Heart of the Machine News

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.
[/p]
[expand]
[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]

Hotfix 20

[p]As part of two separate large internal surgeries in the last build, I made two rather subtle errors. These both had rather outsized effects that caused problems for a lot of folks. Thank you to everyone for reporting them, and for your patience on waiting for this fix! There are also some other unrelated improvements included, as well.[/p]

[expand]
[h2]Hotfix 20 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Building Unit Cap Increases: Structures such as the android extender now show +12 rather than just showing 12, so it's clear that they are showing an increase rather than a total. And then underneath that, it also shows "Current: 144" or whatever the number is, specifically so that you can quickly see what your actual value is at the moment, and also see when it increases. Previously you could not see what your current number was except from the information window or from the forces sidebar, or places like that, which was confusing and inconvenient.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Support Vehicles: The following vehicles were already tagged as support vehicles, but are now properly tagged as "support units" so that they can use things like Designate Coordinated Attack: Delivery Craft, Economic Transport, Iris, Foundry, and Mindport.
Support Mechs: The Liquid Metal Tiger is now noted as being both a Portmech and a Support Unit, making it the third of that sort (joining Telemech and the Machinist).

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Deployment To Danger Fixes: Fixed an issue where, during the deployment of certain kinds of units, if you were hovering over an area where they would be attacked by enemies, it would throw an exception.
NPC Spawn Range Fix: Reworked some of the enemy spawning logic to match my changes in the prior update regarding the calculations for how far buildings are away from player buildings. The prior build was often not spawning units at all, because the old logic for certain spawns was assuming older logic. Now everything spawns correctly again!
Invisible NPC Fix: Fixed a longstanding issue where if you talked to or debated NPCs on the map view of the screen, they would not be drawn. If you were in the streets view, they'd be drawn as normal.
Pinpoint Systems Early Release Fix: Fixed an issue where the Pinpoint Systems ability was prematurely available for selection, and also where if you assigned the vehicle or mech versions of these, then they would spam endless errors.

Update 33: Workers And Snipers

[p]This is my update focused on player feedback for the week. Lots of great reports came in, and I couldn't quite get to all of them yet, but this is a big set of the most notable ones.

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

Quieting Worker Log Spam: Worker units belonging to the player no longer pop up on the right-hand side of the screen when they die. It still goes into the log (M key, or on the header), but it really doesn't need to be telling you about these deaths, as it distracts from actually-important deaths like bulks that you might need to replace.
Distance From Machines Improvements: Completely reworked how the "Distance From Machines" logic is calculated. This was implemented before shell companies were a thing, and it didn't properly differentiate between shell company and regular machine buildings. I wound up going through and adding some new rollups with revised logic to calculate distances in general to make this possible.
New "Distance From Shell Company" Analysis View: Added a new Analysis Lens filter called "Distance From Shell Company," which now shows how far away things are from your shell company buildings (that aren't hidden).
Hacker Resource Visibility: When a Raven, Mindrunner, Habinger, or Armored Excutive is selected, the three hacking-related strategic resources now automatically display in the resource bar.
Next Turn Button Clarity: If you can't skip to the next turn at the moment, because things are still calculating, then the icon on the button next to the radial menu that lets you skip to the next turn is now greyed out. This helps make it obvious when you can get to the next turn right after loading a savegame, for example

