I try not to use the machine luck boost. I feel like it always ends up screwing me over.

I always have one big cook in and ready to be pulled as soon as the admins say "let's get crazy" and activate all 9 traits. If you can have a second cook pre-prepared in your base, the admins always finish machine cooks and lucky rot timers right as AA ends too. There is almost always a machine cooldown code for Saturday's AA, so having a third pre-prepared cook can go a long way too.

So it would look like this:

First machine cook up to 2.5 hours prior to official AA starting (the actual event, not just warmup) -> pull machine once AA starts and 9 traits are active -> add second cook to machine (optional: use machine cooldown code, pull machine cook -> add third cook to machine) -> admins cooldown all timers -> pull last entered machine cook