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???

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.

Portal Submission Tips

Following up on my last post on complaining about portal submissions I wanted to give my tips to help maximize your chances of having your portal accepted. I'm not saying this will guarantee acceptance, but will increase the likeliness of them being accepted. Many of these things come from the Ingress Portal Submission Guidelines, others come from posts on +NIA Ops and others come form personal experience and elsewhere.

Lets start with the portal you are interested in submitting. Good portals are:

• Public/Municipal portals-
• Libraries
• Water Towers
• Public Park Signs
• Post Offices
• Train, bus or other transit stations
• Fountains
• Gazebos
• Memorials
• Art
• Statues
• Sculptures
• Murals
• Plaques
• 'Artistic' Graffiti 
• Buildings
• Historical
• Unique
• Interesting Design/Architecture
• Religious
• Churches
• Mosques
• Synagogues 
• Temples

Portals that are generally not accepted include:

• Police Stations*
• Fire Stations*
• Hospitals*
  * These items were once commonly accepted, but Niantic has since stopped accepting them. The rumor is that they are even removing these portals.
• Schools
• Bridges
• Homes (non-historic/unique design)
• Landscape Images

So now you've selected your target portal you would like to submit lets talk about actually submitting it.

Photo

There are 2 methods of portal submission through your scanner. One is taking an existing photo which is in your scanner and selecting share and then share it to NIA Super Ops. Select the location, Enter the Title and description and then submit. Pretty easy.

The second way, and from what I understand is the way Niantic prefers, is in the game touch your scanner on where the portal should be. Select "New Portal", confirm the location (you will probably have to make a slight adjustment because it will locate to where you are), enter the title and description and you're done. Again pretty easy.

Photo Tips:

• Use your scanner's camera
• Activate GPS tagging on your scanner's settings.
• Take a quality picture 
• Do not include people, faction type objects (frogs, smurfs, androids, etc)
• Do not include identifiable information such as license plates

Title

Your title can make a difference in getting your portal submission approved. Your title should be brief, concise, catchy and accurate. Your title can help tell the reviewer about the portal. For example my local fire department has a pretty cool mural on the side of their building. Now when submitting it I wouldn't want to call it "________ Fire Department" regardless of what it you are submitting and how good the picture is or the mural is that title is begging to be rejected. A title with a greater probability of being accepted would be, "Mural Honoring Firefighting Heroes."

Likewise a boring title could also work well for things which are commonly accepted like libraries, water towers, post offices work well like "My Towns Water Tower."

Description

Descriptions are not always necessary. Many possible portals are self-explanatory like water towers and post offices, but other portals a description will help the reviewer rule in your favor. I've found this is particularly helpful with historic buildings, unique architecture and local unique businesses. 

Remember you know why you thing the location is portal worthy, the reviewer may be thousands of miles away from you and is impartial. You need to convey to them the significance of your portal. 

Now while you want to to give a good description, you don't want to copy and paste from Wikipedia or some other source. 

With these tips I think you will find your acceptance rate increases. 

Good luck and happy hacking!

Quit Your Bitching!

Of the many people, places and things I follow on G+ I also follow +NIA Ops. You get some good information on game updates, portals of the week and more. But since I follow them I also see all of these ridiculous #PortalAppeals.

People if your portal is rejected get over it. The vast majority of them can be answered by looking at the Portal Submission Guidelines.

If you think it qualifies as a valid portal just resubmit it.

Here's a portal of a church I submitted but got rejected. I figured it was because of poor picture quality, so I was going to go resubmit it the next time I was in the area. But before I even made it there it was accepted without an appeal.




And another thing stop referring to the folks that approve/deny portals as "portal approval monkeys" or likewise, they're just doing their job. Have some respect.

Cheater, Cheater Pumpkin Eater

I last posted about Ingress banning players who used IITC or Broot Mod while playing and how I didn't necessarily consider those cheating. Here is what I see as the cheating problem in Ingress. Let me define my premise, cheating is doing something outside the the rules or norms of the game in order to gain an advantage. No advantage, no cheating. 

Spoofers

Just to refresh your memory, spoofers are people who use certain applications to falsify their GPS location. With these apps a player could sit comfortably in their home and hack level 8 portals in both Paris France and Paris Kentucky without leaving their couch. 

