Exactly, I think that's for the best as we don't need to overkill machina which only has existed for 6 months at this point. Out of those 6 months, we didn't see big deployment until 2 months afterwards. As long as they figure out ways to fine tune it and also have it act different during anomalies or special weekends - its influence seems to be minimal to the usual Ingress gameplay.
First test complete, destroy machina portal 5 minutes before check. Capture as soon as the new 5 hour window starts. I received a medal tick. I destroyed another portal nearby, I will go back later today and see what happens.
I like a variant of this idea. But would rather it be 1 point per reso destroyed, but only scorable if you capture the portal. Otherwise everyone will just mow down portals, and never go capture them (ie never get outta their cars).
I don't think points should be determined on the level of the portal though. That just encourages them to grow and other agents to get pissed at other agents for destroying them "too soon".
An unforeseen and undesirable meta for this badge is that players are encouraged to not capture portals so that machina can grow. This seems like the wrong incentive here. Encouraging a lack of gameplay is fundamentally antithetical to a healthy game.
1 year for an onyx is fast in general. My concern isn’t 1 year, it’s that it could plausibly take active, 20 to 40 million MU/year, players 5 to 10 years to get gold unless local agents stop playing ingress to allow the game to become a giant nest of Machina.
I neutralized 70 Machina in 6 months, because I fielded effectively to keep them away. I would have ventured out further if I had a badge incentive and taken out more but 100/month could be hard to keep up if other active agents are also trying to get a gold+ badge.
So to get the badge in a reasonable time frame, which I consider within 1 year for gold and 5 to 10 years for onyx, I will need to stop fielding locally. Or Machina will have to be super aggressive.
Kinda not surprised they weren’t thinking that far ahead… At the very least they could have just started the numbers at machina portals neutralized and added that moving forward, they would also need to be captured. But hey, this is Niantic and they have a reputation to uphold 🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️
Niantic is going to have to increase spawn rate. I can see players getting upset over a person who makes it his/her thing to do this in an area and shuts everyone else out.
The other thing that's going to be fun is that whoever goes for the points has to sign their name to it. You have a spawn going that you are working over time, someone comes through, either faction, and wipes it out. Or someone with lots of time takes to hunting a wide area. You will know who it is, I'm betting on some interesting comm exchanges.
Third test, waited over 24 hours and captured a portal. I got the medal tick. I suppose next up is a new cycle, right? I’ll smash one tomorrow and leave that and also smash one closer to the cycle ending and try both.
Can you let someone else do a capture and see if they get the tick? Just curious if it is player bound, thinking groups hunting and who gets the tick. If it's player bound, no group hunting and it pretty much would guarantee unsocial behavior.
Luckily "Reclaimer Medal" is not about "Capture unique Machina Portals" :)
I am waiting for the Second Sunday or other Special events where every neutral and neutralised portal during event becomes instantly Red (once per Portal per Agent).
To complete Second Sunday or Special Event task you have to reclaim for example 20-50-100-200-400 Machina Portals (lower for Second Sunday, tiers for longer Special event).
This is a game. I dont think someone will chase that onyx medal in 2023(eg i got onyx builder only because it happened,never tried).
So,i expect more M spawn not "in the middle of nowhere" but somewhere where Agents can and will interact with red ones. Or maybe a summoning item (i am L0 in pogo,just searching options).
I tried running some farming simulations assuming Machina portals send out links, on average , once every 8 days (over the past 24 hours about 600k Machina have made about 70000 links).
If you set up a 100 portal Machina farm, you get a steady state of about 10 neutral, 50 Machina, and 40 blue/green that you can harvest 5-6 Machina a day (2000/year). That assumes no one ever comes by to annihilate your farm (it takes about 1-2 months to go from 1 Machina and 99 neutrals to reach this harvestable steady state).
Machina simply aren’t reproducing nearly fast enough (yet) to make this badge feasible.
Hopefully, Niantic knows this and is planning something less annoying than the pre-MXKCD cross-link cancer.
Machina will still appear under fields, that are less than 100k MU in size
Cross linking was a major problem before.
As was mentioned in the X-Fac Telegram yesterday, it would be nice if it cross linked only itself, but not cross link over Enlightened or Resistance links.
This would be an absolute headache to generate the correct boolean math for.
And even if it did only cross link itself, what happens when it is allowed to field?
To be achievable, Reclaimer thresholds need to be significantly reduced AND/OR the rate of Machina infection must increase dramatically
I did a little math to figure out the optimal harvest rate assuming:
a red portal can always has a nearby neutral to infect
to help accommodate the above, at least 10% of portals are left neutral at any given time. All other portals are red/green/blue
each red portal has an average infection rate of r portals/day
agents only capture portals that they just neutralized from a red
agents do not attack other agent portals (i will return to this assumption)
no portals are recharged, so blue/green portals decay in 7 days
every agent agrees to share red portal harvesting equally and follow the optimal harvesting strategy (that means no one makes any links or captures any portals except to reclaim a Machina)
For optimal harvesting, the fraction of portals that should be left red is:
F_Machina = 0.9/(1+7r)
and the optimal fraction of portals to be harvested each day is:
F_harvest = 0.9r/(1+7r)
The current rate of Machina links per portal per day is about 0.1 (700,000 Machina threw about 70,000 links in past 24 hours).
