I had a reaper appear then a control point at Sjoglimten. I went to destroy the control point and had to run around like a mad thing to avoid the Reaper. I finally managed to destroy the control point and started to run away to avoid the reaper only to see the message Reaper destroyed by player. I went back and there it was destroyed with all the shield emitters still working. Works for me.
Just luck.
Machines explode if they fall into water.
If it’s deep enough to make a player respawn, machines don’t survive, too.
The same thing like here: