Portal strategy with least resources (for singleplayer)

Portal guide to avoid having a portal for every destination. Only two portals at your home base and you'll still travel freely.
- saves tons of resources
- saves a lot of space at your base
- guides you through using the system properly

Dual-portal strategy explained

There are many portal guides out there, but as a noob I see two main methods that works best to save most resources with least time wasted. If someone has a better idea, please comment, keeping in mind I have only 50 hours in the game. Again, for LEAST resources used and still unrestricted travel.

(I use option 1, while option 2 is for those who don't want more than one home base portal and want to even save the resources of a single portal)

Option 1: one primary (unnamed) and one secondary (named) portal at base and one (named) portal at every destination
Pros:
- full connectivity: allows for travel between different portals, without having to go back to base each time
- minimum resources: no portal hub needed at base with a portal for every destination, saving a ton of space and resources (e.g. only 12 portals needed in case of 10 destinations outside your base, instead of 20 portals where you have one for each at your base)
- the secondary portal can serve as an emergency portal that does not need renaming (as in the middle of battle it's not easy to remember what name you gave the home portal)
Cons:
- need to rename secondary home base portal every time you leave to a destination (a few seconds)
- you can only hop between outstation portals by renaming them

Option 2: one portal only at base (renaming at each go)
Pros:
- Hub & Spokes: can travel to any point from base (or from any point to another, via your base)
- least resources used, single portal at home base (e.g. only 11 portals needed in case of 10 destinations outside your base, instead of 20 portals where you have one for each at your base)
- emergency use of portal possible
Cons:
- need to rename home base portal every time you leave to a destination (a few seconds)
- more difficult to use in emergencies as you need to rename the portal to what your home base is called
- emergency portal will not bring you to home base when it is used unnamed (as home portal brought you to a second portal, so both have the same name and your new emergency portal will not bring you to either)
- every time you don't teleport home but to another portal, you will be changing the portal names and this gets confusing, a major drawback compared to option 1. The biggest drawback of this: if you leave home by renaming your base portal to a destination, but move on from that destination to another portal by renaming (e.g. rename base portal to "Copper" to get to portal "Copper", there rename portal to "Silver" to get to portal "Silver"), you will only be able to get back to base by remembering the first destination you went to, as you have renamed your home portal to that! In this example, by leaving home by renaming the portal to "Copper", once you moved on to different portals, you will have to remember to go home by renaming to "Copper" and not to any of the other dozens of destinations you have. The map will not help you here either, as it does not mention portal names (unless you use a script or risk using a mod, I guess..).

Explanation on option 1:
1. Create two portals at your base, one remains unnamed, the other will always be renamed, start out with naming it "1" for example.
2. Travel to point 1, build a local portal there (no name), travel back and forth to home portal (unnamed) to dump resources, until you want to move on.
3. Before you move on to point 2 (from 1), rename portal 1 into "1" (as it was unnamed first). Now, you can either use it to travel back to base, or create any new portal anywhere else which brings you home, as you also have an unnamed portal at your base.
4. When reaching point 2, first create a nameless portal, use it as much as you want to teleport to your home base (unnamed) portal.
5. When you're ready to move on, rename it to "2".
6. Continue on to point 3 and repeat the same procedure.
7. When you want to travel to any portal, travel home first, then secondary rename home portal to the name of your destination to use it.
8. In case you do not want to travel back to base first, rename the portal you're at to the name you want to go to (e.g. rename portal "4" to "7"), but I advise against it as you only save 8 seconds (that's the extra step of teleporting home) but you will have renamed a destination and will get mixed up next time you want to go there. Easier to memorize numbers than to check the map each time.

[beann]

you can very easily add custom named map pins. I use the "unamed portal" as an emergency portal, seeing as it can built and immediately jumped into.

[peterspam]

You're right Steve, thanks for pointing it out! I only play solo, but I amended the title to make this clear.

[CrazyManSteve]

hmm seems okay for solo but bad for team play