How easy is it to do???

Apparently pretty damn easy. Just go to the Play Store and search for GPS Spoof or Fake GPS. You'll see dozens of apps. -- And no I haven't done, nor would I do this.

Niantic has done some to thwart spoofing, but it causes another problem. They have put a "speed limit" on scanner activity. It appears that if your speed between two portals is greater than approximately 35 mph, you are prevented from not only hacking, but doing basically any scanner activity which you can gain AP or items from Hacking to recharging. There has also been discussion that this is a safety measure to prevent playing ingress while driving.

In my opinion that is not a legitimate defense against spoofers. It is more a hindrance to real players.  Here is my real life example. In the picture to the right my local team did an event in one van we had 9 level 8 agents, and had more in other vehicles. We would at times have to wait at certain portals a few minutes before we could take any action. This became very frustrating. We weren't speeding, driving hazardously or anything else (okay we had 9 people in a vehicle which seats 8). But this hampered our enjoyment of our day and event. 

I don't know the answer to how to solve the spoofer problem, but the speed limit is not it. 

Illegitimate portals

I believe submitting a knowingly illegitimate portal is cheating. You've probably seen post on G+ like this one where people find illegitimate portals. Some how they got through the portal approval process. In this picture someone actually was successful at submitting their TV in their home. 

Other illegitimate portals include:

• Intentionally submitting inaccessible portals. There is a player in our area who lives in a gated community. The community has fountains, statues, gazebos and a park sign which would all normally be legitimate portals, but they are inaccessible to the public. Even a Level 8 XMP wouldn't reach any of them. So for a while he had his own private level 8 farm as he would invite other members of his faction in to upgrade and hack. Do you need to guess what type of mods this has on it?
• Fake portals. If you follow some of the G+ posts you will see things like backyard playground sets, private garden statues, gnomes, and the like which are not unique or interesting. 

The only reason people submit illegitimate portals is to gain an advantage and as such this is definitely cheating. Sure I'd love to sit at my couch and hack my personal portal in my living room, but that's not what the game is about.

Multiple Accounts
Here's a problem I see first hand and it frustrates me. It doesn't matter if your second account is with the same faction or the opposite faction both are equally bad.

Children's Accounts -  In my area we have a player who has played multiple times under both factions and each time this player also gives their child an account. This player is quite obviously playing both accounts as I see the "child's" username over the COMM at the crazy hours of the morning I play and/or I will see the child's account activity on the Intel Map desktop COMM with no activity from the parent. How ridiculous. This person is either obviously cheating or a horrible parent or both.

If a child wants to play and is legitimately playing, I have no problem with that. Heck, I've been places with many portals before with my son and handed him my phone and let him go hack portals. If I were to get him his own phone and he wanted to play Ingress I'd let him. Even though it is a TOS violation for children to play. If done legitimately, there is no advantage gained other than another player for your faction.

So these cheaters can now single-handedly create L6 (or more with more accounts) portals. Which you will use to hack and gain items gaining an advantage.

Storage Accounts -This is something opposing players in my area were talking about and dare I even say bragging about, having a second account specifically for storing items therefore getting around the 2000 item limit. They swear they don't play with those accounts, they just store items with them. Give me a break...

This too is obvious cheating. The game is set up with a 2000 item limit. As much as I wish it were more or keys wouldn't count or something similar, that's the way it is.

Opposing Accounts - While I haven't seen directly or suspected others of this, I was reading about it. A person creates accounts with both factions, then plays as one fully charging portals, linking, creating control fields, then logs in with their second account destroying what their other account created and rebuilding for the first account to destroy again. These cheaters gain advantage by being able to quickly gain AP and level themselves quickly, or sometimes they spy for one faction, the other or both.

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!

Don't Hoard Your XM Energy

Your XM Energy bar is at 100%! Great right?

WRONG!

Unless you are heading immediately to a mission to blow up enemy portals, there is no reason to have your XM Energy at 100%. 

Why???

Just doing absolutely nothing but going about your daily activity, you are bound to be able to pick up extra XM Energy. Here is my strategy.

In the afternoon when I'm ready to head home from work I have discovered that even as a Level 8 Agent I can bring my XM energy level all the way down to 25% and be back at 100% by the time I get home. When it is time to leave I get on the scanner and look at my keys and see which portals I need to recharge. 

