Wednesday, September 24, 2014

How to prepare for an Ingress Anomaly

How to prepare for an Ingress Anomaly

Connor Tumbleson, (2014).

Since there seems to lack any information for what to do at Ingress events / anomalies. I present my version, in hopes to help you.

How to prepare for an Ingress Anomaly.


Bring a battery / power-brick
No matter your phone. I doubt it'll be able to run Ingress and other team related apps for four hours straight.  Clusters run back to back, so you won't have time to run home and charge. Plan ahead, bring a mechanism to charge.

Bring supplies
These events use supplies and that is no stretch of imagination.  I'd expect to use in the range of 800 - 1400 items.

Have lots of Power Cubes
Without XM, you are useless. You might as well have a dead battery. You can't deploy or fire without XM, and even scoring the cube here and there off hacks will only give you another 30 or so seconds.

Go in with a team
There are people who start planning from the instant they know the event is coming. There is nothing worst than thwarting a massive team effort unintentionally, because you didn't know something. Find your team when you arrive for instruction or get involved early to make sure this doesn't happen.

Keep it clean
At the end of the day, this is a game which is suppose to be fun. Don't do something you'd regret. There is no need to sabotage bikes or injury the other team. Keep it cool.

Play as teammate
Going rogue in an event is tough. The splash damage in any cluster from 100+ people will destroy everything within 150 meters. You will have zero luck going rogue. Don't do it.

Understand the scoring
While these are different for each event / anomaly. The general time it is more points for volatile portals and for a field covering the cluster, and a small amount of points for non-volatile portals. There is no need to fight over non-volatile portals. Leave those for the lower levels.

Use supplies in a smart way 
The only important parts (score wise) of the event are the measurements which occur in each cluster. This is when a "snapshot" of the area, portals and fields are calculated. Thankfully you know the "5 minutes" this measurement will take place. This is when you will be deploying / firing non-stop. If its not that time, don't engage those who will be wasting supplies.

Don't multitask during a measurement window
If you are in a 5 minute measurement window, the worst thing you can do is leave Ingress. You have no idea when the measurement is coming. Save the notifications for afterwards. Every agent is needed for these 5 minute segments.

[Editor note: Measurement windows for #Helios are 10 minutes]. 

Play to your abilities
If you don't have the supplies to withstand a constant deploy/fire L8 race at a portal. Take your efforts to where they will count. Find non-volatile portals away from the action and link / field. (Assuming there is no huge field being made).

Understand a volatile showdown
What happens when you get to a volatile portal and 40 other people are standing around it? The measurement window opens around +- 5 minutes from the top of the hour. Its an all out fire / deploy from both sides. Defending is easier, since you just have to mash the deploy button. As an attacker, remember to always have agents trying to deploy as well as attacking. For a split millisecond, it may be a neutral portal, and that's all you need to claim it and switch to defending. (HINT: Put the person with the fastest connection as the deployer, not someone balancing 3G on their Nexus S)

Get intel!
If you are individually browsing Google Plus during the event to identify the volatile portals, then you are making a mistake. Get someone who can't attend physically to do that for you.

Understand the location(s)
The instant one cluster ends, the next one is underway. Thankfully you have 30-45 minutes till the volatile portals are announced for that cluster, but you still need to relocate to that cluster. Sometimes they will be in walking distance. Sometimes not. Get an understanding prior to the event how you will travel among the clusters.

Plan ahead
If you are planing to come to an event. Today is the day to begin planning. Find the Google Plus groups, start farming / keeping supplies. An organized agent is a smart agent.

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