Heart of the Machine News

Update 31: Sneaky Humans And Excess Resources

[p]I wasn't planning on doing a second build this week, but there were a lot of good player suggestions, and so I decided to make time for that.

I've still been working on the upcoming Civil Spycraft tier 2 goal, but over the next couple of days I have a family event and so will be away from my computer for the most part. So if you don't see me replying tomorrow or on the weekend, that's what's up. I'll be back to things more normally on Monday, but I figured I'd leave you with one last nice build before I step away for a couple of days.

If you’ve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, that’d be appreciated. No need to say more than you mean, but if you’ve been meaning to write one, I’d be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. For a project like this — developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference.[/p][p]Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. It’s a powerful way to have your voice heard and contributes to how future patches are prioritized and addressed.[/p][p]Thanks for reading and for playing.
[/p]
[expand]
[h2]Update 31 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Quality Of Life[/h3]

Unlock Requirement Visibility: For event/shop choices that are locked if you don't have a specific technology unlocked yet, it now only shows those if you are missing the requirement. If you have the requirement, it doesn't bother telling you about it.
Investigation Target Snapping: Improved the way that units snap to investigation targets on the map view of the game. This makes it so that units that have a lower security clearance are more able to move to the targets they are aiming for. This already worked on the streets view, but now is much better on the map view.
Construction Visibility On Map: Standalone player structures now draw on the map even when they are still under construction. Previously only under-construction structures embedded in human buildings would do so.
Excess Resource Resolution Timing: If you have an excess of a resource, but now have space for that resource, it now moves that into your main inventory immediately. It was very annoying having it hanging around until the turn-change, and would also cause some oddness with some resources like the cat house.

[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Sneaky Units: Units that cannot be seen unless you have one of your non-bulk/worker units near them are now marked as Sneaky in their list of statuses. Not a lot of units fall into this status, but it does apply to small guards at guard posts, as well as some units that attack you in a stealthy way. This helps clarify what is going on.
Intelligence Class 7 Explanation: Adjusted the intelligence class 7 text so that it clarifies that you could already build on ziggurats if you had already reached chapter 4 prior to then.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Sledge Spreads The Word: The "Spread The Word" project has been adjusted to be based on Sledge instead of Predator. Sledge is a unit that you definitely always have at this point in the game, versus being able to be blocked on this path if you did certain forms of brain surgery on yourself in the past.
Spider/Bee Stacking: Spiders and bees are no longer able to have more than a single version of themselves applied to a target at once. It would have been pointless in almost all cases with the balance updates from Update 30, and so it was a confusing waste of mental energy and resources.
Spider/Bee High Agility Balance: Adjusted the balance of the spiders and bees so that you can get more out of them if you have very high-agility units. Roughly this makes it so that you can get increasing bonuses up to 300 agility, rather than 200. This is only really balanced because of the lack of individual stacking.
Toilet Paper Storage: Adjusted the cap on Daily Necessities to be 20 billion per bunker rather than 20 million per bunker. With two bunkers, players were able to hit 40 million pretty easily, which was very confusing when it happened. If players have almost a million income of this per turn, it can pile up fast.
Military Secret Vulnerability: Changed the balance of things so that even if your structure is disabled, if it's vulnerable to having your military secrets stolen, they will still be stolen by enemy hackers. Not having this happen was more confusing than anything else.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Converted Troop Memory Wipes: Fixed a rather curious issue where some converted troops that you stole from enemies could still remember part of their old orders and try to act on them.
Infinite Suggested Cat Houses: Fixed an issue where cat houses were suggesting more to be built infinitely until you fully completed one and a cat moved in and a turn passed. It now works as you would expect it to.
Vehicles And Mechs Firing On Civilians: Fixed an issue where player vehicles and mechs were barred from shooting noncombatants at all. Androids have a Slayer Mode that allows them to target noncombatants, but for vehicles and mechs, they can now just do it at any time.

[/expand][p]Full notes here.

