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.

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

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!

Ingress Version 1.28.1 Released

I haven't been following +Ingress  as much lately for a variety of reasons, so this release caught me by surprise. But this was a very welcome surprise.

I woke up this morning, and my scanner showed it had automatically updated Ingress. (By the way if you haven't set your phone/scanner to auto upgrade this is an app I definitely recommend allowing the auto upgrade). Initially I didn't think much about it, but when I launched Ingress on my way to work I was really impressed.

The first and most noticeable upgrade is Portal Vectoring. This is an awesome tool. If you have no portals in view on your scanner you will get pop ups with direction and distance to nearby portals. You can also immediately see the portal level and which faction controls that portal.

This solves one of my major complaints about Ingress. If you were in an area with you are not familiar with, it could be hard to find portals. I am really excited about this portion of the upgrade.

Other important features include the release of 5 new portal mods.

• Multi-Hack - Now there are "blackhat" methods of multi-hacking a portal. Now it appears that you now have the opportunity to "legally" multi-hack. But the number of multi-hacks will be limited before the mod burns out.
• Turret - This is another long awaited mod. But I am not quite certain of just how powerful they are going to make this mod. What we do know is that it will increase the number of defensive attacks on an enemy hacking a portal. But will it increase their strength? Will it automatically attack enemy faction players who get within range even if they do not attempt to hack? These are  some of the rumors out there.
• Link Amp - As the name implies this will amplify the distance between points of possible links
• Force Amp - This mod boosts the force of an attack on a portal
• Heat Sink - When hacking a portal you must wait 5 minutes between hacks. If you try to hack again too soon you get a message telling you the portal is in a cool down period and you must wait. This mod greatly reduces this time. The question remains: will this prevent portal burnout?

Happy Hacking