Without refineries, you cannot properly repair a star port.

Controlling the only 3 Refineries in The Pleiades will allow us to keep eyes on the systems & any attempts to lock them down & in case of further attacks, also allow us to direct pilots between the 3 systems to optimize supply & profits for our people & allies.

We contacted the owners of the 2 refinery systems, The former GPG in Atlas regarding Cyllene Orbital & Sirius Inc who control Oort Orbital & asked them if we could assume control of the systems and station.

They both agreed and than it was just a matter of starting a very long term campaign of multiple expansions to get to these systems.

A week later, The new Witch Head Stations all came online.

The Week after that, all Witch Head Stations were attacked as were 3 stations in the Pleiades including one of the 3 refineries, Cyllene Orbital.

For over 2 months a very small group from Op-Ida have been working the Background Simulation (BGS) to get us to both Cyllene and Oort. We’ve been able to initiate 4 expansions & earlier this week we assumed control of Atlas & Cyllene Orbital, the 2nd of the 3 refineries in The Pleiades.

We still need 2 more expansion however and it’s slow going. Our control systems are not ideal to expand from due to various factors.

We have so far kept this quiet as to not disrupt the amazing repair effort that’s been ongoing 24/7.

We’ve also kept it quiet because there’s been an unknown group of players operating in solo/private groups working against us at times (right now). We didn’t want to inadvertently alert the wrong element who for whatever reason enjoy making life difficult for other player groups like ourselves...even if we are essentially The Red Cross.

However our BGS team is small (& getting smaller) & these next 2 expansions are important as we believe attacks will resume again shortly with a good bet that The Pleiades will see future encroachment.

We've hit the proverbial wall & definitely need some more dedicated bodies for these final expansions and follow up work to finish our goal of getting to & assuming control of Oort Orbital.

While nobody is under any obligation to assist, If you would be interested in helping us in our efforts we will start posting daily updates in the Op-Ida Discord.

o7

Cmdr Zayn Till

It is not a stretch in logic to see where Operation Ida obtains its strength. Through cooperation, dedication, and the time that each and every one of you has given, the community has expanded beyond anything originally thought possible. Because of all of these traits, and every single commander that has aided Operation Ida and it’s mandate, you have continuously proven that improbability will never mean impossible. When next you pilot your vessel, remember that Operation Ida appreciates your activity within the community. As the days progress, new heights shall begin to emerge along with new challenges to overcome. With you at the helm, there is no doubt that Operation Ida will continue to progress even further than what was imagined.

Cmdr Archangel

It gives me no small amount of pleasure to announce that Copernicus Observatory in Asterope has received all of the required commodities.

Simply put: Wow. We have repaired 4 stations this month. We finish the Pleiades on a massive high. Starting this Thargsday, the Pleiades will be fully repaired. It's taken us over a year to get to this stage. This was the hardest area in the galaxy to repair, inaccessible to a lot of the community - and many resources have been located back in the bubble. Some stations have even had to be repaired twice, delaying our progress that bit more. But.....Operation Ida has kept going.. and we've done some amazing work. Truly amazing work. Thank you everyone.

Let's look at some of the stats.: A year ago we were 2 days away from completing our 3rd station: Hudson Observatory. Since starting we've moved close to 20 million tonnes of commodities. We have our own faction. We're stable, well liked and have some awesome neighbours. We now have over 1,100 members in our discord.

The Pleiades is home to many of us, it's been unthinkable to even consider repairing other parts of the galaxy until we remove the dung from our doorstep. But we've cleaned up and for now it's time to move on. It will be strange, but help is needed elsewhere. We will have a few members sticking around and allies to watch our back.

o7

CMDR Ninj

Artemis Lodge is now complete!!!

Insanely amazing job everyone, we took down Artemis in 6 days, and this is our second station repaired in 16 days! It will be great to have Artemis, one of our 2 home stations back online again! Our next target has been discussed before and is (finally) owned by one of our Pleiades allies, Hanks Alliance of Anti-Xeno (HAAX): Copernicus Observatory in Asterope. Copernicus is also the LAST damaged station in the Pleiades!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once again amazing job IDA, keep up the hard work, we are almost done in the Pleiades, after more than a year of work!

o7

CMDR Light027

Cyllene Orbital is now FINISHED. depsite the lessening of needed commodities, the 12k ls supercruise and much needed in long range commodities still made this station a challenge and yet you all repaired it in 10 days!! Amazing achievement. BRAVO

Our own Artemis Lodge is up next and with only a 50 ls Supercruise... should be a joy to repair quickly

Thank you all CMDRS

o7

CMDR Zayn Till

Cleaver Prospect is now complete.. awesome job everyone!! This was one of our harder targets, considering where the station was positioned. Our next target will be familiar to many of our members: Cavalieri in Electra.

