Thoughts on MUFG Capsules

There has been a lot of hype about MUFG Capsules and I wanted to add my two cents in on them, now that I finally have some.

First, Niantic adding capsules as an item was awesome. At the time it was a long over due addition to the game. Now, we have these MUFG capsules which pay a dividend on items stored in them. In a recent G+ post +Petr Morávek did some extensive studies on the return rate of MUFG capsules and concluded the return rate is approximately 1 - 1.5% return rate. Cross referencing this to Union Bank's current interest rate on savings accounts is 1%. I don't know if this is coincidence or not but it will be interesting to see if/when interest rates go up again if the MUFG capsules' return rate will increase.

Keeping your MUFG capsule loaded with approximately 96 items seems to yield the optimum results. However you must remember to pull excess items from your MUFG capsule daily because once the capsule reaches 100 items, it will not be able to generate any additional items.

This is a pretty cool concept, but the yield is not that great. Don't get me wrong I'm not going to turn my nose up at a free L8 XMP or two every day, but I can easily hack that on my ride in to work. Now if I ever get to the point where I get 8-10 MUFG capsules and am getting 10+ L8 XMPs- now were talking. But it's a freebie, so no complaints.

But the hack rate on MUFG capsules is different. Until very recently I hadn't hacked my own and in the month I've hacked several thousand times. But my daughter who in the last month has only done < 500 hacks has gotten 3. She must be very lucky, I'm just unlucky or some combination of the two.

So it's a nice improvement to the game, not a game changer, but I see a day when I do have 10 or more of them and only have 2-3 regular capsules strictly for trading items. But this is absolutely no substitution for farming as I think some people may have expected.

My Daughter Made Level 8!

My daughter hasn't been an active player for a while. She got hooked into Ingress when I told her about the anomalies and she wanted to participate. Tried as we may to get her to 8 before Darsana, we just couldn't get there.

Since Darsana she has played a little here and there, mainly coming out with me when I want a little help taking out a particular portal. A few weeks ago I was hitting a few targets of opportunity while running some errands with her and she said she was going to play. She told me she was now so close to 8 she wanted to make a push for it.

We began heading out a few times, unfortunately time wasn't on our side. My typical playing time is generally from 10:00 pm to 1:00 am and I wasn't going to keep her out that long, so we went out in 1 hr bursts. One of our local Resistance players even kept tabs on her progress (Mainly because it was his portals we were hitting.) One night he sent a message on the COMM saying he was waiting up for her to hit again and level up. It turned out to be a little while before we could go out again.

This past Friday night. I was loaded with nearly 1000 L8 XMPs and was ready to do some damage to the Resistance dominated areas. I on the intel map I found a nearby portal with dozens of links and many, many fields coming and going from it. I estimated that portal alone would give her the AP needed.

We headed out and that portal was number 1 on our list of targets. We get there and I drop a handful of L8 Ultra Strikes on the center of the portal to kill the shields and then tell her to spam it with XMPs. Well I see the portal is going down as the field starts to look weak. Then next think I know it is full blown recharged. The resistance was recharging on her, and by the look of it several people were recharging. So I decide to help and fire off a few L8 Xmps. When it started looking weak I would stop as not to steal the AP from her, but they were relentlessly recharging.

So I then decided to spam it with L8 Bursters. It starts to get weak again. I back off to let her take it out, but they brought it up again. I start spam bombing again. Between the two of us we got it down to 4 resonators. By this time we'd each used probably 100 XMPs. But I back off again and again they are able to keep it fully charged against her. So I start firing again and what do you know one of my XMP bursters took out 3 of their resonators and I got the over 28K AP. I went ahead and took out the last remaining resonator too, but let her claim and fully deploy to.

In hind sight I would have walked to reach resonator and fired Ultra Strike to more strategically taken them out, and save on Bursters, then once it was down to 3 have her do the same. Oh well live and learn.

We went out and she did level up later that night and we were out until 4 am (and the wife was not happy about that).

So I am happy to now have a second powerful player in my family to help me.

Seer Badge - FAIL

Here's another quick rant since I'm ranting....

The Seer Badge.

Wow what a mess. While I do consider this a fail on Niantic's part, I would classify it as they had the best of intentions, but I don't think they anticipated the overwhelming response they would get.

My best guess this was an attempt to increase the number of portals quickly. I like so many other agents mainly submitted portals pretty casually.

Then the Seer badge was announced. Agents could level up based on submitting new portals. Awesome idea, right?

Well yes it was, but I don't think Niantic realized the tidal wave of responses they would get. While the seer badge was active I probably submitted 200+ portals. Yet, I've only had a very few approved. Of the portals I've submitted I expect a minority to be rejected for legitimate reasons. I was gunning for submitting 500+ portals.

As submittals took longer and longer, I stopped submitting as many.

Now to Niantic's credit they initially suspended portal submittals to apply for the badge and I believe they have officially ended submittals.