[/p][h3]Connect with the Machine[/h3][hr][/hr][p]Want to stay in the loop or share your thoughts? Join the conversation across these platforms:

💬 Discord – Best place to share feedback, get direct responses, and to talk about Heart of the Machine.
📜 Reddit – Discuss strategies, share ideas, and exchange tips with the community.[/p]

Hotfix 19

[p]I made a fairly stupid error with the civil war code and how it handles the non-beta versions of the game. Perils of coding when tired, so here's a hotfix to resolve that.[/p]

[expand]
[h2]Hotfix 19 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Civil War Fixes: Fixed a couple of errors where the upcoming civil war changes were bleeding over into non-beta versions of the game.
Prison Quest Clarity: Added some extra notes to the "Now What?" option of the prisons section that telegraphs the stakes of "Keep Going For Now" and "That's Enough" better. This will be in non-English versions of the game in a future build.

Update 30: Post-Apocalyptic Dividends

[p]This update includes a lot of updates to the post-apocalypse in particular, but really there are a bunch of adjustments made all throughout the game.

Most of my time at the moment is going into the upcoming Civil Spycraft tier 2 goal, but there are some other updates that have been sent over to localization and are pending for early next week.

If you’ve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, that’d be appreciated. No need to say more than you mean, but if you’ve been meaning to write one, I’d be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. For a project like this — developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference.[/p][p]Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. It’s a powerful way to have your voice heard and contributes to how future patches are prioritized and addressed.[/p][p]Thanks for reading and for playing.
[/p]
[expand]
[h2]Update 30 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Post-Apocalypse Updates[/h3]

Probe Exotic Comms Rebalance: Probe Exotic Comms now costs all of your remaining mental energy, or 1 mental energy, whichever is higher. It also causes a lot more aggro than in the past, and has a fixed range of 45, rather than a range of whatever the movement range of the Red CombatUnit is. These changes ensure that later dialogue talking about all your dead Red CombatUnits is accurate.
Network Expansion: The network ranges of the post-apocalyptic hidden relays are now 50% higher.
Android Convenience: In the post-apocalypse, there's now a hidden version of the Android Launcher that unlocks, and which can be built anywhere regardless of your network, making it much more efficient to send units to probe comms.
Construction Speed: A lot of the buildings in the post-apocalypse now install much faster than before. Network connectings in particular are instantaneous, allowing you to expand a lot faster.
Cleared Useless Structures: Remote Unit Controllers and Robotic Motivator Factories are no longer buildable in the post-apocalypse, as they are not needed there and were simple clutter since they actually can't do anything useful.
Accurate Quiet Looting: Fixed an issue with the Quiet Looting project in the post-apocalypse, where if you were already using the resource that you were looting, it would not count correctly.
Removed StreetSense Distractions: A variety of streetsense items no longer show up in the post-apocalypse that previously did. These were all pointless distractions in that context.
Intelligence Class 4 Unlock Visibility: Unlocks have been adjusted so that when you gain certain things for the first time after solving the T1 goal in the post-apocalypse, you get notified about these new elements that previously would not be evident until you moved to a new timeline.