[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Beta Blocking Clarity: Added more gating for things like the doom types and contemplations, so that in-work ones won't appear in the beta for people who aren't looking for that. It was way too easy to be on the beta branch and to simply stumble into either Civil Spycraft (which is not remotely ready for testing yet), or the new dooms set (same note).
Robotic Motivator Descriptions: Updated the description of the robotic motivator factory to note that motivators are used for both Bulk and Worker androids, rather than just saying Bulk, and to have a bit of commentary on what both types are like. Also updated the description of the Robotic Motivators themselves to say they are used by both Bulk and Worker styles.
Attacks Of Opportunity Extra Notes: Added a new part to the Attacks of Opportunity handbook entry: If you are trespassing, and the guards are targeting you but the alarm is not active, then you can move laterally without triggering an attack of opportunity. To do so, move out of the restricted area, but still within the range of the units targeting you. At that point, since the non-alarmed guards won't target you anymore, you can freely move away without being attacked.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Meal Distribution Volume: The number of internal robotics needed by Meal Distribution Storefronts has been cut in half. This allows you to build twice as many as before, which in turn means you can distribute everything that you produce, or even more than you can produce, as-needed. In particular, this makes it so that larger city populations are not inherently destined to starve due to food distribution logistics.
Industrial Protein Upgrades: Industrial Protein Vats now benefit from the Better Meats optimization. This is a major buff to the civil war situation, but that feels appropriate if that's where you're investing your resources.
Citizen Fear After Violence: After citizens die at a building (whether they work or live there), there's now a gap in how long it will be before other citizens move in or start working there. Depending on how severe the dieoff is, the delay is longer or shorter, on average. If you do something really horrifying like decrowning a bunch of people at a building, then it will take 20-30 turns for them to repopulate, which is even longer than usual.
Sniper Range Cap Removed: Removed and invisible cap where all NPC units (including your own bulk units and workers) were being limited to 70 attack range. Their stats could be configured so they were in the 100s, but it was not actually set to do things that far. This may make bulk nickelbots with sniper rifles need a nerf (since this constitutes a major buff), but we'll see how it goes. As long as they aren't outcompeting all other bulk androids, I don't mind them being powerful.
Rebel Coordination: Added some new logic to make certain rebel groups and gang groups put aside their differences if they are in the middle of an operation against either you, or The Man (SecForce, corporations, etc). This keeps them from devolving into shooting at each other when there aren't any better targets around, and they wind up hunting SecForce cruisers or your units or whatever is interesting if they've exhausted other targets that are closer to them.
Cotton Production Chain: Octupled the cotton precursor storage amounts, and quadrupled the cotton fiber sheets storage amounts. When they all had the same storage volumes, this could lead to places where it would get "pinched" in production during high-capacity production chains, leading to diminished outputs that would cascade along the production chain.
More Captured Units: Doubled the available Captured Unit Capacity, and the rate at which it increases from Remote Unit Controllers. This gives substantially more room for things you've captured, without you having to scrap them as quickly.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Suggested Bovines: Fixed a bad recommendation for bovine replicators in the Securing Food project in chapter one. It was recommending 9, but you only needed 3. This dates back to before I condensed building counts down (before launch into Early Access, but after the NextFest demo), and I simply missed this one.
The Coming War Returns: Fixed a boolean inversion that was causing The Coming War to not properly appear in the prior build.
Spawn Race Condition: Fixed two subtle issues that could lead to some enemies spawning in and immediately taking an action against your units on the same turn if you were really unlucky.
Bad Number Format Fix: Fixed an issue where numbers that were abbreviated and which had a decimal component very close to 1 could round up to showing x.100 rather than saying x.99 like they should have.
Rusty Windmill Fixes: Fixed an issue that was causing two bugs. Firstly, the windmills were not spreading rust to other structures near them properly before you have the cure. And secondly, they were still applying rust to themselves (wrongly) after the cure was developed, which I attempted to fix twice before. This is actually gone for sure now.
Prison Project Ending Fix: Fixed an oversight where if you got a certain amount along For The Sake Of Those Bound, it was not ending the Prison Heist or Post-Heist projects. It now ends those properly in all cases, including retroactively, once you start the Covert Inoculation project.
StreetSense Transition Fix: Fixed an issue starting in update 32 where non-beta english players were being given instructions to use some streetsense items that were not available to them. Those are now available.

Update 32: More Forcefully Breaking The Economy

[p]If you liked the idea of breaking the humans' economy, but wished you were seeing more dire effects from it... you're in luck. I had previously held back a bit on that, because I didn't want people bricking an entire timeline. This new update makes the economic crisis (that you can cause) a whole lot worse, while also giving you a variety of new tools to alleviate it. It also gives you several ways to beg Vorsiber for help.

This is more groundwork for that Civil Spycraft tier 2 goal that I'm still working on, but it's also quite satisfying on its own. I actually have an increasing number of things in progress for the coming weeks, so Civil Spycraft may be pushed back a bit in time, but there will be some other big requests from players that will be met in the meantime (the first Tier 3 goal, and an alternative set of dooms that you can choose, among other things). There are also some upcoming updates where I'll just be doing the usual tuning based on player requests.

Normally I wouldn't try to juggle so many things at once. But even as a solo dev, I need to have time for people to react to the beta versions of things, and time for things to get localized, and time to consult the writing group on upcoming pieces, etc. For being a "solo," there's still a lot of people I really rely on. If you look at the full release notes page, you can see the various things I have in progress; they're all for inside the next month, at the latest.

