MOA Cabinet Spawner

Corpus

"Hack" Prompt On MOA Cabinet Spawner

MOA Cabinet Spawner is a Corpus machine that periodically will spawn a MOA. Ones that have their lights pulsating on and off means they can be hacked like a console to produce a fresh Shockwave MOA that will be allied to your team.

This allied MOA has glowing stripes to differentiate it from enemy units and a small blue "Ally" dot on players' maps, though it can still cause confusion for teammates unaware of the new ally's presence.Throughout every mission with MOA Spawners, a completely random number is hackable. This may give you, at times, an army of MOAs, but sometimes none at all. 

Notes

Friendly Shockwave MOA, displaying the glowing stripes.

• When the level is alerted to a player's presence, these spawners will spawn a MOA at regular intervals. Hacking it will only produce an allied MOA once.
• When looking for a cabinet to hack, those with oscillating lights are the ones that are suitable for hacking.
• When having the mod Master Thief, you can go to Cabinet and try to unlock it. If nothing happens it means you failed, but if suddenly it starts with oscillating lights it means you can hack it, once you try to unlock and fail, you cannot do it again.
• Hacking will only yield Shockwave MOAs, though rarely some MOAs will be generated as Eximus variants.
• They will prioritize enemy targets, but when no enemy units are in range they will generally "follow" players around -pertaining to the AI code for following players- and often will fall behind or run ahead. They follow either the one who hacked the Cabinet Spawner or the game host.
• Hacked MOA will not give experience for their kills.
• Hacked MOAs do not regenerate shields, like all MOAs, unless a friendly Shield Osprey is nearby. However shield can be restored by Mag's Shield Polarize. This is helpful on levels that have spawners on non-Corpus tilesets, such as on Dark Sectors. 

  

  A flock of friendly Shockwave MOAs

• As of Update 14.0 (2014-07-18), friendly Shockwave MOAs have glowing stripes on them, to differentiate them from hostile Shockwave MOAs.
• These spawners count as Consoles for the purpose of the 'Hacker' challenge, and can be used to complete said challenge if it should occur during Infested Survival or Defense on a map with no decompressable areas.
• On Infested Ships, hostile MOA Cabinet Spawners will spawn Swarm-Mutalist MOAs or Tar-Mutalist MOAs.
• On special alerts, or events, they can spawn a variety of enemies, including Anti MOAs, Fusion MOAs, and even Isolator Bursas rarely.

  

  An Isolator Bursa spawning out of a cabinet during the Project Undermine Tactical Alert.

• If hacked by a MOA (Companion) with Security Override, the cabinet will spawn 2 Shockwave MOAs instead, as well as having a chance to hack nearby robotics for a short duration. Walking slowly through missions with lots of spawners can result in a small army rather quickly, assuming you are lucky with many hackable cabinets.

Bugs

• In some cases, MOAs that spawn from the cabinet will have their level start with 1 instead of their respective map levels.
• Cabinets do not blink for clients, and the only way of identifying hackable ones is to go up to them.  
• Cabinets do not display the "hack" button prompt, but the sound may still be heard and the cabinet may still be hacked. 
• The friendly Shockwave MOA's blue stripes sometimes do not show for non-host players. 

Trivia

A Level 2665 MOA summoned during the Blackout Tactical Alert

• Before Hotfix 12.4.5 (2014-03-12), clients could proceed to hack cabinets then cancel, and the spawner would create a friendly MOA regardless. This could have been exploited to create unlimited armies of MOAs.
• The Corpus Gas City and Infested Ship tilesets also have a floor-based version of the MOA Spawner, which deliver MOAs through trap doors. The variants on the Corpus Gas City cannot be interacted with, but a panel can sometimes be found near the Infested Ship version. When this panel is hacked, it will release one or more MOAs that will attack everything in sight, including players. Note that the MOAs spawned out of the floor spawners in the Infested Ship tileset are named "Corpus Walker". This MOAs look like the common, green-colored MOAs, but posses the shockwave ability of a Shockwave MOA.
• During the third stage of the Blackout Tactical Alert, players could summon MOAs with levels ranging from 1000 to 9999, potentially outranking either the players or the Manics present on the map. This was ultimately rectified in Hotfix 16.3.2 (2015-04-14), which disabled hackable cabinets outright for that alert (as said MOAs could easily make short work of the Manics, especially if the MOAs were in groups).

See Also

• Corpus
• MOA
• Hacking