Dev Diary: Dronenet

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  • I szczerze? co jest coraz bardziej gra staje się przetężona i koncentruje się na wydawaniu pieniędzy...

  • I'm very happy to see this new feature! However, I want to ask why does Glyph Hacking not produce the same yield as a in-person Glyph Hack? Every time I use the Drone to Glyph Hack it never seems to measure up to the item counts in a in-person Glyph Hack. Was this intentional? Or perhaps the coding isn't set correctly? I would hope that by Glyph Hacking via the Drone I am still getting credit to whatever Badges involve with the process. Or by using a Drone are we relenquishing the additional items/points for the ease of reaching a Portal by Drone?

  • When I noticed this feature I erratic, until I read the full article including "but it can't be used to complete a mission". Every now and then I stumble upon a portal that can't be hacked due to covid19 restraints or simply because someone decided to build a fence.

    Some mission set creators maintain their sets very well, but not all. Some even left the game completely.

    This makes it impossible to complete some of those mission sets and I was hoping for some help of the drone. Unfortunately and imho a missed opportunity :-(

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    Hack and glyph hack medal is counting up.

    Explorer doesn't, since it has its own drone version counting up (no medal yet).

  • ViolaRoseViolaRose ✭✭✭

    I'd like more range a drone can hop. Maybe mk2 increase range to 1.5km or even 2km per jump. (The max i've been able to get is 1.25km, for reference, using load the key trick before drone view.) Or be able to deploy a drone to a portal you already have a key for - but travel time. (Like it can only go 1km per hour or something.)

    Mk2 could have a lower cool down between moves/hacks. Or the ability to hack the same portal over again without having to move it. (To make it viable to hack remote portals if you go to them.)

  • Esta muy bien la idea de tener un Drone, pero algo mas de provecho tendría, creo que es ya es hora de darle una función mas al Drone. Saludos 🇵🇪

  • Just get locked with drone inside red circle. Get there from portal marked yellow but unable to jump further by grey arrow. And someone locals do the same and get also locked inside red circle portals 🙃

  • Love it, finally I can glyph from my home!!

    would love to glyph more often though 😊

  • I'm just a little concerned that although probably conceived in lockdown with great intention. It does go a little away from "let's get out and walk" mentally of most ingressers. Worried about the short term impact of the game now being able to go have a walk around town at your bodies expense.

  • I think a Mark II drone to assist with completing missions or a tilt action on phone to tip the scanner a few feet in that direction.

    a Mark III drone could be used for transporting 4 items to an agent in need of gear (hoping from portal to portal with reduce cool down times than the Mark I and Mark II drones.

  • I'm flying my drone since a few weeks now and it is still amusing.

    My drone reached some places that I now want to visit myself. I like to set a target and then reach it by drone.

    Features versus bugs: some consider this as bugs, but I consider them as features that make the drone more complex and thus more challenging and satisfying.

    • assymetric hop capability: in some cases you can jump from A to B and not the other way round. (In cities you also have one way roads). (The tool on Reddit allows to predict this.)
    • Key preload. Longer jumping if you have the target portal key. This allows to go and hello your drone off it's stuck.
    • Invisible drone. I think the drone should stay invisible. The drone has no defense. It can only move once an hour. You can't dodge the enemy. The only defense is stealth. At present you already have to take care when navigating contested area.


    Present games

    • try to reach a certain portal. Or fly from home to work. It involves exploring the portal map to find a navigable way. Some guy on Reddit has developed a tool to calculate reachable portals.
    • Race between players from A to B, try to be the first to reach a certain portal
    • Explore your neighborhood without physical barriers. My drone crossed river Scheldt without stunning ease.
    • Submit new portals to build a bridge (provide a stepping stone) to allow your drone to escape a closed area.

    Future ideas

    • drone with payload capacity. Use your drone to deliver items to nearby friends. Limited capacity (10 items). Drop-off at portals.
    • Pick-up is a different feature. You could or could not implement this also. (Alt: Your friend should send his drone to your house if he wants to deliver stuff in the other direction.)
    • Drone hunting. Make drone hunting opt-in. Drones are invisible by default. If you want to hunt drones, you should set your drone to visible and send it out. Only then you can see other drones. If your drone is sent back (returned) you lose your sight until it's out again.
    • Drone range is an issue but I agree it's a trade-off. In portal dense areas it's overkill (some guy reported to have flown 30 km). In rural areas, this 600 m isn't enough. You can't even leave your home. Where I live, portals are medium density, I have a few square km to explore but can't reach any city.

    Looking forward to future developments.

  • K4CharelK4Charel ✭✭✭

    Random idea...

