Ingress General Discussion: we're all BRTD now

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Welcome!

The answer by the way appears to be yes. When you start out it asks you to go to the nearest portal. You appear to live out in the middle of nowhere, so said church is the nearest portal. Don't worry though, even exurbs and rural towns have plenty of portals and playing opportunities in their downtowns and centers, so you'll get more of a chance later.

Let me know of any other questions you might have! Also good time to sign up since there's an AP bonus for creating links and fields this week.

(BTW it's on iOS too now)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Oh and by the way if you can make the drive or find a ride, there's an anomaly event being held in Charleston, SC on the 13th. The guys from Google will be there and it'll be really awesome!

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Do I really have to walk the entire way or can I just drive to the parking lot? How long will I have to be at this church?

1-You can drive the whole way. It asks you to walk because most people who start playing have portals in walking distance.
2-You have to be within 40m of the portal to interact with it. So whether the parking lot is enough depends on where exactly the portal is located, but I've found usually that parking lots are close enough (unless it's a megachurch or something)
3-Unless your service is bad and the game lags, you only have to be at a portal for a couple seconds. I drive into church parking lots and head out all the time.

It's on iOS now?! I'll download it once my exams are over.

Has been since the summer actually. You'll also have a much easier time playing in NYC.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Far as I can tell, there's about 25 portals in BK's hometown (the actual town limits), another dozen or so scattered around it, and about 30 in the closest town to the southwest. And the whole area seems to be a stronghold of the Enlightened, which actually is a benefit when starting out since it gives you more level up opportunities.

Also there's about 8000 in the Atlanta city limits and immediate vicinity.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Far as I can tell, there's about 25 portals in BK's hometown (the actual town limits), another dozen or so scattered around it, and about 30 in the closest town to the southwest. And the whole area seems to be a stronghold of the Enlightened, which actually is a benefit when starting out since it gives you more level up opportunities.

Also there's about 8000 in the Atlanta city limits and immediate vicinity.

hometown = Auburn
town to SW = Dacula?

or do you mean Braselton/Auburn? or Winder/Auburn?

I'm living in Braselton at the moment but will be moving soon to Athens where I assume there is also a buttload of portals. Where can I find a complete list of them?

Yeah I was looking at Auburn and Dacula. The actual Braselton town seems to have around 60. Athens has over 1000.

A list isn't possible, but check out www.ingress.com/intel to see the state of literally anywhere in the world. Won't give you exact numbers though, I'm getting those with a tool that only level 9 and above has access to.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

BRTD most of the portals in my area appear to be linked together by the Enlightened in some sort of network that turns its interior green on the map. Will this affect my gameplay?

You're talking about fields. Short answer is no. Making those is basically the point of the game and what they cover is each side's score, but playing under them is unaffected. It does mean though you can get more points if you destroy them.

Will the people who established this network notice when I start disconnecting their nodes, and come try to stop me?

Yes.

What happens then- will someone break my kneecaps?

Nah, they'll just try to put the fields back up. Assuming they care enough or are from the area, if not they might not get a chance and might not bother. All depends on one's individual play style and one very active player can make a huge impact in an area. Those fields (on both sides) go up and get taken down constantly in my neighborhood FYI.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

To put things into perspective btw I've visited 5945 portals.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

BTW one of the top Resistance players in the world (can't remember his exact name but it's something Batman related) lives in Atlanta.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

How do you choose between the Resistance and Enlightenment?

Sure seems like fearing the aliens would be a very Tea Party-ish thing to do, which makes me really surprised BRTD picked it. Do you just ignore logic like that and join whichever team your friends are on?

I thought the Enlightenment ideology sounded very heretical and blasphemous, and the whole "the foreign powers are good and just want to help you less advanced civilizations!" is basically imperialism and colonialism all over again. Also if you read any of the plot tie-in material it becomes clear the Enlightened leader is a lunatic.

Huh, I didn't realise that Ingress involved the real world. I for some reason assumed it was a Second Life type game, and BRTD was at koala/Bushie levels of inactivity

Ugh yuck. The thought of living a Bushie-esque lifestyle itself makes me pretty sick. I've walked 1722 km playing it by the way.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I looked around on the Internet and most people said "pick whichever side is weaker in your area. It's more fun that way and the backstories don't matter at all."

But aliens were here and real life and wanted to help us, I'd be all for it, and I'm sure the Tea Party types would be trying to shoot them. Then again, I am a sci-fi fan.

The Enlightened fundamentally could be considered neoconservatives. Think of Bush's Iraq invasion and how it was supposedly going to make things better for everyone in Iraq and wasn't an imperialist venture.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Might I point out that where BK lives is basically teabagger central and Enlightened dominated, while in the progressive stronghold of Minneapolis this happened.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There was also an analogy to Tokugawa/Black Ships/"Resistance is basically like Juche" in there somewhere.

LOL! I suppose I can sort of see where the Juche idea comes from but still...LOL.

On the flip side Resistance players tend to consider the Enlightened to be a Scientology-esque cult.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Is it on iOS now? I may get it over Winter Break.

