Update 34: The Third Magistrate

[p]This is another update based on player feedback. This one includes a number of quality of life improvements, a number of balance improvements, and some bugfixes.

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 34 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Quality Of Life[/h3]

Faster StreetSense Updates: After a valid streetsense location is turned into an invalid one (usually because of player interactions in that spot), it recalculates a new valid location much more quickly.
More Bovine Suggestions: Improved the suggested number of Bovine Replicators during Open Pantry to now be +3 rather than +9, same as was done for the Meats project in a prior update.
Hardware Screen Filters: On the hardware screen -- both on the unit type overview and unit type analysis screens -- you can now filter to see various kinds of units. There was no real way to see this information in the game prior to now, and people had been asking about this for a while. You can see Support Units, Portdroids, Oxdroids, Dynadroids, Infildroids, Souldroids, Small Mechs, and Large Mechs.
Faster VR Screen Inspiration: In the VR screen, when you research an item of inspiration, it now immediately pops it open. If you need to close it, it's still available on the side of the screen the same as before. But this saves quite a bit of clicking around.
Sorted Upgrade Choices: When you get a list of upgrades to choose from, they are now sorted alphabetically rather than being randomly ordered.

[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Emergency Network Source Clarity: If your tower gets blown up and you have to build a replacement network source, it now has extra notes about building it near the spot of the old one if you need to get network connectivity back to your existing buildings; or being prepared to accelerate a bunch of network extenders to improve connectivity.
Targeting Uplink Handbook Entry: A new Targeting Uplink handbook entry has been added to the game, and unlocks when you reach intelligence class 5 and also get the targeting uplink itself. This is a notably confusing mechanic without a specific explanation. This is only in the English version of the game until a future update.
Research Upgrades Handbook Entry: A new handbook entry called "Upgrades Come From Research And The VR Screen" has been added. This opens once you are in chapter two, and explains how to use research from scientists to get extra upgrades. This is a major part of the meta from chapter two onward, but it wasn't really explicitly mentioned anywhere. This is only in the English version of the game until a future update.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Debating The Third Magistrate: The debate with the third magistrate now gives you 7 discards rather than 5, and has a target of 1200 rather than 1400. It was just too tough otherwise, and this basically reduces the impact of RNG on players in particular.
Bomb Upgrades Buff: The "Bomb Explosive Density" upgrade now increases by 50% per upgrade, rather than 20%. And it has a maximum upgrade of 600% rather than 300%.
Female Mimics Can Support: Female mimics are also now support units, to match the male mimics. Female mimics are still dynadroids in a way that male mimics are not, though.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Deploying Unit Exception Fix: Fixed another exception that could happen when deploying units into the range of certain types of enemies. If the enemies had armor cracker in particular, then it could cause an issue.
Number Display Fix: Fixed a number display issue that I introduced in Update 33, when I fixed a different number issue. I was trying to be clever in my code, and instead made a bigger mess. The new fix is the fix I should have done in the first place, as it's simple and reliable.
Doom Notice Fixes: Fixed an issue where alternative dooms (like WW4) were inheriting the "do not open list of dooms" status from their parent doom, incorrectly. Also fixed an issue where dooms that skip opening the list of dooms still said you could left-click to open the list of dooms. They now just note to left-click to close the notice.
StreetSense Collection Spot Fix: Fixed an issue with StreetSense assignments where certain kinds of resource gathering (like collecting flowers) was not reacting properly to being hidden by prior thefts at a POI. That was in turn leading to the action hanging around in kind of a half-life of there-and-not-there.
Bulk Android Death Notice Fixes: Fixed a misconfiguration where bulk androids were being considered "worker units" for purposes of "don't tell me about it in the main log. I'm not sure what I was thinking.
Ten-Turn Average Fix: Fixed a math error in the detailed trends over the last 10 turns for resources. They were correct immediately after loading a savegame, but then were off by dividing by 9 rather than 10 on turns after loading one.

[/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]