Update 36: International Scrutiny
[p]Another big update! A second set of dooms to play through, 8 new achievements, new equipment, and more.
My targets for the next few months are all on track, but my short-term work schedule has shifted around a lot -- mainly based on where I was feeling most-inspired, more than anything else. Instead of diving into the first T3 goal in preparation for next week, I've been working on major extensions to the VR screen, where you will be able to spend Daring to skip by early-timeline content you've seen before, as well as manage your three different kinds of VR. That's coming along well, but due to Golden Week, will be coming out the week after next.
Next week I do plan a build, but it will be a variety of player-requested items as well as a beta for some of the new things I've got cooking up. As noted, all this shift really represents is a shift in order of operations; we get to the same place over the next 12 weeks or so.
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 36 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]New Doom/Troubles Style: International Scrutiny[/h3]
[/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]
My targets for the next few months are all on track, but my short-term work schedule has shifted around a lot -- mainly based on where I was feeling most-inspired, more than anything else. Instead of diving into the first T3 goal in preparation for next week, I've been working on major extensions to the VR screen, where you will be able to spend Daring to skip by early-timeline content you've seen before, as well as manage your three different kinds of VR. That's coming along well, but due to Golden Week, will be coming out the week after next.
Next week I do plan a build, but it will be a variety of player-requested items as well as a beta for some of the new things I've got cooking up. As noted, all this shift really represents is a shift in order of operations; we get to the same place over the next 12 weeks or so.
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 36 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]New Doom/Troubles Style: International Scrutiny[/h3]
- An Alternative To Vorsiber's Wrath: This is a substantially more difficult set of dooms, where the 11 ExoCorps are heavily involved in the city. This isn't pleasant for you or for Vorsiber. Early feedback on this has been that it practically feels like a whole new goal on its own.
- Robots Avoiding Divorce: I heard from some players that they would just never see WW4, because the setup for that involves doing something really unpleasant to one of your androids. Good news -- this new set of dooms provides a different path to WW4 that is complex in its own way.
- Hard And Extreme Mode Wording: The number of turns in the new doom set is really different from the original, and also is uneven per doom (instead of a flat 100 each, these range from 5 to 90). Both the math and explanations for Hard and Extreme mode needed to be updated to properly handle this, while still giving the same experience on Vorsiber's Wrath.
- New Doom Audio Stingers: Seven of the new dooms in the new set of troubles now have their own independent musical stingers when they occur, including the 10th and final doom of that new set. This gives them a pretty notable different feel from the original set.
- New Dog-Shaped Frenemies: Androids that are dogs is a misnomer? Oh well. You can meet them, and fight them, or refuse to fight them in various ways. You can also hack them to joining your side. And some even more surprising stuff that would be spoilers.
- 6 New Achievements: There are 6 new achievements that are specific to things you can do on the International Scrutiny path.
- Much More Daring: Tier 2 goals and side goals have been adjusted so that they now give you Daring rather than Aetagest, even on normal difficulty mode. You'll be grateful when the new VR screen updates roll out in a few weeks.
- Inspiration To Throw Heavier Things: Heavy metal projectiles are now automatically granted on intelligence class 7, making it so that you then don't have to do Nickelbots Are The Worst anymore.
- Independently Realize Dogs Exist: At intelligence class 6, you now get both the Animal Palace and the Pet Sitter upgrade if you don't already have them in your current timeline. This prevents you from having to repeat the Animals Are Not Safe contemplation beyond this point.
- Early Mischief Availability: A variety of StreetSense actions (helping with carrying water, helping with a fire, observing a motel, and wiretapping) are no longer available in early chapter 2+ if you have not yet started the dooms. Basically, the early grace period normally excludes things like this, but these were missed from the normal exclusion.
- Strategic Resource Ordering: Strategic resources are now sorted by group before they're sorted alphabetically within their groups. This wasn't very relevant before now, but it keeps all the personality resources and the crystalized brainwaves together, for example.
- Dragons Occupy Less Mental Space: The liquid metal dragons have both had their capacity costs reduced from 36 to 24. With the way that the various balance has been evolving with mechs, this makes them more competitive with the other mechs.
- 2 New Achievements: There are two new achievements relating to the new balance items from the prior build. One involves the anti-systems-integrity weapons, and the other involves a new way to commit warcrimes.
- 8 New Anti-Systems Android Weapons: SY-5 Anti Pistol, Dual BS5 Anti Pistols, TK-5 Anti Shotgun, MS-5 Anti Rifle, N155 Tactical Anti, Staff Of Precision, Claws Of Precision, Anti Blade. All of these unlock when you reach intelligence class 3, except for the claws, staff, and sword -- those unlock when you get the Carver, Harbinger, and Exator, respectively.
- "Anti-Systems Effectiveness" Upgrade: This upgrade in the Small Arms Research category benefits all the various new equipment and some older ones.
- New Anti-Systems Weapon For Mechs: The FF-5 Buckler unlocks at intelligence class 3.
- New Anti-Systems Weapon For Vehicles: The BS-5 Anti Bomb unlocks at intelligence class 3.
- Infinite Invisible Vehicles Fix: Fixed an issue that could lead to a memory leak on certain sub-screens. It had to do with background traffic calculating long routes that they would never take, and then trying to fade out, but not actually doing so. Good grief! Whole thing is fixed up.
- Unity Version Upgrade: Upgraded unity version from 2021.3.30f1 to 2021.3.45f1. This has some various bugfixes that should not affect the game, particularly. This also includes the fix to the critical security update that Unity announced today. I'm not really convinced it's going to be dangerous to this game, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
[/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]