Update 37: Eiserloh Demolition

[p]This is a pretty small update, all things considered, but it has a bunch of things requested or reported by players. It's nice to have these housekeeping updates amidst the bigger ones.

This build also has something that really was not on my radar, but is an RNG improvement from a 2017 GDC video by Squirrel Eiserloh. A colleague forwarded it to me, and I was really impressed with the alogorithm, and sure enough it is really great. So that's also in this build.

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 37 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]General Improvements[/h3]

• Noisy Squirrels: The game now uses SquirrelNoise5 for random number generation instead of MersenneTwister. For more information, please see Squirrel Eiserloh's 2017 GDC presentation. It's basically a super-fast hashing algorithm used in a really clever way.
• Less Likely For Real Bullets To Leak Through: Improved horrify mode and demoralize mode so that they will not flip over to doing physical damage if the target is immune to that kind of morale damage. Instead, it will either do a normal morale attack if they're vulnerable to that, or a physical attack if it's a robotic enemy.
• Deselection Convenience: If you hit the Escape key while you have a unit selected, it will now deselect that unit before it opens the system menu. After that it opens the system menu like normal.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• More Cultivators: The max possible Cultivator internal robotics has been close to doubled again. This won't really affect too many timelines, but it sets up some things for the future.
• Liquid Ambush: Liquid Identity now grants a 1.5x Ambush bonus.
• Remote Demolition Location: The Remote Demolish ability has been removed, and has been converted into a consumable item that can be used by any Souldroid. There was no longer room on the ability bar for Technicians to have this assigned.
• Remote Demolition Cost: The Remote Demolish item now costs 4 mental energy and 2000 microbuilders, rather than 6 mental energy. It also has been adjusted to be noted as a "swarm of microbuilders" rather than a "drone."
• Eraser Safety: Added a new code branch to feats that allows them to do things to targets as projectiles are being fired, rather than just when projectiles hit. In the case of Eraser Rounds, if it's going to cause a target to violently explode, it now freezes them in place so that they don't move somewhere unexpected and blow up something you had no warning about. This is perhaps most relevant for when your own androids are firing eraser rounds, but it applies to enemies targeting your own units or allies, as well. Keeps things much cleaner for the player in all those cases.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• Double Dragon Paths: The game now blocks you from doing both "Rejection Of Temptation" and "Fertility Deity" if you have both kinds of dragons in a single timeline. You can do either one, but then the next one becomes unavailable after you choose the first.
• Missing Industrial Protein Vats: Fixed an issue where if you got Industrial Protein Vats after having a stealth start, you wouldn't actually get the vats properly.
• Bombing Text: Corrected a text issue where the bombing run from ExoCorps was saying the space nations were doing it.
• Loading Error Prevention: Added in some error prevention during savegame load, if certain objects were being discarded rather than kept.
• Systems Integrity Log Error: Fixed an exception in the event log when bulk units were doing systems integrity attacks and you looked at it.
• Oath Of Pacifism Description: Corrected the "Oath Of Pacifism" description to be accurate now that it is able systems-disruption damage to androids, mechs, and vehicles.
• Warning On Save During Building Death: Quieted a harmless warning that could be thrown if a savegame was happening right when some building was destroyed but before it was fully removed from the game.
• Prologue Description Fix: Corrected the description of the prologue in the Start New Profile screen to properly describe it as short but heavily branching.
• Worker And Resident Exception Fix: Added in protection against issues with assigning workers and residents into buildings that are being torn down right as the calculation tries to run.
• Early Questline Fix: Fixed issues where, now that you can build the liquid metal dragons during the grace period, you could actually go further in some questlines before the grace period was over.
• Floating Point Aggro Fix: Fixed an issue where if the alarm was not tripped during "Floating Point Errors," then the units that spawned were still being heavily aggroed against the unit that took the action. That only happens now if the alarm is actually tripped.
• Wastelander Contact Fix: Corrected the text in International Scrutiny so that it doesn't say you need Homo Obscurus. Instead, what you need is to have had the wastelanders contact an ExoCorp for you in the past. Also corrected the code so that this is now properly true in either doom set, as previously it was not checking that, but instead was checking that you had completed the umbilical collection quest. This also makes The Coming War not appear until it should.
• ExoCorp Contact Text Fix: The text for contacting an ExoCorp is now entirely different if you're on the International Scrutiny path, so that it makes more sense in the context of all the ExoCorps attacking.
• Slayer Mode Fix: Fixed some issues in recent updates that made Slayer mode not work properly (it was doing morale damage instead of physical). This was a bug introduced when systems disruption attacks were introduced.
• Achievements Fixes: Fixed an issue where Budding Pacifist and Taking Extra Care were being triggered on normal starts of timelines beyond the first.
• Destroyed Tower Fixes: Added in several layers of fallback for if you're in the main game (have started the dooms, have not reached the post-apocalypse) and your network tower gets destroyed. If you have secondary towers from grey goo, then it does some extra checks to make sure that one of them becomes your primary, or it unlocks your emergency network source if they're all gone. Previously it was only doing most of these checks on the exact moment of death of the existing network tower, and so if something went wrong with that, it could lead to you being stranded without a network in very rare and unlucky cases.
• Missing Company Options Fix: Fixed two cases of inverted logic that was causing Coupon Program and Nicotine to not become available until after the Company Plateau, rather than during it.
• Exceptions On Freezing Time: Fixed a couple of exceptions that could happen during the popups of unit deaths during combat, most notably if you froze time during their deaths to take a lot of screenshots.

[/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]