Heart of the Machine News

0.655.6 Hotfix 14

Just a quick update today with two fixes to keep things tidy.

0.655.6 Hotfix 14 Suggested Tab Fix: Fixed a regression in the prior build where if you had a building that wanted to show in your build menu suggestions list, but you were at cap on that or otherwise had it not yet unlocked, then your build menu would constantly flip back to the suggested tab.
Building Over Broken Things: Fixed a generalized bug where if you could build something because another version of it was broken somewhere in the world, that there was a strong chance it would delete your new thing that you're trying to build, rather than the old broken version. As an example, if you have an old broken decoy tower, and try to put up a new one. The game now goes through the following lists, deleting only from the first one it finds until it's under cap: stuff that's broken and not rebuilding, stuff that's rebuilding, stuff that's being freshly built, anything else. Previously, stuff that was broken and being built was lumped into one pass of this, which could lead to unexpected results.

Update 16 Preview Senior Technician Rebalance: Lower intelligence, but higher combat stats.
Fog Updates: All of the existing fogs have been updated for better visibility when you are zoomed out, and in general to be more polished. There are also four new fog styles now included, making for more variety.
Worldbuilding Statistics: There are a variety of statistics you can now see in the City Statistics tab about the number of people in the world and region, and so on. The cohort statistics are not yet visible in this preview, and the new city statistics are only in English until Update 16.

Full notes here.

“Does the machine speak for us, or do we now speak for the machine?”
— William Gibson, Neuromancer

[h3]New Minds, Start Here[/h3][hr][/hr]For those just stepping into the Machine’s world, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the basics. The Heart of the Machine Beginner's Guide is your gateway to understanding the systems at play and building your foundation. After all, every complex network starts with a single connection.

[h3]Connect with the Machine[/h3][hr][/hr]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.

Here is a link to prior recent patches in case you missed them.
https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/524216645064853158
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2001070/view/502822010104053992
https://steamcommunity.com/games/2001070/announcements/detail/524212840420081803

0.655.5 Hotfix 13

Well I sure made a mess of things with yesterday's hotfix, apologies for that. I didn't properly handle the differentials with the upcoming build and the hotfix; in the past, I've tried to avoid doing branches like this, and so I still make some mistakes when I do it. I've made some notes on how to better avoid this in the future.

Aside from fixing the things I broke in the prior hotfix (which was basically "the entire game"), I've also put in some improvements to how paused buildings are handled in this new update, which should be welcome in general.

0.655.5 Hotfix 13 Load Errors Fixed: Fixed a bug in the prior build where it was throwing errors on startup of the game because I had some achievements set up wrong. Perils of working on an upcoming build while doing hotfixes at the same time. Apologies for that!
Per-Turn Errors Fixed: Fixed a related bug to the the above problem that was also causing errors whenever you ended the current turn, but only if you were in the non-demo build of the game. This was the same root problem.
Hardened Against "Downstream Errors" In The Future: Added in extra protection against errors in custom code areas on turn-change, initial forces seeding on new timelines, and deserialization. There were a bunch of funky effects in the prior build that were a result of exceptions in these areas causing these background threads to terminate early and thus not do a bunch of various things properly. I've fixed the root cause of that, but this new protection makes it so that if there are similar errors in the future (in my code or in mods), then things will be less severe. "Hilarious" (sigh) side effects of this lack of protection included: hundreds of android spawns on new timeline, status effects not counting down, science not being applied to projects, and enemies not spawning in relation to an event.
Locked Building Fix: Fixed a bug in the prior build that would allow buildings that are not yet invented in a savegame to sometimes be suggested. This was applying to the nomad therapist's office, which is not available yet until the next major update.
Paused Structure Bugfix: Fixed a bug where paused structures were not causing the cap of internal robotics to appear reduced on the sidebar, but were affecting what would happen if you then tried to build something that would use their internal robotics (it would cause the new thing to likely disappear right away, but it depended on some other factors. Something would disappear or else complain at you).
Paused Structure Tooltip Improvement: On tooltips for structures, it now shows Status: Paused or Status: Dormant (for flags, in the second case) if they are paused. Previously they were not showing anything. In older versions of the game they showed as if they were broken, but showing as they were fine was equally confusing.
Paused Structures List Improvements: On the "Structures With Complaints" UI, there is now a section for paused structures separately above the ones that are "fine."

Update 16 Preview Senior Technician Rebalance: Lower intelligence, but higher combat stats.
Fog Updates: All of the existing fogs have been updated for better visibility when you are zoomed out, and in general to be more polished. There are also four new fog styles now included, making for more variety.
Worldbuilding Statistics: There are a variety of statistics you can now see in the City Statistics tab about the number of people in the world and region, and so on. The cohort statistics are not yet visible in this preview, and the new city statistics are only in English until Update 16.

Full notes here.

“Does the machine speak for us, or do we now speak for the machine?”
— William Gibson, Neuromancer

0.655.4 Hotfix 12

This fixes one serious bug that affected a few people, then a couple of very minor issues, and finally has an early peek at a few items from Update 16.

0.655.4 Hotfix 12 Raptor Clarity: Added in some additional suggested structures during the various projects of the Endless War Raptor path, to make some bits of that more obvious.
Rare Mapgen Exception Fix: Fixed some cross-threading exceptions that could happen during mapgen and other collision checks if the timing of multiple threads was just wrong. The errors that would pop up from this were fleeting, rare, and harmless, but annoying.
Rare Unit-Death Exception Fix: Fixed a rare exception that could happen in tLowerStats if your thread timing was just wrong when a unit or structure you had selected died. The error was harmless but annoying
Critical Deterrence/Protection Calculation Fix: Fixed an issue that could cause Deterrence and Protection to drop out from under buildings during turn change, which would then get you attacked in a major way. Yiiiikes!
Paving Over Slums Removed: "Paving Over Slums" as a tech has been removed. It was deeply confusing in terms of order of operations how it worked, and it was in no way needed or intended in terms of the core flow for the compulsion path.