This is the first station we have come across that we have previously repaired. Hopefully thanks to the dedicated efforts of our thargoid defence squads it will be the last. The good news is that the total amount of goods required is much lower than previously.

Please watch out for the mighty noob hammers, they are not to be messed with.

o7

CMDR Ninj

Thanks to the quarter million tons of polymers hauled on Dec, 30th and the 75k tons hauled Jan, 1st, Asami Orbital is complete! That puts the number of stations repaired by IDA at 13! Thank you everyone for your contributions! The next target is Clever Prospect!

o7

CMDR BlakeA

December 14th marks the one year anniversary of the first attacks on starports in The Pleiades & the formation of Op-IDA. To commemorate this event we are going to be holding a 3 week charity fundraiser from Dec 14th - Jan 4th called The HAPPY HOLIDAY HAUL™. Full information on the forums here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/461691-Operation-IDA-Charity-Fundraiser-Starting-14th-Dec-To-Repair-Damaged-Starports-amp-Improve-lives!?p=7213367#post7213367

Any support you can give morally, financially and the like is appreciated. Spread the word! Operation IDA makes a difference!

Donate to the cause at: https://www.gofundme.com/w8tmpe-operation-ida-holiday-haul-for-charity

o7

CMDR Zayn Till

Liman Legacy is now completed on the spreadsheet. We've seen some great efforts and lots of new members which is a beautiful thing to behold. We really have been smashing out the long range deliveries which is worthy of mention too. And that's all while the beta is happening. Nice one!

Our new target is Cleaver Prospect in Pleiades Sector HR-W d1-57. This station is on the edge of the Pleiades, its location means that some of the long range commodities are a bit easier to reach - yet it is still within convenient range of our local source stations. After Cleaver Prospect has been finished we will most likely head back to Copernicus Observatory in Asterope to finish off the central zone of the Pleiades and then start making our way to the bubble - first stop on the way there will be Asami Orbital in Pleiades Sector JC-V d2-62.

We're still waiting for Chapter 4 to be released before we really know what's going on with the stations that aren't quite showing as complete in game. We have let FDev know of the issue and they have the data which you have all been kindly providing.

Thank you to everyone for your sterling efforts all across the board, we're nearly there with repairing the Pleiades. Another fine job from Operation Ida!

o7

CMDR Ninj

Hey Everyone. After weeks of hauling only Beryllium, the end is finally in sight for Kipling Orbital. We only have 3,707 left to haul and the station is finally complete. Of course, our completion is still based on our spreadsheet and not on in game numbers. We hope with all this data we have collected from each one of your countless deliveries to present it to Fdev once again in hopes of fixing this in game bug.Thank you all so much for all your hard work, it truly is amazing.

The next station up for repair is Liman Legacy located in HIP 16753 so let's get to work. I’m sure we can finish this station easily along with every station afterwards, I mean we’re Operation IDA!!! We move mountains!!

Thank you all so much for all of your continuous support, we’ve been able to accomplish so much thanks to every single one of you, cheers

o7

CMDR tnks4listening

We're almost there!
Kipling Orbital only needs one more commodity to be completed (on paper) and that is Beryllium! Unfortunately, it seems that there's less than 2000 tons of beryllium available within 150 lightyears of Kipling, so it's going to be a bit of a long-haul (literally!) to finish this off, but we are Ida and we WILL complete this station

If you haven't been doing much of the long-range hauling, or if you're just looking to get some more range out of your ship, we have range-maximizing builds for the Anaconda , Type 9 , and Cutter pinned in #ed-ship-chat in discord and we're happy to offer outfitting advice for other ships as well. Every ship with cargo space is welcome to help out!

Stations that sell beryllium can be found using https://eddb.io/commodity/38, but pay attention to the supercruise distance before you head out, or the Hutton Run might not feel quite so long after all!

Again, a huge thank you to each and every commander that has contributed to our repair efforts over the last eight months (holy space cows , we've been doing this for that long already?!). Your efforts make all of this possible and it is our privilege to be able to point at a station and say "let's fix that one next!"

o7

CMDR trainphreak

We have now completed Cavalieri in Electra and not just on paper! From next Thargsday it will be operating fully once again. Those newb hammers will be polished and the dents will be hammered out... they might even clean up the scorch marks.

We saw an amazing amount of Beryllium hauled over the last few days to finish the repairs. This is really good to see as all the remaining stations in the Pleiades need it in large quantities. Beryllium just isn't really very available locally. Well done everyone we've now repaired 10 stations as a group and there are now only 5 stations left to repair in the Pleiades!

Our next target is going to be Kipling Orbital in Pleiades Sector KC-V c2-11. We have our eye on Copernicus Observatory in Asterope but won't start on that until after our own in-game faction takes control of from Aegis Research.