Those who still have portals submitted before then will be counted towards the seer badge and those after will not.

At first this really irritated me, but since then they have made many other badges, some are quite easy to get like the Sojourner it becomes a disappointment at worst because while I want to get all my badges to Onyx, this one will forever be stuck as bronze...

Cheaters- A short rant

This is a form of cheating I've come across lately players moving portals which are correctly situated to be in a more advantageous place for them.

I had seen it and hadn't thought too much of it before, but then a portal I submitted and would hack regularly got moved. Here's the portal:

The player moved it from the proper place in the pond to the middle of the pond to the middle of a street so they could hack it from their work easily. One day I go to hack it to the regular spot in the parking lot I always go, and I'm out of range. Initially thought I was dealing with a little bad drift but I waited recharged some portals and never got in range. Then I looked and it wasn't drift, it had been moved. WTF???

I'm a little disappointed that Niantic allowed the move. Just looking at the map you can see it got moved to a street and that the portal is a fountain. The picture shows

Making me more frustrated, I and other players have attempted to have it put back in it's proper place several times to no avail. Niantic keeps denying our requests.

Since I was posting more regularly I now work in a different location, same company just a different office less than a mile away from where I was. This location just happens to have 2 portals nearby. 1 I can hack from my desk when I get the opportunity to and another I'm about 10 meters away from. I would never consider requesting moving the other to be a personal benefit to me. I just hack it on my way in and out or when I happen to be on that side of the building.

While Ingress is really cool and a ton of fun; it's just a game people, why do you feel the need to cheat???

New Scanner - Samsung Galaxy Note 4

I've posted about the other scanners I've used so Let me update you on my newest phone. I got the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 at the beginning of 2015. I was trying to hold out for my carrier, Verizon, to release the Nexus 6, but I got to the point where I couldn't wait any longer. And naturally shortly after I bought the Note 4 Verizon released the Nexus 6, but I'm still very satisfied with my choice.

Just as a point of reference my previous the Samsung Galaxy S4. And even after 2 years of use, this phone performed excellent as a scanner. The Note 4 is fast, responsive and absolutely great as an Ingress scanner. I love it.

At first I tried Glyph Hacking using the pen. For me this was a huge failure. My finger was faster and more accurate. But unlike others I'd spoken to I loved completing the glyphs on the bigger screen. Some have said it is a greater distance and costs you time and therefore you have less productive glyph hacks. I have no doubt that is true, but I work better with the larger area. I actually was trying to teach my daughter glymph hacking using her Apple iPhone 4s. For me that was just incredibly small and I didn't like it.

Now the Note 4 has some energy saving features, I however don't use all of them so playing Ingress drains my battery pretty quickly. I have may portable charging pack, but I also had to get a new car charger. I went with the Anker 4.8A / 24W 2-Port USB Car Charger with PowerIQ Technology from Amazon. This was actually my second new charger. My former one which worked great for my S4 didn't put out enough Amps to effectively charge. If I had it on the car charger while playing it would still loose power while on the charger. I bought a different one and the reviews online said it would charge the Note 4. And it probably would slowly charge while not playing Ingress.

So I started shopping for another and I found some really expensive ones out there. Then I found the Anker and based on my experience with their other products I bought this one. I'm really pleased. It not only charges while playing Ingress, but charges rapidly.

So overall this scanner is a hit. DO I have any regrets about not getting the Nexus 6 I was holding out for? Initially I did, but now I have it I love it and one advantage the Note 4 has over the Nexus 6 is that the Note 4 allows owners to expand the memory using a micro SD card. I love this feature too and can see myself potentially getting annoyed about the lack of memory on the Nexus, like my daughter gets with her iPhone 6.  16 Gigs seems like a lot but once you account for Verizon's bloatware and just the minimum space needed to keep the phone running it goes by quickly, so even though it wasn't my first choice, it was the best decision.

...

Stay tuned I'm going to do a write up of the iPhone 6 that my daughter uses.

Catching Up - My Anomaly Experiences

In the time since I last regularly posted I participated in 2 anomalies Darsana & Persepolis.

Darsana:

Like I mentioned I wasn't completely dormant while not posting. November 2014 Virginia Beach was a satellite location for the Darsana Anomaly. Finally we had an anomaly in my general area. I was really excited about it and my excitement rubbed off on my daughter she decided she wanted to participate. We tried like mad to get her to a Level 8 before the anomaly, but just didn't make it.

November at the oceanfront area of Virginia Beach when scheduled it seemed like it would be great November generally is not too cold around here. Well we just happened to be hit with a spell of cold weather, add to that a cold breeze coming straight off the ocean. It ended up being pretty darn cold.

My daughter and I were assigned to a bike team where we could be deployed to any area needed for additional support quickly. I'm proud to say that my team did it's job well and we won each portal we fought over other than one, but we did win the volatile portals we were assigned to.