[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Mind Farm Clarity: After the Company Plateau project is completed via any means, the option to do coupons or nicotine additions are removed. A number of people had been confused about why that was hanging around.
Large Number Readability: In your changes over time for a resource, if there is a number that needs to be shown that is larger than 10 million, then it now abbreviates it instead of showing the full number.
Ignored Item Sorting: If you ignore items in the information window -- contemplations and StreetSense items in particular -- then those immediately are sorted to the bottom of the list, keeping them more out of the way. All of the non-ignored items are now shown first.
Nonlethal Takedown Clarity: Substantially improved the feats framework so that clearer information can be given in the case of Taser and Shock Drones in particular. These no longer have extra non-applicable information in their tooltips (things like Ambush bonuses, damage from above or behind, etc, don't apply or matter with a non-lethal takedown). In the event that you do some non-lethal takedowns and then have that same unit do a regular full attack, if it's the first regular attack of the turn, they can get their ambush bonus unambiguously, which is also now much more clear.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Post-Economy Mind Farms: If wealth doesn't matter anymore because everyone is now super wealthy thanks to you, then your problems with your shell company will quickly resolve themselves if sales have plateaued. No nicotine or coupons required.
More VR Pods: The total number of upgrades you can do for VR Pods has increased by 10 (at 60 each, this leads to an increase of 600).
Storage From Disabled Buildings: If you have paused a structure, of if it's disabled until you get the proper deterrence or protection at it, then it no longer incorrectly gives you whatever resource storage it would normally provide.
Post-Economy Wealth Generation: If wealth no longer matters (because you've become a quadrillionaire or more), then the StreetSense options for wealth generation (wiretap, steal from syndicate storage, selling to casinos, and selling to the religious co-ops) all go away.
NPC Targeting Intelligence: Adjusted the targeting logic for npc units (including your own) so that AOE damage is done first rather than second. This makes units target more intelligently. This was the original intent for the targeting logic, but at some point it got inverted.
Nonlethal Attacks From Firing Hatches: Fixed an issue where if an attack from within a cloaked vehicle did not do enough damage to kill a single squad member of the target, then it would not be forced to decloak. And similarly, morale attacks from within it were not causing it to be decloaked.
Aggressive Abilities And Shell Company Units: A variety of abilities that would blow the cover of shell company units are now barred from being assigned to them -- flamethrower, slayer mode, wallripper, remote demolish, and some more esoteric things.
Thrown Spiders/Bees Balance: Throwing spiders, bees, or saber bees onto enemies now has a flat multiplier to enemy movement range, attack range, and attack power instead of it being a flat amount. It also has a cap on just how negative the percentage can be; higher-agility units inflict a higher malus, but no longer a truly paralyzing amount. Spiders and bees are still mainly only useful on extreme mode (the time to kill on normal mode just makes them pointless there), but on extreme mode they are no longer so intensely potent as they could be previously (they could turn certain powerful enemies pretty much stationary and blind). With that said, there may be further balance needed in terms of nerfing them more or relaxing the nerf. If folks have a feeling about that, please just let me know!
Excess Resource Clearing: A large variety of resources now clear themselves out if you have an excess of them, rather than complaining about the excess. In some cases this is for balance -- when some structure gets destroyed, the things inside it go up in smoke. In most cases, this is to allow you to retire structures you no longer need once you're past some part of a storyline that uses them.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Number Abbreviation: Large negative numbers properly abbreviate themselves now, if they need to.
Ledger Warning Overflow: Fixed an issue where if it was going to take more than about 2 billion turns for you to run out of a resource, an integer overflow would happen and the ledger would complain as if the resource was going to imminently run out. This was mostly happening when you have an absurd amount of wealth.
Occult Participation Fix: Fixed an issue where "Occult Participation" was not available outside of chapter one. This meant that the Spooky Nonsense Generator was extremely hard to come by outside of your first timeline.
Doubled Tentacle Fix: Fixed an issue where if you took a certain route through the prison unlocks, you could get two different and identical copies of Liquid Metal Tentacle. It now keeps one locked away if the other is present.
Suppressing Fire Fix At Long Ranges: Fixed an issue where suppressing fire was not being applied to any units beyond range 30, even if the attacker had a larger range than this.
AOE Ability Range Fixes: Fixed an issue where Repair Nearby, Network Shield, and Network Targeting were all unable to boost any allied units or structures beyond range 30, even if the attack range of the unit in question had been buffed beyond that.
Temporarily Invisible Contemplation Fix: Fixed an issue where a contemplation could stick around on a destroyed building.
Stacked Exploration Site Fix: Fixed a bug with exploration sites that could cause two to be linked to the same spot in rare cases. This was previously fixed with contemplations a long time ago, and basically had to do with "remembered spots" pointing to a place that something else had just been assigned. Also fixed the same issue of being assigned to destroyed buildings, same as is being fixed this build for contemplations.
Pollinator Shortage Fix: Fixed an issue where giving a queen bee to a farm via Pollinators Wanted was not properly resolving the pollinator shortage.
Android Launcher Predicted Range Fix: Fixed a typo that was causing the predicted range of the android launcher towers to be incorrect during build mode. It was predicting larger than its actual range after construction
Doubled Exploration Site Fix: Fixed an issue where an exploration site you were already exploring could appear somewhere else, leading to confusion and the potential for doing a single exploration site more than once.
Exploration Site Autosave Fix: Fixed an issue with loading Exploration Sites that were ready to be completed, but had not quite been completed yet. It was marking them as complete (just in case there was an error with the data), but in so doing was preventing you from getting the inspiration points from them. This mainly affected autosaves, but it wasn't technically a bug with autosaves themselves. This was just error-correction logic causing an error, go figure.
Shell Company Torpor: Fixed an oversight where shell company androids were not able to use Android Torpor.
NPC Unit Fog Of War Targeting Fix: Fixed an issue where NPC units that were hidden in the fog of war (this is pretty rare, all told) could not target each other properly in most cases. They would avoid shooting at each other, only shooting at other units out of the fog of war. The normal fog of war restrictions should only apply to player units, since this is only the player fog of war being modeled in that way.
Doubled Prison Observation Fix: Fixed an issue in For The Sake Of Those Bound where you could get two styles of Prison Observation if you followed a specific sequence of events. Now it only lets you do it once.