I look at a couple of things as I scroll through my keys. First, I look at portals which are in areas where they may be more prone to attack. Then from there I judge which ones I either need to recharge the most or the ones I don't think I will be able to recharge directly. 

After that I will look at my "pet portals" these are portals that are important to me for convenient farming. Fully charged portals have a higher likely hood of giving more/better items.

But I do wait to deplete my energy until I am ready to leave, because through the course of the day I will get an alert that I have a portal under attack. Depending on the portal and it's strategic value to me and the local group I will recharge it causing the enemy to use more items to take it. Very rarely will I use a Power Cube to defend a portal. Most portals just aren't that important to me because I know I can just take it back if needed.

I will also remotely recharge my portals if I know I'm going to be heading out to lunch and Ingress isn't in the plans because I know just driving around town I can recoup a fair amount of XM Energy.

So do not hoard that energy! Use it. Calculate how much is your minimum you need and stay at that level until you are ready to go attack.

Happy Hacking!

Defending Your Portals

So you've taken the time and energy to take a portal and now you want to keep it, but that is often easier said than done. The enemy faction is constantly blowing it up. And now you have to rebuild it.

First understand that it is not possible to make an impenetrable portal. No matter what you do a Level 8 player with enough L8 XMP Bursters can (currently) take down any portal no mater how well defended it is. But some times it is a war of attrition you know they can take it, but make them work their butts off for it.

Keep it Charged
The easiest thing you can do is keep your portal fully charged. This basic step helps no matter what other tactics you use. A weaker portal is an easier one to take down.

Portal Mods

Portal Shields - Your portal shields are your basic building block of portal defense. Their defense rates range from 10 mitigation for common shields (the green ones) to 30 for the very rare ones (the pink ones).

Force Amplifier - These are nice mods to use in conjunction with other portal modifications, but you will not want to stack your portal with Force Amps because after deploying the first one you get less protection from each additional one. The first one deployed does double the damage to an attacker.

Turret - This great portal mod gives your portal more attacks.Like the Force Amp you do not want to stack these up on a portal because of diminishing returns. You will want to combine it with other portal mods. Placing a turret on your portal will have your portal attack an attacker twice but will also give a hit bonus of 30%.

Links
A not so commonly known fact is that links, either incoming or outgoing, provide a defensive bonus to portals. One link gives about a 10% defensive bonus to a portal. Each additional link gives less of an increase until you have 8 links. A portal with 8 links gets a 50% bonus, but after 8 links there seems to be no advantage.

Other Portals
Another interesting trick you can use to protect a portal is use other portals around it to defend it. The picture below is a local level 8 farm. The portal circled in red has no defensive portal mods, but rather heat sinks and multi-hacks. The portals around it have shields force amps and turrets. This is great for farming. We have 14 L8 portals and one is a very fruitful portal. You can walk the path of this artsy park and each sculpture has a portal. Then the monument in the center has the multihack and heat sink. As you walk the path, you can hit each portal and every 2nd or 3rd sculpture hit the monument. Walk the path a few times and you have hopefully loaded up on some goodies. The outer perimeter portals protect the inner one. An attacker would sustain significant XM losses and have to use many additional XMP Bursters to take down the farm. It's not impossible, and happens somewhat regularly, but it takes a lot of resources on their part to do.

Portal Keys

Yes, Portal keys can be a very effective defensive tool. When you get the alert on your scanner that you have a portal under attack, start recharging the heck out of it. Eventually your portal may fall, but once again you have cost the attacker to deplete their inventory much more than they otherwise would have. 

With these tips hopefully you can defend your portal well and atleast annoy the heck out of any would be attackers.

Happy Hacking

Most Valuable Commodity - L4 Resonators

If you are like me and you have been leveling up, you might be excited when you start to see that you're getting Higher level gear and you may even start to grow some discontent when you hack a portal and get lower level items.

But not so fast there ..

