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Our local smurf never seems to be able to get his desk portal above Level 5*, so being the helpful Enlightened agents that we are, we've captured his desk portal and bumped it to Level 6. We've deployed a Very Rare Shield, Rare Shield, Force Amp & Turret onto it.

Now according to this reddit post adding the Turret increases the chance that they will get hit for double XM damage (critical hit), as well as increases the chance that they will actually get attacked when they hack the portal. The Force Amp doubles that damage done by the portal. I'm assuming that the Force Amp will stack in a multiplicative fashion with any critical hits so he will actually be hit for 4X damage by the portal.

According to the values in the JSON posted here (scroll down to portalHackEnemyCostByLevel) it costs 300XM to hack any Level 6 portal, but it doesn't specify how much damage the portal will attack with, the chance of an attack occurring, and if the damage is augmented by the FA/T combo. The last one, I'm going to assume is true, it doesn't make sense for the FA/T to not increase the damage done to the player.

My question is, are there hard numbers on how much XM damage a portal will cause if it's hacked/attacked and how likely it is to actually attack? I'm trying to work out if it's strategically advantageous to let his portal stand at Level 6 and only let him hack it 4 times, taking increased damage each time, or if we should get him to destroy it (by fielding off it), and rebuild.

*(cough, no teamwork, cough)

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    If this guy is your only opposition in town, you should up this portal to lvl8, add a very rare heat sink and a very rare multi-hack. The more he can play, the more you can play yourself.
    – ch7kor
    Commented Sep 17, 2015 at 8:34
  • I'm in a major city. I have no shortage of play, it's just funny to watch them flounder, unable to synergise as a team.
    – JamesENL
    Commented Sep 17, 2015 at 8:35

2 Answers 2

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Each turret causes 30% more damage. Additionally, the first turret causes the attack rate to double. Further turrets will still increase the attack rate, but not as much.

Force Amps double the damage for the first one, and decrease after that.


Portal Damage has been very well documented. All above numbers apply to the base damage, plus maybe the optional chance of a critical hit. Your L6 can do him a base of 1125 XM damage, and up to 2587.5 XM of damage (5175 for a critical hit).

Portals do not increase damage the more you hack them. It's just pure randomness when you get hit. Also, he'll only be able to hack it four times within the cooldown period - after which it resets.

As he can't boost his portal past level 5, it's more advantageous to not give him a free L6 portal. For starters, he will lose XM, but he will also gain free AP for hacking enemy portals. Additionally, you're now giving him access to L5-L7 gear (weighted towards XMPs). Let him destroy it by doing whatever you have to. He'll get fewer nice things, and you won't have to maintain it.

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    DecodeIngress hasn't been maintained for over 2 years, I'm sure those numbers are no longer correct.
    – JamesENL
    Commented Sep 17, 2015 at 5:10
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    @JamesENL Unfortunately, there aren't any good updated references that are openly available. Plus, those numbers seem pretty accurate from what I've seen in-game.
    – Kaz Wolfe
    Commented Sep 17, 2015 at 5:13
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Force Amp + Turret increase damages, but even with that damage taken just by hacking is not an issue, especially if he hacks only four times with 5mn between hack.

Since Devra virus, about july 2014, hacking rate of power cubes has increased a lot, so FA and T are merely an annoyance. They are just marginally more useful than link amps. Use them on unimportant portals to work on your enginner badge.

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