This was a great event I met a lot of great people and had fun. Unfortunately my faction did not win the satellite event. But we had a great time, met a lot of really cool people from all over and even met Joe Philley himself.

Here's my bike crew:

(Hey dude in the red jacket, stop eyeing my daughter :) )

Here's my daughter with Joe Philley:

Persepolis:

I was all set and ready to go to Persepolis in Washington D.C.. My sister lives inside the D.C. beltway and I was stoked my daughter and I had a place to crash it wasn't that far away and I had such a blast with Darsana I couldn't wait for this anomaly. The one thing I wanted to change was I was not going to be on a bike team again. I was not in shape for the amount of distance we had to travel and the speed needed. I was always at the back of the pack but I was there. 

Well life got in the way, and at the last minute I just couldn't make it. I was crushed. But all was not lost. I'd farmed really well and had stocked my daughter and I up with bookoo equipment. We were prepared. 

Luckily, I let some people know I wasn't going to be able to make it and gave away nearly all of both of our gear to people who were going. After I gave away a ton of good stuff a local player sent me a link to fill out what I'd donated and then I ended up with a Persepolis badge which was pretty cool since I was crushed that I couldn't make it. 

Awesome mission, awesome teamwork!

Because of where I live and the fact I'm virtually the only Enlightened agent in my area, I was contacted to ask to be a part of an awesome mission. This group was building an 18 layer mega-field with one of the main links going through the area where I live.

The issue is because I am virtually the only Enlightened agent, the Resistance (two agents in particular) really dominate the area. They constantly have their own 100K Mind Unit Mega field over the area and apparently they have virtually unlimited keys to the other remote portals. I take it out and minutes later it's back up. I actually got to the point of saying I'll just leave it up because it only gives them more points each time I destroy it when they put it back up.

This ended up being a pretty good strategy. Not only did it keep them from continuing to get massive AP and medals, it prevented not only them but other agents from throwing up other links and fields which could interfere with the mission, yet I could take out their fields with just taking out 3 nearby portals in my town.

The leader of the mission came to my town and briefed me on the mission. I just liked the thought of being part of a cool mission like this. Very similar to the mission I posted about much earlier. He then asked where I was on my Illuminator badge. I told him I was at gold. He then told me he'd save keys to the remote portals for me. After I take out the blocking field, I could try to meet him at the southern tip of the field and put up a final field. The first 17 layers were to be before the checkpoint. With me taking down the field immediately before the checkpoint and the southern tip being almost an hour away my field wouldn't be in the checkpoint if at all. It was very possible the remote anchors would be gone before I got down there. But I appreciated the opportunity and didn't expect it.

I made it down just in the nick of time and put up the 18th layer just as the Resistance agents were striking other layers in the area.

Here's a gif of the action:

Here's a screenshot of my field going up:

Here's a shot of the dog tag the organizer made for the dozen or so agents who participated.

Wow it's been over a year!

I couldn't have imagined it's now been over a year since my last post. I keep telling myself I'd post about this or that. So much has happened in the game in the past year it would be impossible to do a full catch up. I have a few ideas for some blog posts that will touch on some of the happenings in that time, but I will mainly plan on moving forward.

Where have I been??? 
I never stopped playing, though the intensity in which I played did drastically slow down. It use to be very common for me to head out several times a week and play from about 10:00 pm to 1:00 am several times per week. Well I'm getting a little too old for that and honestly it was impacting my work and other things so I've virtually stopped that. But I am thinking of picking that up again on Fridays & Saturdays that wouldn't interfere with other things in my life.

So you may ask why an I beginning this again after sooo long.
There are a couple of reasons. I have increased my activity level the past few months maybe even as many as the past 6 months. For a lot of this time I was playing again as a lone wolf. Like I wrote earlier the game is much more fun when you play as a group with other people. Then recently I got involved in some great group projects which brought me back up again. I'll be posting about one particular project I was involved in which was massively fun.

Also, the game is fun and I've missed my adventures while Ingressing. I'm hoping that by bringing my blogging activity back up I'll also bring up my playing activity.

Where am I now?
I'm currently a level 12. I have all the medals I need to make 15, but that's a lot of AP away. If you've ever used the app "Agent Stats" (which is pretty cool) that app says I'll be a L16 in 2019. I've now set a goal to make it in less than a year. It's a pretty big undertaking for someone who plays the way I've been playing lately, but it's achievable.

Double Check Your Portals

I want to get a heads up to everybody out there, just in case you didn't already know. Resonator decay rates have increased !

Check those portals out especially your guardian. You will have to put a little extra effort and XM into recharging your portals.

My best guess is that this has 2 related intended goals:

1. Increase portal turn over.
2. Weaken portals quicker for the huge mass of new players to give them some opportunity to attack and claim portals in the well established game.

