Major Update 25: For The Sake Of Those Bound

[p]This build has been cooking for a while, and it's undoubtedly the single largest build since launch. I wasn't planning on SUCH a major build so soon after the last one, but here we are! The marquee feature is the new tier 2 goal called "For The Sake Of Those Bound," which is really fun. That said, unrelated to the new T2 goal, there are a really huge number of new pieces of equipment, additional unit features, balance items, and so on.

There's too much for me to make much of a sensible summary, so as a last note let me just give a special thanks to community members Fluffiest and Pingcode. Fluffiest actually wrote the entire first draft of the new T2 scenario, and Pingcode designed and implemented about half of the new equipment. There were dozens of other community members that helped refine everything, but I just wanted to give a particular special thanks to those to. I am a "solo" developer, but there's so many people who also pour their passion into this game.

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.
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[h2]Update 25 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]New Features[/h3]

New Tier 2 Goal: "For The Sake Of Those Bound" is a major new goal, which is available relating to prison breaks. Typically do a single prison break, and then look for the Prison Observation contemplation. If you've already done the prison breaks, then at the point where you could embark on the first one, it will be visible. In order to do this, you must also have completed The Executive Tomb, as it uses... dangerous things... you found in that project.
Armor Cracker: There is a new Armor Cracker feat, which allows units that have it to bypass a certain amount of armor, regardless of their piercing level. This is on a variety of existing units and equipment, plus new equipment.
Bulkhead Armor: There is a new Bulkhead Armor badge, which blocks armor-cracker.
Anti-Aircraft: Added a new Anti-Aircraft feat, and a new Android Buster feat, both of which do damage bonuses against their respective types of target. For the AA, it's against high-flying vehicles only, not low-flying ones like the Cruisers and such. This is on a variety of existing units and equipment, plus new equipment.
Heavy Arms Research: There is a new Heavy Arms Research category in the VR upgrades menu. It currently has five upgrades possible in it, all related to new equipment for vehicles and mechs.
Android Buster: This new feat is now on a variety of existing melee weapons and handguns.
Mech Artillery: The VS-102 Albatross can now be used by mechs and not just vehicles.
Automated Brain Harvesting: Added a new "Brain Harvester" structure, which works a lot like the Protein Cannery, and unlocks at intelligence class 4.
Vehicle Firing Hatches: There is a new "Firing Hatches" feat, which is now required for units to fire out of a vehicle. This also has a debuff to how much damage your units do from firing out of the hatch. This is available only on Delivery Craft, Bastion, and Wraith.
Vehicle Hot Drop: Units riding in vehicles with this feat can disembark without any Mental Energy or Action Point Cost. This is available only on Wraith, Economic Transport, Troopship, and Mech Carrier.
BC-27 Strafe: New weapon available to any vehicle with weapons slots, available very early in the game.
More Vehicle/Mech Weapons: The following new weapons for vehicles and mechs are now available at intelligence class 4: FS-31 Firefall, BC-29 Swamp, SG-50 Magrail, SG-52 Electrorail, AT-14 Achilles.
More Vehicle-Only Weapons: The following new weapons for vehicles are now available at intelligence class 4: DG-5 Disruption Bomb, GG-3 Electro Bomb.
8 New Achievements: Seven of these are related to the new Tier 2 goal.

