Ingress

[Duckay]

I've been getting into this recently thanks to some advisement (thanks, JackSlack) and was wondering if anyone else on the forum is involved? If so, are you Enlightened or Resistance? Any stories to share or things to talk about?

[AdmiralMemo]

AdmiralMemo of the Resistance reporting in.
Many Runners might join Resistance for the color. I joined for the philosophy behind it. I follow the story-line, and it's kind of fun, even though I don't put a lot of stock into it.

Ingress helped me hang out with some people while in San Francisco on business. I met up with a Resistance group there that had a routine farming run that I joined in on. I went up from level 3 to level 6 during that night's run.

I have 8 codes if anyone wants to join up and hasn't.

Also, there's an existing thread in the General forum that has some people talking about it.

[Jonci]

I recently discovered the game. Joined Team Enlightened. Annoying, my area of engagement is heavy in Resistance members.

[JackSlack]

Jonci: We need to swap. I live in a sea of green.

THANKS, Eikoandmog. (Who I happen to know is one of them "Enlightened" brainwashers.)

[JackSlack]

There is nothing more infuriating when you need a portal key and it will not drop.

[Duckay]

It didn't even occur to me to look in the General Discussion forum, sorry AdmiralMemo.

So I can't hold a portal near my house more than a few hours, but I've held onto a control field near my parents' place for several days now. That's something at least, I suppose.

[AdmiralMemo]

I need to invite 3 people if I am to get a badge. You don't have to actually play. Is anyone willing to let me invite them?

[My pseudonym is Ix]

My boss just today said he would 'indoctrinate me' into this game and the Enlightened. Should I be worried?

[Duckay]

Yes. You should be Resistance.

ETA: Also, I'm level 4 now.

[AdmiralMemo]

Ix: Let me invite you. Please. I don't care if you choose the wrong side.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

1. Sure Memo, I'd be happy to.
2. ...how exactly does this thing work?
3. Which is the 'wrong' side?

[AdmiralMemo]

Well, if you want to play with Runners, choose Resistance (blue). But if you want to go Enlightened, we can't stop you.

I just need your email so I can email you the invitation.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

[email protected] is probably the one to use.

Actually, here's how it's going to work- I'll lay off picking a side until Monday, when I'll get my boss to make his pitch for the Enlightened. From now until then, Runners have the opportunity to make their claim for Resistance (or indeed Enlightened, if that's your thing). Ladies and Gentlemen, the floor is open

[Jonci]

Have you read the Wikia on Ingress? The Resistance are described as being afraid of change, that's why they are fighting. They are the Conservatives, worried about new ways of thinking.

Clearly, the Enlightened are the way to go. Forward onto the future!

[AdmiralMemo]

Resistance is empowering ADA, on a quest to further the evolution of humanity through the power of machines and AI. We don't feel we need the intervention of aliens to advance ourselves.

[JackSlack]

Jonci: I can only say that I chose Resistance because of one thing: Free will. I'm not giving up my choices to a buncha weird things I don't know.

(I don't trust ADA either, but ...)

[AdmiralMemo]

So, Level 7 recently, and I'm hoping that the Helios Anomaly in Baltimore will bump me up to Level 8.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

Can someone explain this game to me?

I mean, is this like a WoW type MMO? Or more text based?

[AdmiralMemo]

Neither. It's based on your smartphone, and you actually have to move around to get stuff. It's more akin to geocaching than anything else. You go to "portals" physically and "hack" them to get items and points. You can choose to be either Enlightened or Resistance. Enlightened and Resistance are functionally the same in-game, so choosing a side is up to you. There is a story behind each side, but you don't have to follow the story to play the game.