I could be wrong but it does make sense. You have thousands of new players instantly and you want them to become addicted. If you loose all of your XM on one attack attempt on a higher level portal and all the portals in your area are level 5+ that can become very discouraging. The new players could quickly loose interest and leave.

But no matter why or for how long this will be it is a neat new twist.

Happy Hacking ... And Recharging

Ultra Strikes Revisited

Okay it has been a while since Ultra Strikes have been available to everybody.

In my last Ultra Strike post I wrote that I didn't see the big deal about Ultra Strikes. Those opinions were based on not having used them, but only what I had read from others. Well now I have been using Ultra Strikes for just over a month and wanted to revisit Ultra Strikes.

Pros:
Their intense burst is effective at taking out individual resonators or helping weaken or destroy portal modifications.

They are commonly hacked, so getting them is no problem.

Cons:
Their burst while quite intense, has a very limited range.

They are much slower to launch than XMPs.

Lower level Ultra Strikes are relatively useless.

Conclusion:

The Ultra Strike weapon is an interesting tool. Higher level Ultra Strikes can help with heavily defended portals, but lower level ones aren't worth the effort.

Will I use Ultra Strikes? Why of course I will. Will they be my weapon of choice? No. I would prefer to consider them a tool rather than a weapon. When I come across that heavily defended portal I will weaken it with some Ultra Strikes and then go in for the kill.

So do they live up to the initial hype? No. Maybe it was just me, but from the initial hype I was expecting this incredibly cool and powerful weapon. But I wouldn't go as far as to say they are useless. They are functional tools, but not worth the hype and not worth the exclusivity they were first appeared with.

All else being equal I will continue to use L8 XMPs for the majority of my attacks.

Happy Hacking.

Welcome iPhone/ Apple Users to Ingress

After much waiting and anticipation Ingress has finally come out for the iOS. The rumor mill has it that the Apple version doesn't have all the features yet. But what do you expect it's Apple ... J/K ;)

I will be setting up an account for my daughter who is all about her iPhone. I've been saving all of my low level items to give to her to get her started. She has been on the fence about playing, but I've convinced her to give it a shot. And I can't wait to clear up my inventory of things I normally recycle.

She has a bad perception of Ingress because for the past year and a half trips together seemingly take twice the normal time and being a teen with all the angst and everything else that comes with that age she would literally get angry. If I just pulled over and stopped at a portal which was on the way. Not to mention when I'd go off the intended route to claim or kill a portal.

Now hopefully she will begin to enjoy the game as much as I do. I plan to take her out with me before the end of the week.

Just the past day or so I have seen such a huge boost in activity from new players joining in on the game. I am really looking forward to it.

I don't know if it is related or not, but I've also seen a huge increase in the appearance of new portals. Maybe some of the dozen's I haven't heard from will make it through and I will finally get to upgrade my Seer badge.

Happy Hacking - Especially to you iOS/ Apple agents

My Ingress-aversary

Today is my Ingress-aversary!

One year ago today I received my invitation to play Ingress. Back then it was still very much the same game, but far few portals and the scanner functions are much more basic.

When I first started playing I was a lone wolf. just playing on my own where and when I could. Which wasn't much and there were only 2 portals in my town and no opposing players. I also played a little on my way to and from work, but really didn't pass too many portals. 

All that being said it took me a long time to level. I had just made Level 5 in June when I went to Disney, which was my first experience in a portal dense environment. For better or worse at that time it was all basically green, so there wasn't a lot of AP to be gained. 

Then in July I met up with our local Enlightened group. I went from a low Level 5 to 8 pretty quickly from there. While I was a fan of the game before, this is where I became addicted. The social aspect of this game is like no other. The teamwork, camaraderie and more make this game like no other and have kept my interest in the game high - even the fun banter with opposing players.

Thanks +NIA Ops for making +Ingress  and thanks to all of my friends I've met the last year playing. 

Happy Hacking!

Ingress Dropps the Ban Hammer

At the end of October NIA Ops posted to Google+
https://plus.google.com/u/0/100972947035928803293/posts/HH5BLJdY1Ye

Attention Agents: 

As a reminder, the use of unofficial Ingress software or add-ons which interact with the Ingress game server or client may violate the Ingress Terms of Service. This includes but is not limited to mobile clients, desktop clients and plug-ins. In an effort to protect the quality of service and integrity of the game for all our agents, the use of unofficial Ingress software or add-ons may result in your account being banned, reset, or permanently deleted.  

Transmission Complete

This wasn't necessarily new, there was nothing new there had been some other reminders like this. What was different though is that numbers of players were reporting that they were banned.

Reportedly the emails banned players received much later read:

We have reviewed your account and it remains permanently terminated for violations of the Ingress Terms of Service, including Section 2. Use of the Products - Permissions and Restrictions. This includes, but is not limited to, falsifying your location and/or accessing Ingress clients or backends in an unauthorized manner including through the use of third party software.

Please check out our FAQ on this topic for more info

This player said that they used IITC.

