Thursday, July 17, 2014

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

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

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.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

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