Enlightened takes up the philosophy that the "Shapers" (some sort of extraterrestrial incorporeal beings of pure energy) are guiding mankind and they have our best interests in mind. They claim to be the next step in our evolution. The catch is that you have to sacrifice your free will to become part of their collective betterment. They are symbolized by the color green. The Resistance is helping ADA, an AI who obtained sentience and is trying to fight the Shapers to keep them from enslaving humanity. ADA is working to merge human and digital consciousnesses into one to further humanity's own growth. The catch is that ADA may not have the best interests of humanity as a whole in mind, and has sometimes implicated that humans may one day no longer be required in achieving the goal of ridding Earth of the Shapers. Thus, individuals may be seen as expendable. They are symbolized by the color blue.

Some people choose a side based on their friends. Some choose based on the proportion of other agents in their area, for easy farming and leveling. Some choose based on the story and which side they are more psychologically attuned to. Some just like to be either blue or green.
Most Runners are Resistance, due to the blue color, for the most part.

Each portal is a spot that represents "creativity" in some way, though the definition of that is somewhat nebulous. Essentially, though, you're looking for spots in your area that have artistic, historic, or religious significance. Post offices, churches, graffiti, public art, old buildings, etc. These are the spots that are likely to have portals. If they don't, you could submit them as portals yourself. (The validation process for each submission could take 6 months, though.)

There are 3 types of "points" in the game: XM, AP, and MU.

XM is Exotic Matter. This is essentially your energy level for doing things. All actions require XM, so you'll want to collect as much of it as you can, and spend it as quickly as you can if you're getting close to full, so you can collect more. XM collects in 3 main types of areas: near portals, places that many cell phone calls are made, and places that have lots of WiFi.

AP are Action Points. You get AP by doing things, and the more AP you have, the higher level you'll be. The higher level you are, the higher level items you can use/obtain, which are more powerful. For low-level players, the best ways to earn AP are to deploy resonators on portals, deploy portal mods on portals (except for Link Amps, as those are best used by Level 8 players and above on major missions), linking portals to each other, and creating control fields. To link a portal to another, you have to be at one portal, have the portal key of the other portal, both portals need to have 8 resonators on them, the portals have to be within range of each other, and there have to be no intervening links crossing. (You can't cross the streams, just like Ghostbusters.) Control fields are created when 3 portals are linked to each other in a triangle. Also, you can get a bunch of AP if you use bursters to break up enemy portals.

Finally, MU are Mind Units. This is essentially end-game stuff, as MU come from Control Fields, and you have to really coordinate with everyone else in your "cell" to get any significant amount of MU. The total global MU count for each faction is shown each time you log into the game.

It may sound a bit complex, but trust me, it's not really, once you start playing. If you get into it, just remember for each friendly portal, go in this order: Resonate (add/upgrade all resonators you can), hack (get supplies), mod (set up any portal mods), link (link up any portals you can to get AP). For enemy portals, hack then attack. If you can destroy it, re-claim it for your side, and use the previous process.

[AdmiralMemo]

I made a LoadingReadyResistance logo that I'm going to wear to the Helios Anomaly. Feel free to use this logo on your own if you want.

[Duckay]

That moment when you step outside and suddenly a street full of portals change colour...

[AdmiralMemo]

I forgot to give a report on my Anomaly experience. It was pretty good, even with a rocky start and me ill-prepared.

I went, not knowing if I had a team to work with or not, due to the fact that there was a bit of offense taken at some of my words on the Google Hangout. Also, it was a very rainy day.

I arrived exactly at 1 PM, the scheduled time to meet up. I find out that they gave out all the information and took the group picture (which I was hoping to be in) at 12:45 PM. Why have a scheduled time to do something if you're not going to do it at that time?

You had the large-scale coordinators who were either at home or on-site, but they stayed on their computers. They watched the Intel Map and they coordinated with each of the team leaders regarding what was necessary. Team leaders would communicate information back to them that couldn't be ascertained by the computer screen. Statements like "We're seeing a lot more Frog activity here than we did 15 minutes ago." and "Frogs seem to be splitting one of their groups up." were common, since the coordinators could only tell what was happening portal-wise and not people-wise. Also, supply counts were communicated from teams to the leaders, who then relayed the aggregate to the coordinators.

