The Big Machine

🌺 Main Match 10: The Big Machine 🌺

Work with your partner to construct the biggest, baddest, most powerful machine.

You have been tasked to construct The Big Machine. It's so Big™️, you will need a helping hand... Good thing you have a partner. By going to the various meadows and bidding for machine parts, you will be able to build your machine. Make the appropriate connections to grease up your contraption so you have the most efficient machine.

RULES

This is a game where you will move between meadows.

🀄 Each team has a machine. Your initial meadows determine the machine you have: the player's meadow determines the left half of the machine, and the guest's meadow determines the right half. The halves are the ones given during meadow selection. Note that the halves will share the three middle nodes.

An assembled machine contains a number of nodes (yellow circles), connected by connectors (thick black lines). Initially, these nodes are empty (indicated by blank yellow circles). Connectors come in different types as indicated; they will be explained during scoring.

Throughout the game, you will install parts into the nodes. A part consists of a color and a power. There are five part colors, corresponding to the meadow colors: white, blue, black, red, and green. The power of a part is a positive integer. In addition, there is a faulty part, which has no color and no power. The following gives an example of parts of each color and powers 1-5, as well as a faulty part (olive X).

🀄 In addition, each player and each guest begin the game with 12 cogs. Cogs are the currency you will use to obtain machine parts. Cogs may be freely traded. You may obtain cogs at the cost of making your machine less efficient; see below.

The game is divided into 7 rounds. You will move to another meadow (or stay in place) at the end of every round; then, the submissions are evaluated, which will give you parts for your machine.

🧠 Your submission for a round consists of the following elements:

• Your meadow for the next round. You may choose any meadow, including your current one.
• An amount of cogs used for bidding for a machine part.
• An amount of cogs used for powering up the machine part.
• A node in your machine, where you will install your machine part.

Note that you will submit two amounts of cogs: one for bidding, one for powering up. Each one must be an integer, at least 0, and their sum must be at most the number of cogs you have.

Also, there are restrictions for where you can install your machine part. In the first round, you may choose any node in your team's machine. In the future rounds, you must choose a node that is adjacent to your previously chosen node; that is, connected by a connector. Note that it must be adjacent; it cannot be the same node. Also note that this only depends on your selection; your teammate's selection doesn't matter.

💎 You may spend garnets to quickly "jump" to any other node. By paying 5 garnets, you may choose any node in your machine to install your next part onto.

🧠 Running out of cogs? No problem. You may choose to get some cogs by sabotaging your own machine. You may install a faulty part in any currently empty node in your machine. This gives you 2 cogs, which you may immediately use in the same round. You may only do this once per round. 🧬 If both the player and the guest of a team do this onto the same node, there is nothing fancy: both get 2 cogs each, and the node gets a faulty part.

At the end of the round, submissions will be processed in the following order.

First, you will go to your desired meadow as you submitted.

Then, among everyone in your new meadow, the sole highest bidder (based on cogs used for bidding) gets a machine part. The machine part will have the color of the meadow. The power is equal to the number of players in the meadow, plus the number of cogs used by the winner to power it up. This part is immediately installed in the node selected. All other players in the meadow receive a faulty part, also immediately installed into the node they selected.

🎭 For example, there are 3 people in the Blue Meadow including you. You win the bidding, and you also spend 2 cogs to power up the part. Your machine part will have color blue and power 5.

If there are multiple highest bidders, they are ignored; the next sole highest bidder gets the part instead. In other words, the person with the highest unique bid is the one that gets the machine part. It is possible that the winner bid 0. It is also possible that nobody wins.

All cogs used for bidding are taken, even if you don't win the bidding. But cogs used for powering up are only taken if you actually win the bidding.

⚠️ Installing a node that already has a machine part is dangerous. If the newly installed part has a greater power, then all is good; the old part is replaced with the new part. However, if it has less or equal power, or if it's a faulty part, then the whole node is ruined; it's replaced with a faulty part. If the node already has a faulty part, it will remain faulty for the rest of the game; it cannot be replaced.

🧬 If both teammates of a team attempt to install a machine part to the same node, the part with the lesser power is installed first. Note that if both parts have the same power, then the node will become faulty regardless of the order.

👑 The game ends after all 7 rounds are done. All remaining empty nodes get faulty parts. All cogs remaining are worthless.

Now your machine will be evaluated on its effectiveness. Each connector of your machine may award points.

Simply having functional parts will help the machine. If a connector has non-faulty parts on both ends, it is a working connector and gives 1 point.

In addition, each connector has a condition that indicates how you can optimize its output. If a working connector additionally satisfies its condition, it is an excellent connector and gives an additional 4 points (for a total of 5 points per excellent connector).

• Connectors marked with red text look at the colors of the parts. If the colors satisfy the relationship ("allies" or "enemies", check #rules-addenda for the definition), it is excellent.
• Connectors marked with blue greater-than sign look at the powers of the parts. If the powers satisfy the greater-than relationship in the correct direction, it is excellent.
• Connectors marked with green "free" text are good but fragile. It is automatically excellent, unless you used the connector to go from a node to another node (recall that you have to choose an adjacent node in your submissions).

🎭 As an example, consider the following machine. The connectors marked in green are excellent; the connectors marked in dotted red are just working. In total, this machine scores 9 excellent connectors and 5 working connectors for 9x5 + 5x1 = 50 points.

👑 The sole player with the highest score wins and receives one Token of Life. If there are multiple winners, nobody gets any Token of Life. The player with the lowest score becomes the Elimination Candidate. If there are multiple players with the lowest score, the winners vote for the Elimination Candidate.

💎 You also get 1 garnet per 2 points you have. In addition, if there is a sole winner, they receive 1 cosmos.

ADMINISTRATION

📌 🀄 Player items

Each team has a machine which will be filled with machine parts. Both the machine and its parts are not actually items; you cannot interact with them, you cannot give them to other people, and so on.

Each player/guest also has 12 cogs. Cogs are freely tradable.

📌 ⏰ Timing

Each round lasts for approximately 24 hours, except for the first round that lasts for approximately 48 hours. The deadline of every round is at 3pm UTC ( your local time); allow a few minutes for updating.

📌 🧠 Submission

Your submission consists of:

• The meadow you're moving into
• The amount of cogs you bid
• The amount of cogs used to power up your part
• The node you're installing your part onto

If you fail to submit, you are staying in the same meadow, bidding 0 and spending 0 to power up your part. The node you're going to will be chosen at random among all nodes having a connector to your current node.

Also, your submission may contain a node you're sabotaging for cogs. Your submission may also remark that you want to jump by paying 5 garnets.

📌 📡 Information

This game has the following pieces of information, along with how and when they are revealed to the players/guests, if at all. If a piece of information is not in this list, it is likely not known to anyone, but feel free to clarify.

🔺 Publicly announced, at the end of every round

• Where everyone is.

🔻 Explicitly only known to your team, at the start of every round

• Your current machine.
• The nodes you installed your parts last round, as well as the parts.
• Whether you or your teammate sabotaged your machine for cogs, and on which node.

🔻 Explicitly not known to anyone

• Who won the part in a meadow. (Only the actual winner knows they won.)
• Bids in a meadow. (Only you know your own bid.)

🔺 Publicly announced, at the end of the game

• All machines, and therefore all scores.

📌 💎 ORG items

You can gain ORG currency in this way:

• At the end of the game, you get 1 garnet for each 2 points you score.
• At the end of the game, if there is a sole winner, they get 1 cosmos.

You can spend garnets in this way:

• You may spend 5 garnets to jump to any node instead of having to select an adjacent node.