A was wondering: Why there are pictures of exact places in each city? Should the route use only those train/bus/subway stations, wich are mentioned in brief? Or maybe, for example, we could mark those points on the map and could receive any digits or letters... Can't do it in Moscow, 'cos i didn't figure out all places on photos.
Phase 1 of this mission was to do Recon in major cities around the world, taking photographs of transport assets such as train stations, bus stations, subway stations and taxis. The photos you're seeing are ones that were taken by agents around the world. So as far as marking them on the map goes, no, it wouldn't reveal anything as they were taken by us.
@Sonne I have revised your route and it seems to me this is the way to go. Have you contacted dispatch?
I see what you mean about the gaps. It's okay for some places (where it's obvious that you need to just walk less than 10 minutes), but it doesn't make sense in other places where you need to walk almost an hour. Another weird thing I noticed, for those of us starting at Sochi, for some reason rome2rio insists that we take the local to Adler and catch the train to Moscow from there. It's a bit weird because it adds a couple extra hours to the trip (since it takes you in the opposite direction from where you want to go), and in any case the train stops at Sochi anyway to pick up passengers (checked on http://pass.rzd.ru/timetable/public/en?STRUCTURE_ID=704).
From Dispatch: Agent beckett, The escort agents have their own budget, and do not need to be taken into account for the budget of the subject's extraction plan. Division 66 Didn't expect anything else, but better be sure.
I have not contacted Dispatch because another agent might improve upon it. And, we haven't yet determined the pickup point. Mostly what I'd done was to remove inefficiencies by specifying the waypoints, primarily in London & Austin. LosAngeles was the only one where I accepted the default schedule. For example, my flight from London to Orlando is shorter because that leg doesn't start in the centre of London and go to the centre of Orlando, I schedule the rails from Brussels to take her straight to London Gatwick (LGW) and the bus to Austin picks her up at Orlando Airport (MCO). In Austin the default schedule brought her in from the north to a depot at the south end of town, then the leg to LA begins at a depot in the north end of town. I'm sure Austin is nice but she only needs to see it once.
Ya, I was wondering how you managed to shave 3 hours off the flight. Til I realized all of Heathrow's flights had layovers. An issue I ran into is that looking for greyhound-like stations in LA region gave two. The North Hollywood one plays nice going to Vancouver, while the one in LA needs another stop or it wants to go through SF. But not sure if North Hollywood is in LA City or County and if that really makes a difference.
There has been impressive work done on this route phase. I hope that watching in awe counts as collaboration, lol.
OVERVIEW for the mission up to now : We are still trying to determine coordinates for the starting point. Routes are still in the works, but some of them looks like viable options. To help/follow the course of the mission, please refer to those three documents : Mission details : https://docs.google.com/document/d/15Duy2GXVYoggJXPSfYT4sy3YvZVrD4MS6_qzJn59cF0/edit Routes and further instructions : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19uQNjoHr5b49ulMy026HnS7fWh2Xw6WkAqdS3Jdhytg/edit#gid=0 Possible locations for the target : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U8P9mVOWb-zdtcnv8Vh9PXCr1d_MObWm3wa1Ar4SlPc/edit Wiki need to be updated soon, so that newcomers can follow the mission easily.
As the deadline draws nearer, I'd like to know what are plans for proposal submission is. Are we going to submit individually, or as a collective? Thoughts?
I'd assume that we'd be sending multiple, just to be sure that we have the correct starting place. Individual submissions might be okay, but it would be more helpful for Dispatch if we were to send them a link to the Google Doc where we're listing the viable routes, for example. (Or if we just collect the links in one email and send that)
At this point, our mission has two objectives: Determine where to meet her and to develop an extraction plan. Where to meet? I think it is the Adler rail station but a fair argument can be made for the Kurganinsk station as well. If we aren't able to determine the meet with certainty, HQ said they can deploy at both locations. I suggest we have HQ order the teams to leave messages at both locations and see where she pops up. Which extraction plan? We are ordered to come up with a (singular) plan so we should submit only one plan. My thinking is we have to submit a plan to get her to Moskva from either origination since we haven't determined that yet. Aside from that we should decide one plan to be "best" and submit that, but submit the rest as alternates. That enables the agents local to each unlocked city (who have the best local knowledge) to have some flexibility for unforseen circumstances. How to determine which plan is "best"? All plans are under budget, most plans have several hours to spare for contingencies. From an operational standpoint I would think that the best plan is the one that requires the fewest transfers from one vehicle to another - that would be the fewest chances for her to be discovered or for something to go wrong. I've not reviewed any of the routes based on those criteria. How to submit to HQ? We should give them the link to the googledoc workspace where we should have the proposed routes labeled as "Best", "Alternate", and "Invalid [reason why]"
Yeah, there can be multiple plans sent and HQ will choose the most cost/time effective, a link to the current google doc should be fine.
Dispatch said they'd choose the best option of many for route. The pickup. however, is something we should pin down to the two locations. They wanted coordinates, no?
No, they asked for multiple possible meeting points within the 2 cities we mentioned. "Please provide us with coordinates of the possible locations to search for the subject within these two locations" but yes, they wanted co-ords.
I thought they wanted one plan because that is what the briefing said and I haven't seen anything from them to the contrary. But it makes sense they'd choose, they know their assets better than we do.
