Machina Research Document v3.9
Bacon9000Join the research group: https://t.me/MachinaResearchGroup
Bookmark https://linktr.ee/machina.research for the latest version of this document.
Refer to https://telegra.ph/MACHINA-Details-11-14 for past Machina details.
* New items or changed items begin with "*"
Rules
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1. All Machina rules are merely suggested behaviors and subject to change without warning at any time.
2. There is only one rule.
Spawning
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** There are two kinds of spawning phenomena:
*** Post-Anomaly
*** After each cycle
**Non-anomaly Spawning
* There is a spawning cycle 15-45 minutes after each septicycle which deploys one L1 25% portal with 4 SBULAs at a rate of one per semi-randomly selected candidate S12 cell.
* Not every S12 cell will get a new spawn in the wave.
* Spawning only occurs in an S12 cell that has at least 40 portals and no other Machina-owned portals
* Previous suggestions about 100k MU fields, recently use of portal, etc, might not matter. But also see the Rule #1, above.
** Anomaly Spawning
** After anomalies, there are flash waves of L4 (with 4 SBULA) spawn affecting many gray portals when the anomaly finishes. There are no known differences in terms of gear hacked or dropped by these spawn.
Linking
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* Linking only happens outward from Machina to gray portals. No Machina portal can have more than 1 incoming link. Thus, no red fields are possible at this time. But please also refer to Rule #1, above.
* Fielding over any Machina portal will not prevent it from linking
* Machina linking creates comm messages.
* Linking only happens with a leveling up for portals L1-L7. L8 portals may refresh back to 25% during and might link out. See the Leveling Up section, below.
* Links seem to be hindered (but not entirely prevented) by S12 cell boundaries.
* Links that overcome the S12 hindrance, above, can link into S12 cells that have less than 40 portals.
* Machina links will not cross link with any other existing link.
* NOTE: long links rendered in the scanner may create the incorrect impression that there are cross links
* One consequence of the above two points leads to "crushed spiders tucked into S12 cubbyholes". Another consequence is that the max. number of links will be no more than the number of gray portals within line of sight from an infected portal bound by links and S12 cell boundaries with only a few exceptions.
* The consequence of the S12 cell boundary hindrance has a limiting effect on link length.
* At this time, it is not known if the invisible-to-intel Machina link problem has been resolved.
* Multiple portals within a Machina cluster can send links at the same time
** Agents report the maximum number of links from a single Machina portal appears to be 40.
Machina Agent Tracking Ziggyzaggies
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* The Machina comm messages can create player tracker craziness in IITC at the moment. There is a plug-in that adds a layer for Machina tracker. You can load this plug-in then turn the layer on or off to see/ignore Machina player tracker indicators: https://softspot.nl/ingress/plugins/iitc-plugin-player-tracker-addon.user.js
Leveling Up
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* Leveling happens 2-3 hours after any checkpoint
* Leveling refreshes the portal to 25% energy at the next level up, unless the portal was already a P8
* P8s can refresh back to 25% energy.
* Leveling up is frequently, but not always, accompanied by linking out. Leveling up can occur without new links.
* When leveling up, destroyed resos may be replaced.
Decay
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* Machina portals with more than 5% energy will lose up to 5% energy every 24 hours based on when the portal was infected
* Machina portals that have decayed to 5% will not continue to decay to gray
* How is gray spelled? In the USA, it is "gray." In other English-speaking locales, it is spelled "grey". It means gray.
* Note that some Machina portals at any level may decay to 5% then stop decaying (although the portal will still show timestamps changing every 24 hours). These stuck portals may, at some random time later, level up and have 25% energy even if they've appeared to be "stuck". No observers have reported any reproducible behaviors that unsticks a stuck portal.
Hacking
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* Hacking a Machina portal will drain your XM bar and can give you resos, keys, and XMPs. No mods.
* Hacking a Machina portal via a drone can give you a small return in resos, power cubes, and XMPs, no keys, no mods.
Destroying
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* Destroying a Machina portal can drop resos, keys, XMPs, and power cubes. No mods.
Flip cards/Viruses
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* Using an ADA or a Jarvis on a Machina portal will destroy it, not flip it. See the Destroying section, above.
Reclaimer
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* To get Reclaimer badge credit, you need to capture a portal that was most previously owned by Machina
* The elapsed time between the portal having been owned by Machina and being captured by you is apparently large. Experiments on the scale of hours have not found a limit yet, and it seems possible there is no time constraint implied except that the portal had to have been Machina occupied on or after May 13, 2023 15:19Z - the first wave of the 4 SBULA series.
* NOTE: Capturing of a portal which previously belonged to Machina awards 1331AP in addition to the normal 800AP for capturing a portal for a total of 2131AP. This is currently the biggest single source of AP in the game (even above the 1250AP for creating a field).
S2 Cells
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* This plug-in is excellent for highlighting S2 cells. Please set the inner cells for S12 to see the cell boundaries discussed above: https://github.com/nikolawannabe/s2-cells/raw/master/s2-cells.user.js - I suggest setting Inner Cells for level 12 and Outer Cells for level 10.
**Wave Info (timestamps for new spawn - the minutes are accurate +/- 1 minute)
---------------------------------------------------------
20230513 15:19Z
20230520 22:28Z
20230528 05:21Z
20230604 12:30Z
20230611 19:24Z
20230619 02:27Z
20230626 09:25Z
20230703 16:24Z
20230710 23:21Z
20230718 06:23Z
20230725 13:22Z