    Do you think the drone is strong enough to carry a capsule of say 100 XMPs? And drop it at the right location?

    Obviously if the drone get **** down then the cap drops on the ground...

  • My five cents for additional features:

    Drone fight by a special hunter drone, serveral attacks needed to destroy a drone, one action per 30 minutes, limited "spots" by moving to target drons portal

    Drones are visible by other drones within certain range

    Only one drone on a portal, means a drone can block other drones exept hunter drones

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    One small change I'd like to have added.

    Have unique hacks with the Drone work towards Explorer

  • Ilya95Ilya95 ✭✭✭

    Hello NIA,

    Thank you for the new mechanics which encourages us to study the surrounding portal network from different perspective! Drones are great, and it is to be emphasized and honored that altering of the primary gameplay is quite slight. If you look for options to enhance the drone impact, consider the possibility of friendly portals recharge with drones. The drone XM storage may be limited for the single flight. This option would be interesting for players who haven't got acquainted with drones yet, and it won't be harmful for gameplay.

    There are several points worth mentioning:

    1) "Drone ready" notification would be beneficial;

    2) "Furthest drone flight distance" is not quite a "distance", it is rather a "maximum drone displacement", as I understood the terms translation. In its current implmentation this stat piece is not medal-worthy, as it is limited by the size of portal-dense location available for the player. The limitation of this parameter may be overcome in several ways;

    a) Replacing the displacement with actual distance and applying the restriction of incrementing the stat only for the jump from/to portals unique for the flight. It would prevent players from maximizing this stat on rural clusters, but the search of stable route in the cities would be encouraged;

    b) Addition of the drone transfer via link. It may be nerfed by the introduction of "drone charging" requiring time and drone XM;

    c) Replcaing the displacement with the sum of all flights displacements. As it would encourage the deploy-move-recall tactics, the sum may be weighted, reducing the contribution of low-distance flights;

    d) Other possibilities of jumps in portal-loose area;

    3) If the force recall-related medals are planned, highlighting of drones by beacons or other consumables may be interesting;

    4) Drones have a huge upgrade potential which may motivate agents for L12+ levelup, recursions or Onyx medals aquiring. The upgrades may include instant jump/portal cooldown possibility, drone XM capacity increase, the amplification of the drone-hosting portal level for the drone owner, hack output amplification, several drones unlock, jump distance increase, force recall resistance probability etc. The drone enhancement with in-game progress will leave no player doubts if drone-based gameplay worths trying.

    Have a nice and productive day!

  • DJDonegalDJDonegal ✭✭✭

    I admit - I have not read every post on this thread. I got through the first couple of pages and was so thoroughly depressed by some of the suggestions being made that I skipped ahead to here. I will go back and read other posts later.

    How can people think using drones to flip portals is within the spirit of the aims of Ingress?

    We cannot - cannot - introduce pay-to-win features into Ingress. It will break the game. P2W just about works for PoGo because for the most part it's PvE. It's a game of collecting for your own personal vainglory. And I say that as a L40 PoGo player...

    But Ingress is almost entirely PvP. To introduce pay-to-win elements such as a drone you can buy to flip portals. Attack portals. These are anathema to Ingress and to do anything this drastic would end Ingress as we know it.

    If drones are to be successful, they must remain as passive as possible. They must influence other aspects of the game as little as possible - they must be their own game within Ingress as much as possible.

    So I would actually suggest nerfing the Mk1 before we start looking at Mk2, Mk3 or however far this is intended to go.

    Mk1 - Nerf it, and these points should apply to all iterations of the drone. No VR kit from hacks. Instead of, like normal hacks, getting kit for two levels above and one level below the portal - ONLY get kit from the level below the portal. To discourage using it sit on P8 farms from your sofa and encourage using the drone in more interesting and inventive ways that don't lead to an imbalanced impact on the rest of the game.

    Mk2 - You can jump to a portal within 5km rather than within scanner view, to open the game up for more rural players.

    Mk3 - Introduce the ability to travel along links belonging to your own faction to improve the challenge of travelling as far as possible before being recalled.

    Mk4 - Same as Mk3, but you can travel along links of either faction.

    Other ideas - drone only missions banners, separate from current banners. Using airport portals to teleport to other airport portals for the purpose of continuing the journey in an entirely new location.

    And to compensate for nerfing - introduce some badges. Maybe each drone iteration has its own badge to be earned so you can challenge yourself with different abilities. This would be comparable to the Great, Ultra and Master Leagues of PoGo...

  • TheAuraStormTheAuraStorm ✭✭✭✭

    I’ve really liked the idea of the drone, and definitely see it as a more viable idea of keeping your streak going than recharging.