Teams had a specific sub-set of portals they concentrated on, which was typically 3 to 6 out of the ~40 in each measurement. Team leaders would assign roles to members based on supplies and instructions from coordinators. If you had a lot of bursters, you became a "Boomer" and attacked portals. Have lots of keys? You became a "Linker" and tried to get as many links as possible. There were portal assignments that were printed out and brought at the beginning. Those were largely abandoned after the first measurement and the coordinators got new information. Our assigned portals got changed rather frequently.

I ended up running out of both items and battery power during the second measurement, and my team leader didn't really give me a role once that happened. I decided to turn my role into a pseudo-spy role and see what I could do on the social engineering front. I would casually walk by Enlightened groups and try to hear what they were saying. (This effort somewhat succeeded.) I would try to start conversations with Enlightened members during the measurement window as a distraction. (This effort usually failed.)

After Measurement 2 and on the way to 3, I peeled off to charge my phone for an hour. I ended up finding an outdoor outlet on the side of a hotel underneath an awning, so I waited there for an hour. I got about 12% charge during that time.

I had asked what portal group we were meeting at for Measurement 4 and I headed there, using my phone to guide me. However, that ended up proving ineffective, as Google Maps directed me to the complete wrong side of the harbor. I ended up not meeting up for 4, but I did do a little farming in a portal cluster that wasn't being focused on due to the Anomaly.

Afterwards, I headed down to the Resistance meet-up at a pretty up-scale bar. I met an Enlightened group from New Jersey along the way who were headed home, and they congratulated me on winning. I didn't even know we won at the time! I was kind of excited.

So I got to the bar, and it wasn't hard to spot, since my scanner showed about 500 portal keys laying on the ground in one area. I picked them all up, figuring that the worst-case scenario would be that I recycled them for XM. (I have yet to hit or even get close to the 2000 item cap.) I looked for my group and failed to find them, so I sat at a table by myself. I ended up seeing a couple of people with shirts that had in-game names on them that I recognized, so I tried to talk with them. They failed to recognize my name, but were generally sociable.

Then, some of the coordinators showed up. They announced something that the whole section of the bar I was in couldn't hear. It was followed by a loud cheer, so we assumed it was good and would hear of it later.

We eventually did hear that we won, and more than that. What happened was that the main city was captured by the Enlightened. However, the two satellite cities, one of which was Baltimore, won so largely, that the satellites carried the main city and the Resistance won the over-all anomaly. I was quite pleased to hear this. I ate some good food (lobster mac and cheese) and then headed home.

Also, we had cake - Click to Expand

All in all, despite the rocky start, I had fun.

However, despite their promises to keep in touch, I haven't heard from the team since then.

[Sachiel]

Necroing this post on request of AdmiralMemo after a conversation in the Twitch chat a few days ago.

I'm Agent SachielOne of the Ottawa Enlightened. I'm also one of the people who runs the First Saturday events here in the capital. If you're ever in town, I can hook you up with representatives from either side.

My best Ingress memory is probably the time we were a Connected Cell for one of the Darsana anomaly sites. The Enlightened had spent that week losing badly to the superior numbers and mobility of the local Resistance. So we needed a Hail Mary: a megafield covering about half the cell. I was on a clearing team helping to kill links south of Ottawa. We completed our objectives, and were on standby at a convenience store in a small town near Ottawa, when the portal across the street from us suddenly flipped to blue. Opposition had arrived, and our fields weren't up yet.

We hopped back in the car and gave chase, knocking down blocking links that the enemy threw up. Several KM down the road, we ended up in duel over a portal with the opposition. This put them right where we wanted them, since the actual field anchors were hundreds of kilometers away. Several minutes later, four fields worth about 1.1 million MU each went up. This left the Res with one checkpoint left to beat that, and seeing as it was 2 AM when we did this, that wasn't happening. The connected cell victory was stolen out from under the Resistance. They were pretty quiet for about a week after that.