As always, my thanks to you all for your commitment - whatever you're able to contribute. This community rocks.

o7

CMDR Ninj

Earlier today we completed Cavalieri!! Sadly this was not in game but was completed in our spreadsheet. First and foremost I would personally like to thank every one of you who helped with this, you guys are truly Awesome. The spreadsheet has been submitted to Fdev to show that the issue with deliveries not registering is still present.

The plan for this weekend is to reach 100% completion for Cavalieri. Which currently needs only 32k Beryllium. So to all of our long range haulers we could really use all of your help. Cavalieri is home to one of our ally groups The Hive and I know it would be greatly appreciated if we could have the station done for them as soon as possible. On Monday we will announce our next target for repair.

Again thank you all so much for being apart of IDA. Whether this is the first station you've contributed with, or if you're a seasoned vet who has been with us for months. Thank you so much, you all make this place incredibly special and something I personally am grateful for getting to be a part of.

Keep up the great work!

o7

CMDR thnks4listening

Today we have reached 100% deliveries for Bao Landing. Awesome work! This information is not correct in-game due to deliveries going missing. Thank you to everyone for providing delivery data and to those who have also been updating the spreadsheet too, this has now been included in a new bug report for FDev to investigate.

We're now moving onto our next station target which is Cavalieri in Electra. Watch out for the noob hammers on the station. :D

Thank you for your continued hard efforts all across the board and happy hauling.

Go Operation Ida!

o7

CMDR Ninj

Another station has been completed! Awesome work everyone, Kamov Survey will be back online in the early hours of the 16th August.

Our next target is Bao Landing in HIP 17497. This is one of the last stations in the Pleiades that has fairly easy commodities to be delivered across the board. There are some delicious CMM's which may equally excite or disgust many of you out there.

While we were advised by FD that the cargo delivery bug had been fixed for stations, several players consistently observed missing deliveries for Kamov Survey. This time around we will be collecting data on all deliveries and reporting them to FD so this can be looked into further. To help us collect this data, please can you post what you have delivered in our new #deliveries-for-bao channel on discord. You can post what you've delivered for the day, or if it's easier for you then please feel free to post each delivery.

I'd like to also thank all those members of Ida who have helped out making this place operate efficiently while many of the current staff have been busy elsewhere. You all rock. We're currently expanding our staff list to ensure we can cater for everyone at all times. If you'd like to help out, please let us know!

Another fantastic job by Ida!

o7

CMDR Ninj

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, waffle lovers and haters of all ages.... today we have some great news: Operation Ida is now a player faction in-game!  

Our home system is Pleiades Sector HR-W d1-41 and we have started there with 9% influence. Currently there is no faction description in the system map, this will be added sometime in the future by support.  Over the next coming days/weeks we will be looking to take Malthus Terminal from Aegis Research. This will help us massively next time Aegis go into lockdown as we will still have Malthus open for business. 

While our main focus as always will be on what we do best: moving butt-tons of cargo regularly in our repair efforts - we will be posting some orders and suggestions on how we can improve as a faction through the relevant channels and tasklist.

Thank you everyone for your continued hard work and support. Without a committed and fun group, plus a lot of persistence from you that we wanted an Operation Ida faction in-game - we wouldn't have got this far.

Go Operation Ida!
o7

CMDR Ninj

As of midday today the final tons have been delivered to Artemis Lodge in Celaeno! With the completion of this station IDA has hopefully made progress in our goal of bringing purpose back to the pretty parts of the Pleiades. Titan's Daughter and Artemis Lodge, two absolutely gorgeous stations in stunning locations are now repaired and the Pleiades is starting to come back to life. 

Following the long repair effort that was Titan's Daughter, Artemis Lodge was a decently easy target taking us under a month to complete; while working on the end of Titan's Daughter for the start of that. We will be continuing that theme with our next target of Kamov Survey in HIP 17892. Kamov needs just over 800k in supplies which is less than Artemis's starting totals however it does need more long range. In addition Kamov is an Industrial station and has a chance to provide much needed local supplies out here in the Pleiades once online!

Before we start the process of repairing Kamov Survey I want to take a minute to thank everyone who worked so hard on Artemis Lodge. This was a very quick repair, even faster than we expected and that is incredible as this isn't easy work we are all doing out here in the Pleiades and it's good to see the motivation is still there to get these things repaired! IDA as a whole came together to make this repair possible, however I would like to take a moment to thank @Poltargeist#7921,  @Resurgence#6789, and @tnks4listening#8130 for they individual help in either mass hauling numbers, daily update support, or just generally providing motivation and information to fellow haulers. You all make IDA what it is!

Another fantastic job IDA!

o7

CMDR Light027