Your lower level resonators are very valuable, especially your L4 resonators. Think about it:

• If you are a Level 8 to fully power a portal by yourself you need:
• 1 L8, 1 L7, 2 L6, 2 L5 & 2 L4 Resonators to make a Level 6 Portal
• If you are a Level 7 to fully power a portal by yourself you would need:
• 1 L7, 2 L6, 2 L5 & 3 L4 Resonators to make a Level 5 Portal
• If you are a Level 6 to fully power a portal by yourself you would need:
• 2 L6, 2L5 & 4 L4 Resonators to fully power a Level 5 Portal

You get the picture. 

But there may be strategic reasons for building lower level portals; i.e. being able to readily hack the L4 and lower level items you need.

I can't tell you how many times I haven't been able to complete fully charging a portal because I haven't had L1- L4 Resonators. It is irritating. So do yourself a favor and be sure to hack/build lower level portals regularly so you can build your stock of L4 and below resonators.

Now, the same does not hold true for the XMP Bursters. As you move up your strategic need for lower level XMP Bursters goes down. I generally keep XMP Bursters of my level and 2 below and strategically use my lower level ones as not to waste the higher level ones. 

But don't don't just drop them or recycle them. Help an up and coming player of your faction and arrange a drop.

Happy Hacking!

Size Doesn't Matter

In the world of +Ingress  , size doesn't necessarily matter. One great way to earn XP quickly is finding a group of portals relatively close together and hack them all until basically they burn out.

Here's the plan; hack it as often as possible over a few days, whether they are under the control of your faction or not. Build that inventory and keep track of the keys you get. then when you feel you have a fair amount of keys go in and build your links.

Be sure to to this strategically. In this case smaller is better. Link the portals which are closest to each other and build an interlocking series of small control fields. Yes, your control fields will yield very few Mind Units (MU) for your faction, but you are earning 313 AP for each link and 1250 AP for each control field.

You want to link the closer ones to ensure you do not block out other potential links and control fields. I've done it before and created too large of a link which prevents me from executing my master plan and now I can't create new links or fields.

No your control fields won't be these huge sexy multi-million MU control fields, but remember you earn the same weather it is 1MU or 10,000,000 MU. IMO until your are a level 7 or 8 don't worry too much about the global faction score, first worry about leveling up and getting yourself to the point where you can then worry about making the huge control fields.

Below is a local historical area where I hacked for a while to build the inventory of keys I needed to execute my plan. When all was said and done I created enough portals, links and control fields to earn over 130,000 AP in just one night. Not too shabby. Not to mention all the AP I earned building that inventory.

Happy Hacking.

Mid-level Player Player Strategy

So you're a level 4, 5 or 6 agent and want to continue to advance, but it's your finding it hard to. Don't give up.

First, hack, hack, hack! Build that inventory - especially XMP Bursters. At this level your bursters aren't powerful enough to do massive damage to portals your level or higher, so you need to rely on quantity. You will also need a source of XM. So if you are not hacking in a portal rich environment, you will want to make sure you have some power cubes. Hack, for a few days then plan your attack. When you think you have enough items, keep on hacking.

Second, do your research! Get on the +Ingress  Intel Map and take a look at what you have available and what makes a promising target.

Here's what I look for.

1. A portal which is my level or lower. I might do one level higher if the portal is weak
2. Links - The more the better. Links do not have any bearing on the portal's defensive strength, just points for you. You get 187 AP for each link you destroy.
3. Control Fields - Like links the more the better and they don't have anything to do with the portal's defensive strength. You get 750 AP for each control field you destroy.

Here is an example of a portal I'd want to attack as a level 6.

• Level 5 Portal
• 5 Links
• 4 Control Fields

Attacking and flipping this portal would give you 6285 AP

• Destroying 8 resonators at 75 AP each       = 600 AP
• Destroying 5 links at 187 AP Each             = 935 AP
• Destroying 4 control fields at 750 AP each = 3000 AP
• Deploying 8 resonators at 125 AP each      = 1000 AP
• Capturing a portal                                      = 500 AP
• Fully charging a portal                                = 250 AP

This gives you the most bang for your buck.

Here's an example of a portal which is weaker and I might consider for a L3 or even a L@ with a lot of resonators and the ability get more XP through other nearby portals or through power cubes.

Here's a screen shot of a portal I attacked that had 13 links and 8 control fields attached to it. I got 10781 AP for:

Work smarter not harder my friends! This will make your leveling up happen a lot quicker, but does require some planning on your part.