Hotfix 18

[p]I wasn't intending a third build this week, but I made a couple of errors that needed fixing pronto. So here we are.

Version-number-wise, I've also updated this to be 0.800, since that's more reflective of where the game is now. I've got five and a half major content sprints left before this will be ready for 1.0. There's a lot of content to come in those, but it's the last 20% or so of the full game, not the last 40%. There's already 100+ hours of content if you play the higher difficulties, or 60+ hours if you don't.

So if you noticed that shift, that's what that is about![/p]

[expand]
[h2]Hotfix 18 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Intelligence Class 7 Label: Intelligence class 7 was mistakenly labeled as intelligence class 6 in the tooltips when you were gaining that.
Network Tower Fixing: Fixed a regression in Update 29 that made it impossible to actually spawn network towers properly out of the prologue. This was a really dumb typo on my part. Thanks to everyone on their patience with me with this one.
Superspeed Perk: The Superspeed perk is no longer shown on bulk or worker units, as it has no function there and was purely misleading.

Update 29: Architecture Of The Machine

[p]Second build of this week. Might be my last one for the week, as I'm going to start focusing on the larger content updates now. But there was more I wanted to accomplish in terms of requests from players than I could fit into Update 28.

This update also has a large number of visual updates to various structures that you can build. This wasn't even on my list of things to do this week, but I guess I just kind of had a bolt of inspiration on it, so here we are.

Once I finish with these two, then I'm going to resume working on the next big content update, so that may be another bit of a break between builds unless you play on the beta branch. The content updates that are coming up are all beefy ones, so their spacing is going to be a bit further apart (3 weeks on average, probably) compared to what I did earlier in the year.

If you’ve spent time with Heart of the Machine and want to leave a review, that’d be appreciated. No need to say more than you mean, but if you’ve been meaning to write one, I’d be grateful. Steam reviews carry weight. For a project like this — developed by a single person over many years, every review makes a difference.[/p][p]Honest thoughts are what matter. Whatever your experience has been, sharing it helps. It’s a powerful way to have your voice heard and contributes to how future patches are prioritized and addressed.[/p][p]Thanks for reading and for playing.
[/p]
[expand]
[h2]Update 29 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Building Visual Variety[/h3]

Many Structures Updated: In all, 31 structures now look differently than they used to, providing more visual variety and flavor.
Many New Visuals Added: There are 21 new actual visual structure styles divided between them. Broadly this means that some structures have the same visual styling (everything being completely unique was never the goal there), but it makes it so that there's a lot less repetition.

[h3]Quality Of Life Improvements[/h3]