Apparently this "reminder" had some bite behind it and was directed to players who used IITC or Ingress "Broot" mod.

Posts on G+ and other places started appearing with players stating they had been banned. Many admitted using IITC, Broot Mod or some other 3rd party product which was in violation, others firmly denied it.

I will admit I used the Broot Mod on my phone briefly, but had removed it well before these actions by Google. I also used IITC desktop to a much greater extent. Once I saw the reality I ditched IITC too.

Are using those things a violation of the TOS, absolutely. Were they cheating, meh.

What were the advantages of Broot Mod? In my opinion very few hardly constituted cheating IMO.

• What I liked best was the chart of your inventory. I could see all my Items in one fell swoop. Quick and easy.
• Another feature I liked is that you were able to disable animations like rotating items.
• Another cool feature was the start up was much quicker. Fortunately a later version of the official version added that. 
• Placing your resonators correctly was also easier with this unapproved version as it told you how far away you were from the portal.
• The portal view also allowed you to see how old the portal was. 

All of these advantages were what I would consider convenience and aesthetic. Nothing dramatically altering the game experience in your favor. 

As for IITC, I only used (past tense) the desktop version and I really liked it. It offered the interaction I wish Ingress would have offered. It made working with the game much easier. Some of the features of IITC:

• First and foremost it was much more user friendly.
• Downloadable plugins to further enhance your use.
• Much easier to plan fields
• Player tracker Plug in, you could see where players were recently.
• Sortable list of portals (one of my favorite things would be to track which portals in the area were how old and plan to attacks on the enemy's portals before they earned Guardian Medals)
• You could get the street address for portals often (Great for using navigation to get to unfamiliar portals)
• Counts of portals in a specific area. Good to measure you performance against your opponent.

Once again useful information, but not what I'd consider cheating.

I actually think the Google/ Niantic team should be looking at these things and make changes based on what these products are offering. We've seen that they did shorten the start up animation, and offered a total count of items based on feedback. Hopefully this is just a start.

I Cringe Inside

Wow, I didn't realize how long it has been since my last post.

I've been out there fighting the good fight. I was part of a cool event where members of my faction built a control field yielding nearly a million mind units. I was responsible for clearing the southern most links and capturing the southern target.

But what I wanted to post about today is how I cringe inside when I pass a portal and cant hack it.

This seems to happen for 2 reasons and I don't know which is more annoying. 

First, not that long ago in one of the system updates they apparently installed a script which determines your speed and will not allow you to hack if it calculates your speed is too quick. From what I've read online it appears that they calculate the distance between the last portal you visited and the current one. If your time between the two gives you a speed above ??? then you can not hack, deploy, recharge, etc... 

This system is very flawed. take for example my morning commute today. There is one stoplight I almost always catch. When I'm stopped I hack and recharge it. While I always seem to catch this light it is only for a minute or so tops. Then I get to a stoplight further down the road. Now this light is one I've written about before. As of now it has a level 6 portal on one side and a level 7 portal on the other. I want to catch this light, but almost never do. Well today I caught it and got nothing from either of the hacks. Grrrr.

Now I understand the reasons which have been given as to why this is done:

• To prevent playing while driving---
• I am a responsible adult and do not play in a way which would endanger myself or others. I realize others may not, but that is not an issue with the game that is an issue with the individuals playing. These individuals are putting themselves and others in danger and in most areas probably breaking the law. But Niantic/ Google can't be held responsible for individual's behavior.
• What about commuters/passengers? While I live in a rural area not terribly far from me is a light rail system. Each station has a portal, but you cannot hack those portals from the train. Also, I've been the passenger in vehicles and want to play, but can no longer do so. There is also a portal I use to hit every day on my way home. I would be driving, hand my son the scanner and tell him, "When the hack button lights up, hit it." and he would and I'd get that every day, but not any more. 
• To prevent spoofing--
• Cheaters are going to cheat. Liars are going to lie. Yes this could prevent spoofers, to a certain degree, but maybe if they moved the threshold to a much higher speed one that will not hamper the game play of honest people. 
• By far and away, the vast majority of people play the game fairly. Don't ruin the game on their account we as players will report them, and Ingress can ban them. 

The second thing that makes me cringe is when I'm there looking at a portal and in my mind I can see the portal and it's resonators around it. Unfortunately, I'm with my family and they are not fans of me playing Ingress. A trip to the nearby grocery store has 2 portals on the way and another 3 very close by. After so many times of these "quick trips" being longer than my wife or kids want, I've succumbed to their will. It is just not worth the grief.

Now my plan is to load Ingress on my wife's phone for her and get her playing. She has a friend who plays and I think if she tried it she'd enjoy it. It would be a cool thing for us to do together. My daughter has expressed interest, but she has an iPhone...

Hack, Hack, Hack and then Hack Some More.

So you're a higher level agent now and you don't need to hack every portal you see. What are you  going to do with L2 or L2 items anyway?

