A big (and somewhat boring) part of Ingress is farming. Farming is when you seek out higher level groups of portals, usually close together (hence the term "farm"), and hack them for gear. The idea is that if you and several other put a little in, you will get a lot out, just like on a farm. 8 people each donate an L8 resonator, half of them donate mods (shields, force amps, turrets, multihacks, etc) and you can each hit it 4 times in 4 hours, essentially getting a lot more than you put in to it. If the farm stays up more than one day, you can hack it going to and coming from work. Nice, easy painless way to collect gear.
If you hack enemy portals, you get less gear (usually) and take some damage but on the plus side you get 100 AP.
If you farm friendly portals, you get more (again, usually) and better gear, but you do not take any damage and you do not get any points for the hack. It is sort of like going to your neighbor and saying, "can I have a cup of sugar"
Most local factions have a farm or two (L7 or L8) they farm on a regular basis to keep them stocked with the higher level gear needed to remain active in the game. Since it takes many L7-L8 players to make a good farm, there is usually a sense of "ownership" to that farm and normally the rival faction will tend to leave the farm alone unless there are a lot of people who maintain it, then it becomes a bit of a challenge to see if the rival faction can take it down before the host faction can keep it up. Part of the game and most of us accept that. It can be fun.
In smaller areas/communities with few maintainers, the farms usually are left alone unless the farm becomes huge and begins to tip the balance of power. Up where I live, there are a couple of hotly contested areas so they never really stay in control of one faction very long so calling them "farms" is not really accurate.
Now sometimes, a group (8+ people) of high level players from the same faction will come in and set up a farm (with heat sinks and multihacks), with the sole intent of farming it for several hours or days to build up gear and then move on. If you can be part of one of those organized gatherings, get in quickly to claim your share.
In my neck of the woods we have a small cemetery with 7 portals in it, 6 of which can be "drive by" hacked (hacked from the comfort of your automobile/cycle). The cemetery has been an occasional L6-L7-L8 farm for the Resistance, lasting a few weeks before someone comes in and knocks it down. A couple of times in the past it has been done by an L15 looking for a nice point haul with a few L8 XMP's...while disappointing to those few who maintain it (3 or 4 L8-L9 agents and every once in a while a few L9-L10 will help) We understand...the agent is trying to level up and this is mostly low hanging fruit (unless we can get enough AXA shields at one time to defend it).
However on a couple of occasions it has been taken down purely as some sort of revenge towards one or two of the maintainers. To me that is just silly. If I took the time to seek out every L7-L8 farm that was maintained by someone who attacked one of my portals, I would not have any time to farm! Besides, I just link hunt. Taking out an entire L7-L8 farm is wasteful no matter which faction you belong to.
Taking out L8 farms, especially smaller ones seems wasteful. I purposely left one alone in Plano (75/Park area) and had hoped to farm it but some group on the Resistance decimated it. Maybe they thought it was getting too big? Not sure. Anyhoo, a few hours later the toads had it back up so I am happy for them. Each side needs at least one local high level farm. Of course it did not last long as some other Resistance member took it out again. The next day it still was not back up so Waynea1, PapawTexas, and I filled it out, sans any L8 reso's (I was out...grrr) and linked it a bit for points, then left. The toads will have it back up and hopefully it will stay a while.
So, am I wrong? Should the small farms be left alone if they are not a real threat to the rival faction?
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