[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Reinforcements Handbook Entries: There are now handbook entries for Light Reinforcements and Heavy Reinforcements. People have been asking about this on the forums and discord for a while, and I had not realized it was not in the handbook!
"Standard" Androids: The term "elite" for your normal androids has been shifted to instead be "standard." There were only half a dozen spots in the game where this term came up at all, and it was confusing.
Feat Stacking Clarity: The feats handbook entry has been updated to note that the highest value of a feat is what is applied, rather than the combined value. In other words, feats don't stack
Jumping To Where Units Died: When your units died, bulk or otherwise, you can now left-click the notification of this to jump to where they died. It will put a circle flare around where they were for three seconds. In the recent events window, and the history window, you can do this same thing if the on-screen notification has expired. Please note that events logged prior to this new update won't behave this way, but any new deaths even in existing savegames will of course work properly.
Damage Clarity: If a unit is going to be doing zero damage of any sort, then it does not flip over to saying zero morale damage. It stays saying physical damage. This was mildly confusing, since it seemed like maybe you were in a morale-attack mode when you were not.
Coordinated Attack Clarity: "Designate Coordinated Attack" now notes that this will use Action Points from every unit involved in the attack. Also, for standard units only (not bulks), the following message is now added to the AG-50 Punt Gun, AG-51 Rail Driver, and SG-50 Magrail: "Units equipped with this cannot use Networked Targeting to support."
Guard Aggro Clarity: In the tooltips for NPC units that are guards who have been aggroed in some fashion, it now says if they're the same amount indifferent to you as usual, or if they will now attack you on sight. There is a color difference on the icons in the map for this, but it was never clear in the game until now what was going on. This text will only be in English until the next update.
Complete Armor Blockage: When your units cannot even scratch an enemy unit because of the amount of armor they have, it now shows a rejection message to that effect. Previously it would let you shoot at them, accomplishing nothing, and this was occasionally confusing to new folks, and always useless.
Movement Range Ratings: The movement range is now shown on enemy unit tooltips, since that's now relevant information. I was hiding it to keep things tidy, but it's useful to know in general to be honest, and with the Slow Breaker in particular, it's extra useful now.
Project Click Behavior: For projects in the task stack, if there's only one outcome (this is most of them), then clicking them no longer opens up a sub-menu that does nothing. That was very confusing, and could lead to players missing tooltips. For projects where you can choose an outcome, it works the same as before. It also has a note in gold text that those can be clicked (that's not new, but it helps set them apart).
Out Of AP/ME Clarity: If you are out of AP or mental energy, and you are trying to move an android, it now has tooltips next to the cursor that are more clear in terms of letting you know why you can't do what you're trying to do. The mental energy version is only available in the English version of the game until a later update.
Item/Ability Targeting Clarity: When you are in targeting mode for an ability or item, it now always shows that in the header. If you were hovering an invalid target, then it previously was just saying that the target was invalid, but not what you were trying to do. This made it look like potentially you were trying to attack the target but could not, for example.

[h3]Quality Of Life Improvements[/h3]