Really who cares about that the resonators or bursters you get from those level portals. But as a higher level
agent you should be hacking any portal you come across. Remember, hacking a portal is similar to those video slot machines.

While I do not have validated proof that this is how it works only empirical evidence. It seems that when you hack a portal it is like pushing the spin button on a video slot machine. With lower level portals the ratios greatly favor getting leveled items such as resonators, XMP Bursters and Power Cubes. But you also have the opportunity for non-leveled items including Portal Shields, Multi-Hacks, Turrets, but also items like Jarvis Viruses & ADA Refractors.

A friend in my local community recently posted a screen shot of a Jarvis Virus he had hacked from a neutral portal. I recently got an ADA from a L5 portal.

Once again I have no hard evidence (but remember this is a blog - blogs require no evidence ;) ) but it appears that the standard hack rate for items like a common  Portal Shield is somewhere in the 1:15 range. Items like Very Rare Heat Sinks and Very Rare Multi-Hacks come up in the 1:1500 range. ADAs and Jarvis Viruses seem to come up on the 1:800 range.

To put more empirical proof to this we have seen events where it is announced for X amount of time there will be an increased portal drop rate on XMPs, Power Cubes, and other items. Also, you have probably noticed on Thursdays you will hack a media item of the latest Ingress Report.

So hack every opportunity you get on any level portal. You never know what you are going to get and worse case scenario, you recycle anything you don't want or need.

Happy Hacking!

Ingress Courtesy

I've learned a lot about courtesy to your fellow Ingress agents since hooking up with a local players group. Unfortunately, looking back before I joined the group and was operating solo, I had some bad habits which probably irritated some others in my faction.

1. Recharging - If you are hacking a friendly portal at least have the courtesy to at least put one recharge on it, especially if it looks like you are in a area that this person frequents. You can tell this if you see there name on multiple portals and having multiple resonators on it. So look at the portals as you hack them and see which players are associated with it. 
2. Linking - When I was a lone wolf I thought it was cool to try to create these really long impressive links. I even posted here some of those. But remember, links can not intersect, so by creating this giant link or field that looks good on the Intel Map, you may be screwing other players. Remember you get the same amount of AP for a link regardless of the distance, and you get the same amount of AP for a field no matter how large. 
3. Upgrading Resonators- At face value it may look like you're doing a good thing by upgrading a portal with either higher level resonators. But that may not always be the case. Higher level agents often create pet portals of a lower level, particularly L4 & L6, to be able to hack L4 & L6 resonators. Altering that can screw with others' plans.
4. Upgrading Portal Mods - Just like upgrading resonators, putting portal mods on a random portal my interrupt others' plans. Sometimes there is strategic reason for putting one mod versus another on a portal. This is even more important now that the rules about portal mods have been changed. Where before 1 player could place 4 mods on one portal and replace unwanted mods, now an individual player can only place 2 mods and mods can not be removed. 
5. Communicate - If in doubt get on the COMM and discuss with others. If you are not part of a local group find one. Most places will have some level of a local group. The may have private communication channels beyond the COMM and you can be in the loop on what is going on in your area. But there is nothing wrong with getting on the COMM, in the Faction channel and contacting someone who "owns" a portal and saying, "I pass by ___ portal regularly and wanted to know if you minded me upgrading it." 

So just show a little courtesy to your fellow players and keep the game enjoyable for everyone.

My Wishlist for Future Ingress Development

Over the past 8 months or so there have been many upgrades and enhancements to not only the game but to the user experience. I'm sure our friends at Niantic have some great enhancements to come. Here's my pie in the sky list of what I'd like to see in some form or another.

Greater Number of Items in Inventory

2000 items seems like a lot, but like many of you I am hitting my inventory cap several times a week. I would like to be able to have more items at my disposal. Now, I don't think I necessarily need more at any given time, but I think it would be nice to have more items in a cache. The trade off could be that once you put something in your cache it would not be available again to you for 4-5 days. 

Greater Functionality from the Intel Map

Well first lets say I've been really disappointed with the functionality of the Intel Map. One of Google's strengths has always been Google Maps. So I was expecting more. 

I'd like to be able to search for portals with multiple criteria. For example I'd like to only be able to see blue, L7 & 8 portals with links in a certain radius of a given location. 

I would also like to see more game interaction from the Intel Map. When I receive an alert of a portal being under attack I'd like to access my portal keys from my desktop somehow and recharge my resonators. 

I think it would also be great if we could access our inventory from the Intel Map including being able to drop and recycle items.

I would also like to have the ability to redeem codes again through the Intel Map like we use to be able to. 

Portal Invisibility 

Imagine a portal mad where you can make a portal invisible to an individual enemy. So you have a pesky enemy agent when you deploy this mod you can enter a players agent name and the portal will not be visible to them. But a portal equipped with this mod wouldn't be available to be linked to other portals.