That means the optimal harvesting rate is:
F_harvest = 0.9(0.1)/(1+7(0.1)) = 0.053
That means the maximum sustainable rate of harvesting Machina is about 5% of the available portals per day. If you live in an area with 1000 portals, if the whole area is treated as a farm and managed optimally for Machina reclaiming then 53/day can be reclaimed.
However, this assumes agents don’t attack blue/green portals to make them available for infection (which would be the case for a lone agent). To get the absolute upper limit, let’s assume all green/blue portals are immediately neutralized by the other faction. Otherwise, all agents cooperate to maximize and share the optimal harvest (an extremely optimistic assumption). This effectively turns the “7” in the above equations to a zero and so:
F_harvest = 0.9r = 0.09 at r =0.1
to put this in more context, there are 18 million portals globally and, I estimate, at least about 100,000 agents.
18 million portals farmed optimally by the every agent in the world cooperating means the maximum global harvest rate is 950,000 to 1.6 million reclaims per day, or 9.5 to 16 per active agent.
This means the minimum time required to get an onyx badge if every active agent plays optimally and cooperatively is 6.5 years (16 reclaims per day) at the current Machina growth rate. This assumes a ludicrous level of collaboration and a complete abandonment of traditional ingress play. Realistically, the upper limit may be 3 to 5 (or about 25 years for onyx).
So back to the conclusion, the Reclaimer thresholds are currently effectively unachievable. Either the thresholds should be reduced, Machina portal infection rates must increase at least 5 times, or a partial combination of both.
Comments
not all medal need to be easily done in less than a year
I guess these wild tiers mean at least someone thinks the game will be here for a couple more years, lol.
Any reports so far on time to capture for medal ticks? I have a park nearby my work and will try to get out there once or twice to test theories
Exactly, I think that's for the best as we don't need to overkill machina which only has existed for 6 months at this point. Out of those 6 months, we didn't see big deployment until 2 months afterwards. As long as they figure out ways to fine tune it and also have it act different during anomalies or special weekends - its influence seems to be minimal to the usual Ingress gameplay.
First test complete, destroy machina portal 5 minutes before check. Capture as soon as the new 5 hour window starts. I received a medal tick. I destroyed another portal nearby, I will go back later today and see what happens.
To get Onyx in 1 year, you'd have to capture 109.5 red portals every single day.
I know fully well that Onyx badges are meant to be hard, I have most (not all) with wings. But this is a bit much.
I like a variant of this idea. But would rather it be 1 point per reso destroyed, but only scorable if you capture the portal. Otherwise everyone will just mow down portals, and never go capture them (ie never get outta their cars).
I don't think points should be determined on the level of the portal though. That just encourages them to grow and other agents to get pissed at other agents for destroying them "too soon".
Second test, waited 5+ hours. New checkpoint. Got a tick on reclaimer
Will wait a full 24 hours on the next one...
An unforeseen and undesirable meta for this badge is that players are encouraged to not capture portals so that machina can grow. This seems like the wrong incentive here. Encouraging a lack of gameplay is fundamentally antithetical to a healthy game.
It is OK to have badges that taken multiple years to achieve their highest level.
Heck I still don't have Onyx Explorer or Pioneer.
It bothers me slightly that after 10 years, they are still Platinum
1 year for an onyx is fast in general. My concern isn’t 1 year, it’s that it could plausibly take active, 20 to 40 million MU/year, players 5 to 10 years to get gold unless local agents stop playing ingress to allow the game to become a giant nest of Machina.
I neutralized 70 Machina in 6 months, because I fielded effectively to keep them away. I would have ventured out further if I had a badge incentive and taken out more but 100/month could be hard to keep up if other active agents are also trying to get a gold+ badge.
So to get the badge in a reasonable time frame, which I consider within 1 year for gold and 5 to 10 years for onyx, I will need to stop fielding locally. Or Machina will have to be super aggressive.
Would have been nice if the Reclaimer stats had included all Machina portals destroyed and captured previously.
Kinda not surprised they weren’t thinking that far ahead… At the very least they could have just started the numbers at machina portals neutralized and added that moving forward, they would also need to be captured. But hey, this is Niantic and they have a reputation to uphold 🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️
Niantic is going to have to increase spawn rate. I can see players getting upset over a person who makes it his/her thing to do this in an area and shuts everyone else out.
The other thing that's going to be fun is that whoever goes for the points has to sign their name to it. You have a spawn going that you are working over time, someone comes through, either faction, and wipes it out. Or someone with lots of time takes to hunting a wide area. You will know who it is, I'm betting on some interesting comm exchanges.
There already was before the medal. This will take it to a spicy level for sure, lol
Third test, waited over 24 hours and captured a portal. I got the medal tick. I suppose next up is a new cycle, right? I’ll smash one tomorrow and leave that and also smash one closer to the cycle ending and try both.