    The drone has a lot of potential to enhance gameplay, but also to damage the balance of gameplay, and the usual pay to win (P2W).


    I like how the drone has introduced new stats that our scanners are tracking. This could even pave the way to new medals.


    When I first heard of the drone, I first thought that if we could sent a drone out to hack a key from a portal, this would be great when microfielding. I’m sure that we’ve all been microfielding and been one key short for a field, or realised we could make a split field, the ability to send your drone out to hack for a key, to save walking to a portal and back would be great, for balance being able to do this once per hour means it’s a convenience tool to be use when needed, rather than legalised spoofing.


    Also for when doing a mission, we all must know the feeling of being physically unable to hack a portal while doing a banner / mosaic, the last time it happened to me I wanted to ****, cry and punch a wall simultaneously. Just as what I suggested with the ability to hack, being able to deploy your drone to hack for a mission could be an absolute life saver!


    I like the balance of one hack per hour, it limits the use and makes the drone a convenience item, rather than discouraging exercise and movement. Perhaps a premium item could be some kind of battery / charge that resets the burnout of the drone, allowing one immediate hack. I see this being purely for convenience, and not to the detriment of the balance of gameplay, but being an optional premium item that could generate revenue.


    These are my thoughts anyway.

  • grendelwulfgrendelwulf ✭✭✭✭✭

    I mean all you can do is hack and aquire items. That's just a few tion of the game

  • I think there’s a lot of possibilities with the drone but most importantly if it gets any extra features than it has now then it 100% needs to be visible on intel or in game so the other faction can attempt to **** it down. With 1 hour jump at around 600m a time that gives your enemy plenty of time to stop your drone

  • Be nice to be able to hack the portals more than once. There be Lv8 portals in area that will cause trespassing. I can get to one with a drone, but can only hack it once.

  • milofargmilofarg ✭✭✭
    edited June 2020

    Maybe it has already been mentioned, but I'd like to be able to put the drone at any portal in the world by just using coordinates, and explore places that I'll most likely never visit. It's a virtual drone anyway so I don't see why the agent's location should be a limitation on the start position. The existing rules for jump and recall could apply, so if you wanted to move to new coordinates outside the visible area, you'd have to recall it, and the distance would be reset.

    I would also like to just have a "reporter" drone that stays on the portal even if it changes alignment to capture videoes during anomalies, ops, field art or shard jumps.

  • GreenVamGreenVam ✭✭✭✭✭

    In this form, the drone is not a useful tool for the agent. Can a drone hack a remote portal 1 time per hour? But with your feet, you can reach that portal and crack it 8 times much more productively!

    Fly to a remote portal without the ability to get a key? Alas, it’s easier for me to get to the portal than to use a drone.

    I was in favor of introducing drones from the very beginning of this idea. But as I see it now, this idea is ABSOLUTELY useless.

    And yes, why does the agent have only 1 drone?

  • GreenVamGreenVam ✭✭✭✭✭


    It is this principle that makes drones simply useless.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm holding 10x more lv1 resonators than usually, thanks to the drone. Also, now I will never became out of gear because I can collect some at home.

    I can't be in the street all the time just to farm, but I can open the app sometimes during the day, and that few hacks will provide me enough gear to be able to play (when I finally had time for it) without stopping to farm before.

    If you think the drone is useless, you have the right to choose not use it. As I said before, if you want more stuff go, for a walk. The core features didn't change and everything is working the sameway as always. I believe you just want the drone to became a sponsored spoofing tool.

  • QaGuyQaGuy ✭✭

    I like to have the balance.

    About drone's attack ability. There are a lot of posts about money spent to create fields in mountains, military bases etc.

    I want to spend some money too on drone which would be able:

    1. It lives 1 hour (time is discussable) after deployment
    2. It flies every 15 minutes (needs discussion). ( it means it could be deployed in 3 jumps from the target portal)
    3. No more fly once attack is started
    4. It cannot hack
    5. It is visible to anyone on the scanner.
    6. It has predefined capacity to carry XMPs only
    7. Attack lasts 1-2 minutes.
    8. Attack is done in random places inside the area surrounded the target portal in circle with radius 80 meters
    9. Drone drops all it has on board if it died (portal flipped, time limit end, attack end).


    XMPs only cannot destroy L8 portal with Aegis shields. It will require multiple drones from a few agents.

    We will be happy to remove some annoying anchors. Niantic will be happy with our money.


    It is an idea.

  • joecainjoecain ✭✭✭✭✭

    Ingress - coming soon to PS4/Xbox.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    It might actually work. I wish someone makes a mod for gta or watch dogs, adding portals to link and online. A game like that would be fun.

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