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Guaranteed it will be back.

The question is, whether they will implement proper restrictions on how it grows, so that it can be managed through strategic means instead of brute force.

Brute force against an unrelenting and unattritable opponent is not a winning strategy, yet it's the only one the game rules allow, because any other method is pointless.

Until they work out how to allow players to strategically control Machina's growth, such as cell root limits, and not spawning in areas with no players, they should keep it turned off.

It's a simple process to test various algorithms in a controlled environment that doesn't have the "Production" sticker on it, and they should take the time to do that.

how long have you been playing Ingress? I’m curious where you got the idea support would ever actually provide any insight into what you’ve actually done to get you banned from COMMs. Thats not how they operate and as far as I understand, they’ve never operated any other way.

Take your punishment, stay off COMMs and stop worrying about people riding their scooters.

This isn't a new concept and it's what it does.

This is horrible because it sets up the precise issue for a lot of more strategic players. The links would always be in places where no-one else is, thus requiring distance travel.

Machina should only play in areas with players, not dead zones.

Now I'm really lost as to how this would be considered an improvement by anyone?

The problem with Machina is it's one set of settings, for two apparent goals.

Goal 1: Give people with no opposition something to destroy.

Goal 2: Make it harder for people who do nothing but build big fields, because they have to clear the area.

If those aren't the goals, then whatever Niantic implemented isn't what they intended. Areas with lots of players don't need Machina. Areas with no players at all do not need Machina. Machina should begin to spawn in previously dead areas, when someone plays in them, then die off if that person stops.

Filling dead zones with links does nothing besides force someone unhappily to travel to an area that otherwise they wouldn't have to think about. That shouldn't be part of their goals.

1. Machina should only infect grey. This gives players a strategic way to control it's growth, by capturing the portals around it.
2. Machina can't cross existing links. This allows players to strategically pen the red in.
3. Machina should be limited to 1km links. While I used to think 5kms is fine, too many people have shown an unwillingness to even go that far and are more likely to stop playing than drive somewhere. Someone on foot can clear a 1km link with a bit of effort, zero effort with a scooter, bike or even car.
4. Machina should only spawn and grow in scoring regions where there have been active players in the past cycle. This prevents it from filling entire scoring regions with no players with the Red Weed, and spooking new players.
5. In regions where there is at least one active player, Machina should seed a constrained number of times, e.g. 50 portals max, for a given cycle total (e.g. 7 seeds per day).
6. For any cycle where there were active players in the last cycle, Machina can link every 24hrs. If a cycle passes with no players, the portals begin to decay without linking or growing, for that cycle.
7. If there are at least 10 Machina portals in the previous 24hr period in the scoring region (and active players), no new seeds will occur that day.

This sort of set up meets a handful of goals:

• Machina doesn't fill dead zones with links. This allows people who want to organize multi-region fields to do so, without having to send Agents far and wide across the desert or into a rainforest, just to clear links. Something that would give away their plans to the opposition early.
• Machina doesn't destroy anything a player has built. Decay already does that just fine.
• Machina gives players a way to strategically control it's spread. By capturing portals around it, and linking around it, the red weed can be contained. Since it will stop spawning when there are a number of existing portals in the region, they can be left and maintained instead of brute force chasing constant spawns.
• Machina doesn't grow exponentially. By randomly spawning without limit or regard for activity, an exponential growth occurs where each wave of new spawns sets up larger and larger webs of portals.
• Players who want to let the red spread can do so, including gameplay where teams have different ideas on it, and one team enjoys clearing the strategic control portals to let it out.
• New players wanting an opposition will see one emerge, rather than be swamped with it immediately, and can learn to control and manage the growth in a realistic style. "I opened it and couldn't capture anything because they were all level 6 red portals" is not what you want for a new player. "I appear to have attracted attention from something red by playing" is far more of an inviting mechanism.

Unless Niantic introduces strategic gameplay to manage Machina, it will continue to feel like an insurmountable and brute force task, trying to control it. It's find to "dial it to 11" every so often, for a cycle or two, but it should not be the norm for 3 months at a time. The fact that they have to choose to clear all Machina from the board, because players can't, should be an indication that their methodology is wrong.

I'd rather join the red faction and capture gray portals.