Are Jarvis Virus/Ada Refactors useless to the other side?
The refactor viruses can be used by either sides. If you use the virus to switch the control to your faction, you become the owner of the portal and all of the attached resonators, destroying any link and fields attached to the portal itself, but getting no AP from the action. If instead you use your opposite faction's refactor, the portal becomes owned by "Jarvis" (or "ADA").
Switching the portal to the opposite faction can be useful to destroy links that are in the way of the construction of a big field. Using both kinds of refactor on a portal can also let you create a L8 portal without the need to have eight L8 agents available.
Here is a variant of "campfiring".
Wherever the resonators are deployed (correctly or not), an undefended portal is no match to a high level player.
But an increasing number of players have their "home portal" or "work portal" directly accessible from their couch or their desk. These home portals usually have a combination of heat sink and multi-hack mods in order for their "owner" to be able to farm efficiently on them.
To prevent them from doing so, one can deploy a portal, add four link amps on it (which are no use either for defence or farming) and then convert it to the enemy faction. The link amps will be unremovable, and the owner will be stuck with their regular four hacks per 4 hours, unless they use a refractor/virus to convert-destroy-rebuild-upgrade.
You can also use other-team refactor viruses as a portal denial weapon. Here's how:
- Take down the enemy's portal by normal means.
- Stand directly on the portal's location and deploy eight level-1 resonators.
- Flip the portal into your enemy's hands.
This leaves them unable to space the resonators properly without using a refactor of their own, but makes the portal so vulnerable to attack that they can't wisely invest much in upgrading it or linking it. I've heard this called "campfiring" the portal, since the eight L1 resonators look like a fire at the base of the portal.