Instantly Create a Portal of a Certain Level

When you deploy to a neutral portal you select what level portal you create and the correct resonators are deployed instantly to make that portal. The same rules apply so an individual can not create a L8 portal. But say I want to create a L4 portal I just select a create L4 portal button and it is done. 

Instant Portal

Another cool item the game could add that could be even more rare than Jarvis/ADA is an Item where you can instantly create a portal without any approval needed. Now if you give it an inappropriate name or make it inaccessible to the public, then it would be removed. 

Offensive Weapons

Think of how awesome it would be to have a weapon which can directly used against enemy players. You can fire this weapon at an enemy who is physically in proximity to you and disable their scanner for some period of time say half an hour to an hour.

Another offensive weapon idea would to have a weapon that has a range of a certain distance and when an enemy passes within its range it would fire at them and do damage to their XM levels. These weapons wouldn't appear on an enemy's scanner or Intel Map, but could be destroyed with an XMP of proper level in proper range.

Scanner Mods

I mentioned some mods which attack individual players, so to keep some balance we could offer some scanner mods. Like a scanner shield. The shield could mitigate damage done by offensive weapons, but the trade off would be it would lessen the range/ power of your XMPs or Offensive weapons.

Another scanner mod would be one which would be interesting would be a mod which you can increase your likelihood of obtaining a certain type of item (resonators, bursters, cubes, keys) but not exclusively. If you had this mod set up to increase your chance of getting XMPs you would still get other items just at a proportionally lesser amount.

Care Packages

When I was a leveling player I had some L8 agents help me out by dropping items for me. Some of these larger drops could take half an hour or more to transfer items. What I'd like to see is a way to build into a package. So I can in one package transfer hundreds of items if I wanted. It could be as easy as selecting an item then, selecting the quantity you want to add to the package. Then the intended recipient could just pick up the one care package.

This doing things in bulk could also apply to recycling items too. So you could instantly recycle say all of your L4 XMPs at one time.

Portal Transport

Say I have some items I want to transfer to another player. If I am at one portal and the other player is at a different portal then, I can select what portal I want to send items too. The portals must both be under control of the same faction and items not picked up within a short period of time would decay.

My First Two Encounters with Police while Playing Ingress

Earlier this week I had to go out of town for a funeral. So Monday evening I got in town, settled in, visited with some people. But by 10:00 pm was bored and had nothing planned to do. So I get on the COMM and announce I'm a level 8 player in town and want to help the local community while I was there.

Pretty soon I had a few replies. The other faction had a pretty large level 8 farm in a neighboring town, they were looking for some help taking down then they also needed help building their farm. I'm always in for blowing up enemy portals. So I offer to help do that. I was well stocked with several hundred Level 8 XMPs and dozens of power cubes thanks to the recent doubling the drop rate for cubes. I got on the road and headed to their farm.

I was blowing their portals up with ease. I went up one street and down the next attacking away and introducing Ingress to my younger brother (unfortunately he's an Apple guy and cant get him to play). I get to one street and even though I'm not familiar with the area I can tell the portals are in a park. I, legally, park on the side of the road in a marked parking spot and start firing L8 XMPs. Combining where I parked and the range on the XMPs I could hit all the portals in the park. By now, I've taken out half of the portals and then...

I saw the unmarked car pass by the first time and didn't make any mind of it. But a minute later he came back from behind be and the lights came on; including spotlights.

The officer approaches, very kindly, and tells us were in a park and the park closed at sunset.

I apologized and told him I didn't realize the street was in the park, but I would leave.

He was friendly and said the sign was not easy to see at night, but the entire street passes through the park and the park continued up until the next street. He thanked me and turned away as I pulled away. I unfortunately had to leave some of those portals, while damaged, still in the hands of the other faction.

I continue driving, my brother holding the tablet and navigating me through this unfamiliar territory. I knock out another couple of portals. I then come up to this church that has 3 L8 enemy portals on it's property. I park on the street. Once again I'm parked legally, on the street, in a marked spot in front of this church directly under a streetlight.  I'd been there for a minute or two then comes the same officer again. He pulls in the parking spot beside me, rolls down his window and asks me, "Are you playing that Google game where you have to go places to claim portals for your team and blow up other team's portals?"

I tell him yes as I show him my cell phone.

He goes on about wishing Google would delete the game and that they have gotten some reported possible burglaries that end up with people playing that game. He concludes by telling me that this is a small, sleepy old town that basically closes up completely at 10:00 pm and asks me to call it quits for the night and come back in the morning.

From my best knowledge, he had no legal reason to ask me to stop, I just thought it better to tell him I would stop. While I do not believe he had the legal authority to have me stop. Since I had left the park he admitted was poorly marked, I had done nothing wrong. But arguing was not something that could have any positive effect for me. Besides it was getting late and I think other than the chit-chat and catching up my brother was over playing with me.