Update 16 Preview Senior Technician Rebalance: Lower intelligence, but higher combat stats.
Fog Updates: All of the existing fogs have been updated for better visibility when you are zoomed out, and in general to be more polished. There are also four new fog styles now included, making for more variety.
Worldbuilding Statistics: There are a variety of statistics you can now see in the City Statistics tab about the number of people in the world and region, and so on. The cohort statistics are not yet visible in this preview, and the new city statistics are only in English until Update 16.

Full notes here.

“Does the machine speak for us, or do we now speak for the machine?”
— William Gibson, Neuromancer

0.655.3 Hotfix 11

This is less a hotfix to the recent update, and more a generalized collection of fixes and tweaks.

0.655.3 Hotfix 11 Senior Technician Clearance: Senior Technicians no longer gain the Military Officer Codex perk if that is something your units would have, as your character is way too cautious to do something that risky on a shell company unit for fear of exposure.
Repairs And Jammers: There is now extra logic present to make the repair spiders and contraband jammers unlock if you have a damaged or partially-revealed stealth building.
Hidden Building Stat: Fixed an issue where on hidden buildings that were fully revealed, it was omitting their hidden stat in their tooltip, rather than showing it and showing it at zero.
Chapter 3 VR Screen: Fixed a bug where in savegames that were in chapter 3, some of them could wind up not allowing you to see the VR screen. I had code in place to correct for this, but mistakenly only applied to to chapter 4 and onward.
Post-Invasion Woes: After a military invasion from an ExoCorp, any soldiers that are still left around (including those from Vorsiber) despawn 2 turns later.
Post-Project Fix: Improved the general logic on project completion to prevent some errors that were largely surrounding a lack of clarity in the code. The most notable result of these was after the "monsters" project, it would give people a ton of extra Steward internal robotics. But this was a problem waiting to happen in other areas, too.
Prison Project Fix 1: Fixed a race condition at the end of the prison sequence where you could get both the experimental monsters path and also the divorce path at the same time, which were always meant to be mutually exclusive.
Prison Project Fix 2: Fixed an issue where if you ended the prison sequence on the next-to-last prison break, then the "Down with secforce" project would not properly start. You had to be one prior to that, which was an error.
Arson Project Fix: Fixed an issue where the Arson options would not properly show on all donut shops during "stop the poisoning" for any buildings where some unit was standing there. So if you happened to have a bulk unit standing on a donut shop, it would softlock you from progressing. Same if an enemy soldier happened to stand there. These now show up properly, although you can only see the icon directly on the map view. Moving the unit in question (when it's one of yours), or killing the enemy that is there (if it's not one of yours) then makes it possible to complete.
Investigations During Obsessions: Fixed an issue where some investigations were still possible to start during an obsession, but then they would not function correctly.
Corporate Record Decryption Fix: Fixed an issue where the "Steal Corporate Records" project could be softlocked if data from it was decrypted too soon. This included the case of being blocked by an obsession.
Religious Co-Ops During Obsessions: Fixed an issue where you could not sell to the religious co-ops during obsessions.
Obsession Exploration Sites: Corrected the text during obsessions so that it now properly says that exploration sites are not available. Previously it said they were.
Dead Researcher Project Fix: If all of your fugitive AGI researchers are dead, possibly because you killed them, it's now properly failing the AGI Rescue Mission, Defeat Oerl, and The Great AGI Debate projects, if those are active.

Full notes here.

“Does the machine speak for us, or do we now speak for the machine?”
— William Gibson, Neuromancer

0.655.2 Hotfix 10

This is a much less important hotfix than the one yesterday, but it has some really nice improvements in there. Thank you to everyone for the ongoing reports and savegames!

0.655.2 Hotfix 10 Exploration Site Tease Removal: Moved the "Chatting With PMC Guards" exploration site to no longer be included with the demo content, since it's impossible to complete in the context of the demo. I didn't mean to leave a dangling temptation of this sort in there!
Total Time Played: When hovering the button for the end of time, it now shows the total time since your first awakening. This is, in other words, your total time played across all timelines, not counting any save-scumming.
Accidental Grey Goo: Fixed a bug in the prior build that was causing the manifesto route to always convert into the grey goo route
NPCs Despawning On Load: Fixed a number of issues where various NPC managers were despawning their NPCs when you load into a savegame. This was most notably with your worker androids despawning when loading a save.
NPC Despawn Resource Rules: If you have NPC units under your control that are tied to a resource, and they despawn in such a way that would increase that resource over cap, that will no longer send it over cap. This applies to things like war raptors, but most of all to the worker androids.
Timeline Paradox Fix: Fixed a timeline/savegame paradox that could happen in fairly rare circumstances involving save-scumming. Trying to explain this one is challenging, as the full explanation is over 1500 words on the full release notes. This only applies once you're into chapter 3, but basically there were some gaps in the savegame format that I designed and how well those work with time travel that crosses timelines. The short answer is that these issues are now solved, basically by having the needed data in a couple of spots so that I can hot-merge savegames with profile progress if that needs to happen.
Tester Convenience Addition: Building on top of all the profile-based additions in this new build for the game, if you download someone else's savegame and put it into a folder on your computer (say, something like "testers" or whatever), then you should now be able to safely open their savegames without it logging their achievements to your storefront of choice (Steam, GOG, or Epic). This was something requested by testers who also want to work on their own achievements without accidentally getting those of other players.

Full notes here.

“Does the machine speak for us, or do we now speak for the machine?”
— William Gibson, Neuromancer