Can you let someone else do a capture and see if they get the tick? Just curious if it is player bound, thinking groups hunting and who gets the tick. If it's player bound, no group hunting and it pretty much would guarantee unsocial behavior.
Whoever captures gets the point, doesn't seem to matter if they smashed or not
Great, thanks for that info as well as your other test data.
Luckily "Reclaimer Medal" is not about "Capture unique Machina Portals" :)
I am waiting for the Second Sunday or other Special events where every neutral and neutralised portal during event becomes instantly Red (once per Portal per Agent).
To complete Second Sunday or Special Event task you have to reclaim for example 20-50-100-200-400 Machina Portals (lower for Second Sunday, tiers for longer Special event).
You might have provided a guess to what 2S will be like in July.
Onyx meant to be hard but real.
This is a game. I dont think someone will chase that onyx medal in 2023(eg i got onyx builder only because it happened,never tried).
So,i expect more M spawn not "in the middle of nowhere" but somewhere where Agents can and will interact with red ones. Or maybe a summoning item (i am L0 in pogo,just searching options).
In other cases this onyx is too elit for me xD
I tried running some farming simulations assuming Machina portals send out links, on average , once every 8 days (over the past 24 hours about 600k Machina have made about 70000 links).
If you set up a 100 portal Machina farm, you get a steady state of about 10 neutral, 50 Machina, and 40 blue/green that you can harvest 5-6 Machina a day (2000/year). That assumes no one ever comes by to annihilate your farm (it takes about 1-2 months to go from 1 Machina and 99 neutrals to reach this harvestable steady state).
Machina simply aren’t reproducing nearly fast enough (yet) to make this badge feasible.
Hopefully, Niantic knows this and is planning something less annoying than the pre-MXKCD cross-link cancer.
I find it sad that machina cannot cross link or take portals under fields anymore.
Felt like a welcome help for the weaker fraction in the area. Now it kinda helps the stronger fraction in the city...
I don't get why they always make the stronger fraction even stronger while trying to punish those fractions with less people in the area.
Machina will still appear under fields, that are less than 100k MU in size
Cross linking was a major problem before.
As was mentioned in the X-Fac Telegram yesterday, it would be nice if it cross linked only itself, but not cross link over Enlightened or Resistance links.
This would be an absolute headache to generate the correct boolean math for.
And even if it did only cross link itself, what happens when it is allowed to field?
As stated here
There are already discussions everywhere that there isn't enough of Machina around.
Yet in the last 48 hours several clusters are appeararing in every city.
It is still too early to know if cross linking of itself would be beneficial, for now it is really good at obeying current linking rules.
The current iteration of Machina is only a couple of weeks old.
This makes it so Machina farms can be set up for those wishing to feting their Reclaimer badges.
Long post so I will start with the conclusion:
To be achievable, Reclaimer thresholds need to be significantly reduced AND/OR the rate of Machina infection must increase dramatically
I did a little math to figure out the optimal harvest rate assuming:
For optimal harvesting, the fraction of portals that should be left red is:
F_Machina = 0.9/(1+7r)
and the optimal fraction of portals to be harvested each day is:
F_harvest = 0.9r/(1+7r)
The current rate of Machina links per portal per day is about 0.1 (700,000 Machina threw about 70,000 links in past 24 hours).
That means the optimal harvesting rate is:
F_harvest = 0.9(0.1)/(1+7(0.1)) = 0.053
That means the maximum sustainable rate of harvesting Machina is about 5% of the available portals per day. If you live in an area with 1000 portals, if the whole area is treated as a farm and managed optimally for Machina reclaiming then 53/day can be reclaimed.
However, this assumes agents don’t attack blue/green portals to make them available for infection (which would be the case for a lone agent). To get the absolute upper limit, let’s assume all green/blue portals are immediately neutralized by the other faction. Otherwise, all agents cooperate to maximize and share the optimal harvest (an extremely optimistic assumption). This effectively turns the “7” in the above equations to a zero and so:
F_harvest = 0.9r = 0.09 at r =0.1
to put this in more context, there are 18 million portals globally and, I estimate, at least about 100,000 agents.
18 million portals farmed optimally by the every agent in the world cooperating means the maximum global harvest rate is 950,000 to 1.6 million reclaims per day, or 9.5 to 16 per active agent.
This means the minimum time required to get an onyx badge if every active agent plays optimally and cooperatively is 6.5 years (16 reclaims per day) at the current Machina growth rate. This assumes a ludicrous level of collaboration and a complete abandonment of traditional ingress play. Realistically, the upper limit may be 3 to 5 (or about 25 years for onyx).
So back to the conclusion, the Reclaimer thresholds are currently effectively unachievable. Either the thresholds should be reduced, Machina portal infection rates must increase at least 5 times, or a partial combination of both.
I was wondering this as well, also do you have to be the one who neutralized it or can you steal a capture from someone?
Yes but we are also all competing against each other just to get to the machina clusters first to get the stats.
even more sad they cant spawn in active area meaning if i keep play i will never get any red for the badge 🤔
I think 10,000 for Onyx is far fairer.
I've played, fairly hard, including overseas at multiple cities and still only managed 17629 on Pioneer.