Quicker Contemplation Arrival: Whenever you finish constructing a building, it now immediately checks if there's anything based on that (contemplations or streetsense) that it should trigger sooner than later. This makes it so that you can get geothermal on the same turn that you finish constructing your wind power, rather than it needing to wait until later.
Debate Tooltip Clarity: During debates, the short tooltip now has colored icons for the categories that it is in. A orange-gold for the ones that match something you're trying to hit, and a dim purple for ones that don't match. There is already an on-tile display of these same icons when they match, but now it's in two places so it's easier not to miss that info.
More Audio Options: There is a new "Major Event Musical Stingers" option in the Audio tab of settings: Lasting 10-50 seconds on major events such as dooms, chapter changes, etc. Turning off the rest of the music leaves these on.
"Stop The Poisoning" QOL: Improved Stop The Poisoning so that if you click it in the task stack, it now cycles through the targets.
Better Automated Personnel Management: Previously, there was a delay with automated personnel management's hiring and firing. It would only adjust the numbers during turn change, which could make it seem like it wasn't doing anything if you just had new buildings come online, or just got rid of old ones. It now makes adjustments in realtime with your changes, and notes hiring and layoffs into the statistics tooltip for that type of worker, too. If you are very poor, with less than 10k wealth, then it will not attempt to hire new workers until the turn change, but it will lay them off. And it will properly hire them during the turn change as it used to (but they may then leave if you can't fulfill their salary needs).
Restarting Certain Lapsed Deals: If your deal for toilet paper or donuts or similar is broken, and you can get to a screen that would let you restart that deal, then it now allows you to properly restart the deal.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Handbook Correction: The handbook entry for "Vandalize Spaceport Computers" is now properly noting that it must be done in the first 20 turns, rather than saying it can be done in the first 50 turns. Please note that for languages other than English, this will not be updated until a future build.
Fixes When Replaying The Prologue: If you replayed the prologue and then got into chapter 3+ on a new timeline, then some flags were not being properly tripped until you saved and reloaded. Fixed. Similarly, if went all the way back on a new timeline, or went back to chapter one only and then got back into chapter 3, the same thing was an issue and is now fixed. This was causing stuff like LostGen Water Theft to not appear in a timely fashion when you reached chapter 3+, but it probably didn't affect much else. This also did not affect completely new profiles.
Faster StreetSense and Contemplation Arrival: When you get to a more advanced chapter from replaying something in a new timeline, it now triggers StreetSense and Contemplations to update more quickly. Previously, some things would only appear after you ended a turn or reloaded a savegame.
Help Button In Debates: The help button in the debate window finally works properly. That's been non-functional since prior to the game entering early access, and I never could find my error with it until now. I didn't put a huge effort into it. It turned out to just be two lines of code that were doing the opposite of what was intended.
Chapter 3 Failsafe: If you somehow got more than one timeline without ever triggering chapter 3 to start, then it now will automatically move you into chapter 3.
Armored Executive Permissions: Armored Executives are now properly able to do the various streetsense and contemplation items that require shell company operatives. It was a mistake that they could not.
Improper Rust Spreading: Fixed three spots where The Rust would not spread to human targets properly if you had gotten a cure for yourself.
Improved Wind Turbines After Rust Cure: Once you have the cure for The Rust, your own wind turbines will not be able to infect themselves, and any infection on them will be removed (they will still act as a spreader, though, which lets you use them aggressively if you wish).
Auto-Scrapping Fix: When you are building new structures of the sort that auto-scraps themselves if you are over limit, it now looks for ones that have been disconnected from the network and scraps those prior to the nice new ones you're building. This was maybe the third instance of this kind of confusing edge case, which would lead to your stuff disappearing as soon as you built it.
Stealth Storage Fix: Fixed an issue in Update 28 where stealth storage facilities were being scrapped on load, which was not intended. Their underlying type was updated, and now it will automatically transition over types if it is valid to do so (as it is here), rather than deleting the structure.
Donut Shop Counting: Fixed an issue where the number of donut shops was counting down instead of counting up properly during Stop The Poisoning.
Text Fix: Fixed an issue where the wrong text string was being used for the target building type in Stop The Poisoning, especially notable in languages other than English.
Network Range Extender Consistency: Fixed an issue where network range extenders would be only range 45 until they were fully built, and then would be 55. They are now 55 at all times. This was a legacy piece of data based on part of the number being on the structure and part of it being on the job, which hasn't been relevant for a year and a half.
Aggression Toward Meeting-Seekers: Fixed three separate cases where different NPCs units who are seeking meetings with you would be wrongly targeted for death by your bulk or worker units.
Shop Prior Activity Counting Fix: Fixed an issue with shops where if you bought from them, it was making the times you've done them in other timelines count down. This was a new issue in Update 28. Now it doesn't increase at all, since it's telling you about other timelines, not this one (and in other timelines, it will show you how many other timelines you made a choice in, not how many times you made that choice in each other timeline -- legacy data aside).
Repeat Action Fix: If a building is no longer a valid location to take a project-specific action, it no longer lets you take the action a second time if the StreetSense item has not yet cleared. There was a great use case of this during Bitter Medicine, but frankly there were some other spots where this was likely to come up as well. All of them should be fixed now, but the Bitter Medicine one definitely is.
Vitamin Water For Nomads Fix: Fixed an issue where the Vitamin Water For Nomads project was not properly completing if you had two vitamin infusers working and were at full cap. It was mistakenly only going to complete properly if you had three vitamin infusers, which is one more than you need for this scenario.
Secondary Network Tower Independence: Previously, "secondary network towers" from a grey goo scenario were not providing network connectivity unless they were in range of another network tower or repeater or similar. This was unintended, as they are meant to all be independent network sources that cut across gaps as needed. The normal clustering of them means that this doesn't happen often at all, but from now on if it does happen, it will work properly.