Attack Ranges During Placement And Movement: When you are in placement mode for any kind of unit, it now shows the attack range circle for them. This is useful for deterrence and protection of course, but also for planning attacks from standard units as well. This is also shown when you move any unit.
Morale Damage Visibility: When morale damage is being scheduled for a target unit in addition to regular damage, both are shown in the bottom of the tooltip for that unit. Previously the morale damage would be done, but it would not actually be shown in advance as part of the prediction on these tooltips. When ONLY morale damage is scheduled to be dealt to a target, or when the morale damage percentage is higher than the physical damage percentage, then the "incoming damage meter" above the heads of units now shows with a blue color instead of orange.
Enemy Death Meter Display: For any NPC units that are being targeted by your own bulk/captured units, it now shows the "incoming physical or morale damage meter" above their heads.
Drone Quality Visibility: Drone Quality is no longer hidden on your unit tooltips. Previously you had to hold shift to see that value, which was confusing.
"Seek And Destroy" Home Site: When you have bulk or captured units in the "Seek And Destroy mode, it will now show what their home position is, which they will return to when they don't have any targets they feel like chasing. This home position can be seen by selecting or hovering them. When you reposition any bulk or captured unit by hand, or when you change its stance via the command mode menu or the lower-left interface, it now sets its home position to their current position.
"Seek And Destroy" Visibility: When you look at the list of statuses in the tooltip for one of your bulk units that is in the Seek And Destroy mode, it now shows you what their last goal was when they did a move. Please note that if they were shooting at something, that's separate from the move. And they don't move every turn.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Building Over Ruins: When roads, fences, and other minor items have been destroyed, you're now allowed to build over them freely, rather than them continuing to block construction.
"Protection Required" Project: The "Protection Required" project has had some of its options rebalanced, making them more valuable. A fix to prevent a softlock with this project also is in place.
Small Arms Research Un-Dilution: Removed four melee-focused upgrades from the Small Arms Research category, to make that more focused. These upgrades are still available through the Melee Research category.
Buffs To Sledge: Sledge attack range has been increased from 12 to 26. There's no good reason they can't lob grenades that far. Also, frankly, this makes the bulks a lot more useful since they can actually cover a reasonable area with their deterrence.
PMC Impostor Buffs: PMC Impostor attack range has been increased from 12 to 29. They have a nice rifle to start with, and this helps set them apart from the other various android classes, making them have a better role in general.
Item Usage Buff: Androids that can take cover will now do so, for free, any time they use any item while standing in a spot where they can take cover. Vehicles and Mechs that can put their shields up will now do so, for free, any time they use any item. This helps make item usage more viable in a lot of ways.
"Designate Coordinated Attack" Buff: "Designate Coordinated Attack" is now able to be used on any target, not just humans on foot.
Mech Rebalance: All of your mechs that are not adapted from human designs now have weapon hardpoint equipment slots now, and slightly fewer augment slots.
NPC Armor Intelligence Upgrade: If armor would block NPC units from doing all physical damage to a target, they will now still consider it a valid target and make decisions based on that if they can do morale damage to the target. This makes it so that bulk units can take down a Vorsiber inquisitor, for example.
Mech Drone Quality: Now that mechs can launch drones like vehicles do, they all have ratings for their quality of drones.
NPC Turn Order Improvement: Improved part of the turn-order so that new NPC units spawn in before the existing ones decide where they want to move. All of this is after the part where they shot at each other. This allows existing NPCs to decide if they want to hang around or chase newcomers. In various cases, newcomers would spawn right where some existing NPCs were, and those existing NPCs would prematurely move away, which looked very strange.
Biological Mainframe Rotting Intensity: The effect of Rotted Minds on Biological Mainframes is now more intense, to keep this more in balance with other sources of Neural Expansion. Aka, you now get 3% of their capacity rather than 5%. This means 1442 rather than 2404 per Biological Mainframe.
Biological Mainframe Rotting Speed: Once you have experienced Rotted Minds once, there is an update to the stats of the biological mainframes that just shows their actual numbers, and not a "before rotting and after rotting" set of numbers. And there's no longer a time gap before the brains rot. This keeps them viable for generating a lot of neural expansion and in particular compute power -- more so than ever now with the automated brain harvesting -- but removes the ability to micro them to get 4 turns of inflated neural expansion.
Vehicle Engineering Buffs: A variety of vehicles now have substantially more engineering, which is useful for Divert Power To Stun in particular.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Command Mode Visual Fix: Fixed a bug from the prior build where if you had exactly 13 or 15 androids unlocked, then it would accidentally put one of the icons down too low on top of the android list button.
Coordinated Attacks Fix: Fixed an oversight where coordinated attacks could call across shell company lines (calling non-shell company units to shell company actions, or the opposite).
"Solve Homelessness" Fix: Fixed an issue where the "Solve Homelessness" project would complete instantly if you had never built any housing at all.
Mech Disembark Range Fix: Fixed an issue where when mechs were disembarking from vehicles, their valid movement range was smaller than it should have been because of it calculating the distance from the vehicle with the height of the vehicle included.
Versatile Lens Fix: Fixed an issue where if you filtered StreetSense to something other than "Project-Related Items," then that would cause the Versatile lens to stop showing those project-related items.
Turn-Change Investigation Fix: Fixed a generalized issue that was causing lists of units to be incorrect during turn changes, and which was also causing "you're in some investigation or infiltration" to blink out of existence during that period, too.
Feat Rounding Fix: Fixed an issue where feats with an amount like 1.5 were being rounded on some parts of the interface to the number 2, which was misleading. It now shows the proper number in all of the places where the feat value is shown.
Mouse Edge Scrolling Fix: Fixed an issue where if you had mouse edge scrolling on, it would not react to the mouse being at the bottom of the screen. In general, there's more of a grace area on the scrolling edges, which on most screens won't make any difference, but on high-DPI displays will make this work properly in all the cases.
Chapter One Sequence Break Fix: Fixed a sequence break that didn't make any sense where if you hacked some other mechs before the prison mechs shows up in chapter one, the prison mech would never appear and people would thank you for driving it off. It now appears anyway.
Executive Skyscraper Fix: Changed two contemplations from chapter two to work based on any skyscraper, rather than requiring an executive skyscraper. The latter are not guaranteed to always be in the city, so that could make those contemplations unavailable.
Minor Exceptions Fixed: Several minor but annoying exceptions have been fixed.
Bulk Unit Feats Fix: Fixed a really stupid oversight where NPCs were all pulling from the default list of feats that were part of their type, rather than looking at how they were configured. This meant that any feats on your bulk androids were not actually taking effect!
Desynchronized Timeline Save Fixes: Fixed a small nest of issues regarding diving into older saves for a city than whatever was in the central metadata. This may have exclusively applied to literal dives, since I had tested things with the manual savegame loading, but I can't rule it out. Essentially, a variety of data, including what turn it is, was being back-merged in a way that was not correct, and now that doesn't happen.

[/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]