Aiming for that perfect score? Wolfram Kresse has done the math for you :-)
via Anne Beuttenmüller
Originally shared by Wolfram Kresse
(tl;dr: link to table of how to optimally reach any amount of APs up to 3000 attached below)
After becoming L8 almost10 moths ago, and after merely 31 days, I never really cared about AP anymore, and trying to achieve some smooth or special number wasn't really that interesting to me either, since it all had been done before.
But sometime last month, when I glanced at my profile, I noticed that just about a mere 10k were left to reach 5 Million. That sounded like a round enough number to make it worth my while.
So the first thing I did of course was...I went home and hacked together a small C utility, printing me the optimal ways to reach arbitrary AP differences. :-D
OK. Starting point was 4989037 AP. Well, at 10k to target, one still had every freedom, nothing to worry about. Only after approaching to about 2000-3000 one should be starting to take care what was happening. So I checked the Intel map, and checked out the three closest enemy portals...nice, two fully deployed, one already chipped, one field, three links...all in all 7911, so 3052 remaining.
3052 AP...hm, 222725 possible combinations to get there. It should be possible to limit that amount somewhat. So I disabled all useless and stupid combinations (such as recharge/upgrade/destroy more than 10x, etc.).
That left me with 31726 combinations.
OK, let's avoid all "dangerous" AP sources (meaining, anything envolving attacking, as it's quite difficult to control, and it can easily happen that you destroy just that one resonator or link too many).
Aha, only 285 possible combinations left! It should be possible to do something with that. And the most optimal combo my tool spat out was: 3x hack enemy, 1x create field, 2x deploy reso, 4x create link. That sounded quite manageable. Well, hacking enemy portals shouldn't be a problem...there were way too many around :-/ a partial green one was around as well, so deploying would be possible, and 1 field plus 4 links is pretty easy going.
So I grabbed a jacket and ventured outside. Eliminated the three portals, deployed, placed two links. What's the counter saying? Hey, that's fewer points than expected! o_O Did some neighbouring portal get scratched? Checking the log...WTF, since when do you get points for deplolying mods once again?? Argh!
Well, luckily I took with me a list of the best methods to reach any amount of AP between 0 and 3052 :-D
So I checked the now remaining 1513... 2x hack enemy, 1x first reso, 4x deploy reso, 1x create link. First reso is stupid, there's no grey portal around...it's convertible, of course, but it would still take an almost empty portal. What else is possible? Nice, a severely crippled portal with only two resos remaining. Looking good! Went there, killed it.
The result? 1363 AP, or 3x hack enemy, 1x first reso, 2x deploy reso, 1x create link. Perfect! :o) So I quickly deployed two resonators, hiked to the nearest blue portals, and as the final act placed some haphazard blocking link to wherever. Bingo! :o)
BTW, the maximum AP difference that's impossible to resolve is 616, meaning for any number larger than that there is at least one possible combination to make it. When filtering out the "dangerous" attack combos, this number increases to 1307. So if you plan to reach a certain amount of AP, you can safely approach your target to about 2000 AP, and only then you'll have to start thinking about how exactly you'll need to reach your destination.
I'm a bit reluctant to publish the source code for that utility, though, as it is quite an Evil Hack(tm) brute-force tool I clobbered together within one or two hours - of course without any documentation whatsoever :-P . It does contain several vital search optimizations, though, so computing the complete list of best possibilities from 0-3052 took only a few seconds, despite being a brute-force O(n!) search.
However, you don't really need the utility itself: here is the list of "optimal" (essentially, taking the least amount of actions, weighted against useless actions such as creating fields without links etc.) ways to reach any amount of AP between 0 and 3000: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_xKgLgISIXRaE1nbU5tbFY1T0U/edit?usp=sharing
Have fun, and happy APing!
#ingress Brandon Badger Joe Philley Anne Beuttenmüller Jorge Steffen DarkG
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