Happy Hacking!

My Best Day Yet

Today (okay its 2:00 AM so technically yesterday) I had my best day ever playing +Ingress .
It started at lunch time. There was a nearby L6 portal which I noticed on my drive in to work had a number of control fields and links coming from it. When I got to work I pulled it up on the Intel Board. At that time it had 7 links and 5 control fields. I decided I would hit it over lunch.

So I head to my local Taco Bell then went to the enemy portal. It now has 9 links and 7 control fields. I pulled up and parked right on top of the only L8 resonator, but wanted to hack it first. This portal was well protected with just 1 hack I lost 600 XP.

I started firing my XMPs in rapid succession (boy I miss being able to use Carousel Method to limit my XM losses). About 30 L5 XMP Bursters and 4 L5 Power Cubes later it fell.

Look at the points! When all was said and done between hacking, bringing it down & redeploying this one attack was worth over 9000 AP for me!!!

The down side is that GPS drift really screwed me. I noticed that drift was pretty bad when I was attacking too. I was in my car on the edge of the portal's resonator range when I claimed the portal. I started deploying resonators and when I did, I did not look at the field. All 8 resonators basically deployed directly on top of the portal. An easy target for the other faction to claim.

Later this evening. I decided to hit the road. I had a lot of portal keys and wanted to put them to work. I think I claimed about a dozen neutral portals (there aren't many players where I live) made many links and control fields. I did make one bonehead mistake and created a link to the wrong portal which caused me not to be able to create a control field I wanted and now I will have to create 2 adjoining control fields, but after I obtain another portal key. Guess who is going to be burning out that portal hacking it. I will deploy a Multi-Hack on it to help expedite the process.

Happy Hacking!

Ingress Wonderland

I recently took a family vacation to Walt Disney World and naturally played a lot of +Ingress .

As I have mentioned I live in a rural area and only have 6 portals in my town which I control almost the entire time. I was amazed at how many portals there were. Unfortunately for me nearly all the portals were controlled by the Enlightened and I couldn't gain any AP for hacking them, but I could hack away, link and get some nice items. Below is a cool screen shot form Disney's Animal Kingdom showing just how many portals there were. If I could find a Resistance portal I could flip it.

I actually got my first Turret, and Heat Sink while down there.

It seemed no matter where I was waiting in line there was a portal or two ready to be hacked. Additionally, there were so many portals I didn't have to worry about running out of XM. Now, the one thing I did have to worry about is running out of battery life. Unfortunately, I did think about getting a portable charger but just too late. Even with there being very few portals from the other faction I am pretty sure I would have been able to level up from just deploying resonators and creating links. I almost never made it past lunch with any battery life at all.

So note to all heading down to such a target rich environment: get yourself a portable charger of some sort. If you are a serious Ingress player you will thank me for it.

On the down side, I left with a number of Disney World area portal keys. I tried reaching out to others on the COMM to arrange a drop but had no takers which I thought was pretty weird. Oh well I'll just end up recycling them for additional XM sometime.

Happy Hacking!

Commercial Portals

I've been noticing quite a number of what I will call "Commercial Portals" popping up near me. What I mean by commercial portal is one that is there seemingly to promote a business. Heck, the company I work for created a portal for their main building.

Also, near where I work a billiards hall put up a portal, a T-Shirt company did one and many others.

I'm not sure what I think about this. On one hand I love that there are more portals available, but on the other hand I feel it cheapens the game, especially the more blatant ones. Think how watered down the game will become if every strip mall has half a dozen portals.

I already have issues creating control fields because my link would intersect another link. it will only become more difficult with extreme quantities of commercial portals.

What are your thoughts?

Happy Hacking

Great Source for XM

So have you ever been out hacking portals, and your XM levels are too low to do anything? That last portal you recharged took the last of your XM and you can't wait the 20 minutes for the portal to recharge?

Well I stumbled upon a great place to get a fair amount of XM. It may even be as good as an unclaimed portal or a level 1 portal.

What is this great source for XM, you are probably asking?

Your neighborhood cell phone retailer. Add to that every strip mall seemingly has at least one. Each retailer has hundreds of XM there for the picking.

Just a quick tip that may help you.

Happy Hacking!