Flip Card

flip card is an item which immediately converts a portal to its faction. There are two types of flip cards: the ADA Refactor flips an Enlightened portal to Resistance control, while the JARVIS Virus does the opposite. Flip cards cannot be used on neutral portals, nor on portals which are already aligned with the target faction. Using either type of flip card on a Machina portal neutralizes it instead.

Usage

To use a flip card, the target portal must be within your action range (40 meters). Open your inventory and select the flip card you wish to use. Tap the “Use” button to see the nearby portals. Select the portal you wish to flip, then tap the “Confirm” button to use the flip card. Flip cards cost 1,000 XM per portal level to use. (For example, it costs 8,000 XM to flip a L8 portal.) The scanner will not allow you to drain your reserves to 0 XM, so it is not possible to use a flip card on a portal two levels or more above your own (because the maximum capacity of your reserves will not be large enough to contain enough XM).

Effect

An agent who uses a flip card to convert a portal to his or her own faction will gain ownership of the portal and all its resonators and mods. (This is how an agent can end up owning more resonators or mods than they’re supposed to be able to have on one portal.) If a portal is converted to the opposite faction of the agent who used the flip card, ownership is transferred to the non-player accounts __JARVIS__ or __ADA__.

Using a flip card on a portal destroys all links and control fields attached to it, but grants no AP, and does not count as a portal capture for the user. This means that the “Resonators Deployed,” “Portals Captured,” “Unique Portals Captured,” and “Unique Portals Visited” statistics do not increase.

After using a flip card on a portal, that portal will become immune to flip cards for one hour. If you use a flip card on an immune portal, the flip card is wasted. Neutralizing the portal does not reset the immunity timer.

Using a flip card on a Machina portal neutralizes it instead.

Strategy

Because they are so powerful and are very rare drops, you generally wouldn’t want to use one on a portal when the same result can be fairly easily obtained in other ways. For example, it’s a waste to use one to take over a low-level enemy portal, when XMPs can do the job easily. Generally, they are better used on very strong enemy portals.

Note that using a flip card on an enemy portal that already has some L8 resonators means you need fewer L8+ agents to make it L8. For example, suppose two L8 agents encounter an enemy portal with seven L8 resonators. Without a flip card, the best they could do is destroy it and build it into a L6 portal. With a flip card, one agent can flip the portal and the other can deploy a L8 resonator, making the portal L8.

At first glance, the ADA Refactor might seem worthless to an Enlightened agent, as might the JARVIS Virus to a Resistance agent. However, they have their uses. Perhaps most importantly, they can be used to remove friendly links which obstruct your plans. Before flip cards were introduced, you had no choice but to wait for one of its anchoring portals to decay or be destroyed by an enemy agent.

During an anomaly or other event where you must maintain control of a crucial portal, it can be useful to use a flip card on it before you build it up. “Inoculating” the portal like this will prevent the enemy from flipping the portal themselves for one hour. Of course, this works better if the portal is owned by the opposite faction initially, but you can flip a friendly one, blow it up, then build it up again.