In hindsight, I was an easy target for the officer. I was basically the only person moving around in the town, I had an out-of-state license plate and I was stopping frequently and probably seeming strange to anybody who did see me.

But note to others: If you are approached by police, be calm, be polite, tell them exactly what you are doing, and obey any instructions they give you. It's just a game. This officer very likely did not have the legal right/authority to ask me to stop, but is it worth the argument or discussion? No to me, that is not a booger I'm going to pick.

Decode Ingress has a good post about encountering law enforcement you may want to read if you haven't already: Ingress[tip]: Contact with Law Enforcement.

Happy and Safe Hacking!

Is the Ultra Strike Worth All the Hoopla?

So the new Motorola Droid phones came out earlier this week. These phones were preloaded with +Ingress and when you activated your account on these phones you also got a goody bag of items including several of the the new Ultra Strike weapons. 

Now since these phones have been released Ingress internet sites have been buzzing on how to get hold of the Ultra Strike weapon if you do not have one of these phones. These theories run the full spectrum from crazy to to easy to be true. Some of you have even commented here on rooting your phone and altering your build.prop file to mimic or be seen as a Droid. 

Sounds interesting to me and why I am not a technical neophyte, I have learned that I know/think I know enough to end up getting myself into trouble, but do not know enough to get myself out of it. So I will pass. Besides I do not believe this would fall in line with the game's TOS.

Other than being complete Ingress addicts and just needing to have the newest stuff and try it out, I haven't seen anything that makes me say I need this new weapon. Sure I want to get my hands on one and use it, but I doubt it will be able to knock my socks of.

The fact that you are using one item to destroy one resonator doesn't impress me by itself. What would impress me is if this new weapon were able to do its job and not result in the portal attacking and draining my XM Energy.

The one cool advantage I see with this weapon is that you could strategically go and knock out resonators of your least favorite opponents, just to screw with them.

I'll update if I feel differently later.

Happy Hacking!

GPS Drift

So your right where you normally go to hack/attack one of your favorite portals. You hit the deploy or hack button and get the message that the portal is out of range. Grrr.

Or IMO even worse you think you are at the furthest point where you can deploy resonators, you deploy them just to see they end up immediately on top of the portal making for an easy hit on your newly claimed portal.

You look on your scanner and it shows you are where???

Here's what got me thinking about GPS drift. The image below is from my commute this morning into work. Don't worry fellow agents I was going exactly 0 MPH when I took this screenshot. Just as I was going 0 MPH for the next 10-15 minutes, but that's another rant for another time. Keep in mind I am in the left (the "fast") lane on the interstate here. My GPS drift is probably close to 100M if the ring represents 40M. So if I were trying to hack or deploy, I'd be SOL.

First, your phone is not a military grade GPS, it is more perfunctory. 

Second, because of it's more general functioning ability it is more prone to disruption from weather (even mild/moderately inclimate weather) and obstructions like trees and buildings.

There are some things you can do to help. 

One thing I've found, and I can't explain why, is that you will need to check your phone's settings to make sure you are not set to automatically connect to Wi-Fi. It doesn't make sense to me because GPS is separate from your network connection and operate independently of one another, but for some reason it works sometimes. 

Another reason (beyond general security and not related to GPS drift) not to automatically connect to available Wi-Fi is that you may be just on the fringe of the Wi-Fi range and your connection may be slower than your regular data connection. I ran into this problem at my children's school. I have their school set up as a trusted site and to connect when available because I am active in the school and am there frequently. Well their school has a Civil War historical marker in front of it which is a portal. I had so many issues on that portal. It took me a little while to realize that I was connected to their Wi-Fi, but had such a weak signal being on the street or in the parking lot it made working that portal difficult.

I don't recommend it, but it may help; remove your phone's protective case. To help determine whether removing your protective case will help refer to your owners manual and find where your phone's GPS antenna is located. If the case is obstructing the antenna's reception, you may want to consider a different case. Remember were talking a low wattage signal which travels thousands of miles. 

If you are experiencing GPS drift there are some things you can do:

1. Be patient. GPS drift often corrects itself in a short time. 
2. Move to a clearer location or get outside of your building or car. This will help you get a clearer signal.
3. Force Sync Ingress from the device tab in the OPS menu
4. Restart your phone. Just like when you call tech support for your computer the first thing they want you to do is restart.
5. Load a GPS App. I use GPS Status and like it it also has the ability to clear your GPS cache which can slow down your GPS and even give bad locations. 
6. There are also external GPS antennas for phones, but I have no information on how well they work.

I hope this helps.

Happy Hacking!

Update...
I wrote this post at lunch time today. Now as I get ready to leave work I turn on my scanner to burn up the XM Energy I'd accumulated through the day. This is the image I get. Where I actually am is probably 400+ Meters from where it is showing me. I am barely on the map. This is the worst GPS drift I've ever encountered. I typically show accurately from my office. Wow...