It's been on iOS since the summer. There's a couple things lacking in the iOS version but only hardcore players really care a whole lot about those and it doesn't prevent you from levelling up, we have an iOS player who's already Level 12 in Minnesota.

On the flip side Resistance players tend to consider the Enlightened to be a Scientology-esque cult.

One group of Ingress players consider the other group of Ingress players to be like a cult, eh?  Interesting.

More in terms of how the backstory portrays that side. Your average Ingress player on either side isn't much different from the average one on the other side of course.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Haha. If you get into it you'll find reasons to.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's not that difficult to destroy resonators, I've destroyed 41,635. It just is because you guys are low level and don't have access to good weapons. Once you hit L6 you start being able to do serious damage, and at L7 and L8 there's basically no portal you CAN'T destroy if well supplied, it just takes longer depending on how well defended it is. Leveling up to L8 is actually pretty easy if you are in a dense portal area and have teammates assisting you, some people have done it in marathon runs less than a day. Key is to find some portal dense area like a sculpture park and fill in and link up what you can. Probably fastest way to gain AP.

Oh and Flo: That doesn't surprise me, Florida Enlightened are notoriously weak just about everywhere except Jacksonville.

Update: I am now level two but I still haven't taken any portals because they're all really high level, is it supposed to take forever to capture a portal? Also in Winder there is apparently a portal at the funeral home, I think that's a questionable design decision

Oh there's plenty of those around here. Remember you don't have to go into the funeral home or even hang around it long to play. There's one near me that's a portal due to being a historic building on the national register of historic places, but you can easily hit parked on the street nearby or walking by on the sidewalk.

The only types of locations that'll get portals banned is if they're on private residential property, if they're in locations where they might cause potential interference with emergency services (you'll find fire stations as portals, but they were from the beginning. New ones aren't being accepted, and in fact they won't even accept things like statue and plaques near fire stations now), and if they're on the property of a non-university school and not accessible from off property. Portals in cemeteries are quite common and somewhat controversial too but it's clear Google isn't ever going to disallow them, despite a recent revelation that it's not only likely illegal to play Ingress in a cemetery in Tennessee, but that it's actually a felony (the law is obviously aimed at cemetery vandalism, but consists of a long list of prohibited activities, one of which is playing a "game or amusement" in one.)

This also means that yes, portals do exist on military bases and in some pretty restricted areas.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Yep, I've been able to average over 500k AP a week, that's basically what I was pulling during the summer.

And yeah BTRD I looked on the Intel map and I think I saw some portals in the international terminal at ATL (as in, the far side of the TSA checkpoint)

Basically every airport has portals in places like that. However theoretically anyone can access such places as long as they have a plane ticket. There are some crazy inaccessible portals. For example last year some guy who works at a nuclear facility in Nevada was able to put some portals not accessible to anyone besides him and his fellow workers to a very strategic use for the Resistance.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Hey check out the Intel map now and Hawaii. I actually know some people who helped do that and am talking to them now.

Hell yeah! My favorite bar (a block from my house and Kansas City's oldest) is a Resistance stronghold!

All of Kansas City is a Resistance stronghold. It's long had a reputation as the most heavily Resistance major city in the US. For example, check out the scores here: https://plus.google.com/+Ingress/posts/MUJKqdwcH2j

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

And in case you miss it this is what I'm referring to:

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Check out the training missions for more info.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Lief don't worry about attacking green portals at this time. You won't do much damage. Just hack them for more gear and you get 100 AP for each hack. 25 hacks = Level 2.

Main thing to do is link together blue portals. Get them in a triangle and you get a field which is the fastest way to gain levels. Also claim any white portals you see and fully deploy on them, that also gets you big points. It's 500 for claiming it and 250 for having the last reso plus 125 for each individual one. That equals 8 x 125 = 1000 + 500 + 250 = 1750 for building up a white portal. And if you do it to three and then link them into a field, it's 313 for each link and 1250 for the field. So 1750x3 = 5250 + 939 for the three links and 1250 for the field and thus 7439 for each of these you can fully do. And now you see how I can often pull in half a million points a week.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

What happens when you go up in levels? Do you get better items from hacking portals?

Indeed. And better weapons. Once you're Level 8 you can crush any portal if you have enough weapons.

Also what do I do with all these portal keys in my inventory?

You can do two things with them. One is recharge portals which you gain a slight amount of points from. The other is link to other portals to make links and fields. To link, both portals need to have a full deployment of 8 resonators, be of a high enough level to travel the distance (this should not be a problem on a university campus), not be under a field themselves, and have no links blocking between them.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Whoa the Enlightened really took over Columbia University! Not really a bad thing though at this point, since you only get points for hacking green portals, not blue.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Hey BK's got four badges now. And up to 153 portals visited. Just 6195 more to go to catch me!

Lately I've been working on my missions badge.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Hey BK: https://plus.google.com/events/cgpfcf623gl9ci48jkmdf7bgvnk

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Oh yeah, if you go, you can meet Zeke, my team captain from Chicago. He'll have interesting things to say.