Farming With Fellow Ingress Players - A First Experience

I had my first farming session with fellow Ingress players earlier this afternoon. It was an amazing experience. People whom I know not of gathering solely for the purposes of empowering one another. Met up with @dahuaidan and @xiaohuaidan. Their names imply a lot. About 15 of us turned up.

We began deploying resonators to power up portals till they reached EP8 status. One of the players, @blacklantern, took the lead in voicing out portals that required more R8s. In a short span of 10 minutes, we were happily hacking portals for the most sought-after items available to any player in the Ingress community. I was busy memorising glyph signs to get more out of each hack.

The farming event carried on for approximately half an hour. Someone alerted (shouted) the rest of us that a member of the opposite faction had arrived. True enough, the resonators that powered that EP8 portals began to lose energy rapidly. We were under siege! My phone kept displaying that a @JerrickEX was constantly attacking our portals. One by one they went down.

At this point, we should have called it a day. But, didn't. What happened next occurred so quickly... it was a blur to me. I was simlutaneously trying to deploy shields, replace worn out resonators, recharge weakened ones. This bespectacled geek cannot keep up. In short, just the presence of 1 member of the resistance faction wiped out our efforts. And he used ADA Refactors on 4 of our portals. Did he get tired of blasting XMPs?

The afternoon quickly became sour. @JerrickEX sat in proximity and continued his onslaught. We were in, what other members termed, a "deployment war". Soon after, @NTUchemist and @biochemist appeared. I couldn't understand why they delight in causing pain to others. Not long after, a stray link was thrown across our playing field. A number of us went to investigate and realised that more ADA Refactors were used by the opponent. We took out those portals. Another stray link appeared. This one missed our playing field completely. This confrontation persisted for an hour. By which time I was tired and utterly pissed.

Long story short, we decided to call it a day soon after. In retrospect, we really should not have engaged the opposing faction when they arrived to ruin the party. But something continues to bother me: How could @JerrickEX arrive within 30 minutes of us deploying an EP8 farm? Is there someone from the Resistance who is monitoring the Enlightened? Who could coordinate, strategise and execute an attack as though it were a military exercise?

Regardless, it is heartening to know that free-spirited individuals continue to fight the Resistance. Hey, it is a fun alternative to desk-bound games. I had fun.