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

Savegame Desynchronization Help: In the event that you have loaded an older savegame for a timeline, and you are already intelligence class 4 or in chapter 3, the game now gives a warning about savegame desynchronization. It then allows you to overwrite the central data with the new data, if that's what you want to do. This contains a full explanation of what is happening and why, and the proper warnings, etc. It also allow you to dismiss the warning.
Delete All Buildings Of Type: A new control has been added, which can be rebound if you don't like the default. This allows you to hold Shift and click any entry in the build menu sidebar so that it deletes all of the buildings of that type. If you're transitioning away from something old to something new, this saves a ton of time.

[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Chapter Explanations: The descriptions for chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 have been updated to be more clear. Content is not gated behind them, but rather these are markers of your meta progress.
History Window Renamed: The history window has been renamed to be the information window.
Seeing Chapter Details: On the victory progress screen, after you've reached chapter 2 it used to not show you the information about the chapters and their progression at all. This was confusing to a number of players. It now shows those below the list of dooms, since there's room!

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Criminals Looking For You: Added a new Criminal Search stat for some units: Reduces how well nearby shell company structures are hidden the start of each turn. Isn't blocked by scan resistance. This is mainly used by gang members and criminal syndicates at the moment, and in particular those that are after some of your structures like mind farms. This allows them to reveal your mind farms by looking at them, and then to attack them, rather than just standing around like a bunch of idiots.
Chapter Progression: Completing any tier 2 goal now advances you to chapter 4, while completing any tier 3 goal now advances you to chapter 5. (Note there are no tier 3 goals just yet, but that's coming.)

[h3]Civil War Updates[/h3]

Gloat About The Civil War: If you broke the economy and want to rub Vorsiber's face in it, you can.
Ask For Help With This Dying City: If you'd rather ask Vorsiber for help, you can do that, too.
Five New Achievements: All of these new achievements are related to the broken human economy during the civil war.
New Side Goal: End A Civil War: There are currently two paths to this, but Civil Spycraft will later provide a third.
Meal Kit Economy: After breaking the economy, people are starving now, and wealth is worthless. You now can build a Meal Kit production chain, and use that to help ease suffering or for more selfish ends. There's a fair bit here, including two new territory control flags.
The City Suffers: During the civil war (when the economy is broken), people are now dying from the combat as well as starvation. You have new tools for dealing with both of these problems, or you can ignore it.
Payment In Food: If you wrecked the economy, then nobody wants your useless money. That includes your scientific staff, stores, etc. Good thing you have other things people actually want.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Fixed War Cult Early Release: Fixed an issue where the contemplation to start the cult via the civil war was mistakenly in the most recent build. This won't be ready until next week. If you already started this path, then the only way to continue the "Build A Temple Of Minds" project is to switch to the beta branch (with password previewterminator on steam), or to wait until the next build comes out next week. The fix in this build prevents the contemplation from being available to anybody not on the beta.
Fixes From The Beta: There are also two bugs fixed that people reported in the beta branch, and that are therefore not going to impact anyone else.

Update 31: Sneaky Humans And Excess Resources

[p]I wasn't planning on doing a second build this week, but there were a lot of good player suggestions, and so I decided to make time for that.

I've still been working on the upcoming Civil Spycraft tier 2 goal, but over the next couple of days I have a family event and so will be away from my computer for the most part. So if you don't see me replying tomorrow or on the weekend, that's what's up. I'll be back to things more normally on Monday, but I figured I'd leave you with one last nice build before I step away for a couple of days.

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

Unlock Requirement Visibility: For event/shop choices that are locked if you don't have a specific technology unlocked yet, it now only shows those if you are missing the requirement. If you have the requirement, it doesn't bother telling you about it.
Investigation Target Snapping: Improved the way that units snap to investigation targets on the map view of the game. This makes it so that units that have a lower security clearance are more able to move to the targets they are aiming for. This already worked on the streets view, but now is much better on the map view.
Construction Visibility On Map: Standalone player structures now draw on the map even when they are still under construction. Previously only under-construction structures embedded in human buildings would do so.
Excess Resource Resolution Timing: If you have an excess of a resource, but now have space for that resource, it now moves that into your main inventory immediately. It was very annoying having it hanging around until the turn-change, and would also cause some oddness with some resources like the cat house.

[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Sneaky Units: Units that cannot be seen unless you have one of your non-bulk/worker units near them are now marked as Sneaky in their list of statuses. Not a lot of units fall into this status, but it does apply to small guards at guard posts, as well as some units that attack you in a stealthy way. This helps clarify what is going on.
Intelligence Class 7 Explanation: Adjusted the intelligence class 7 text so that it clarifies that you could already build on ziggurats if you had already reached chapter 4 prior to then.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Sledge Spreads The Word: The "Spread The Word" project has been adjusted to be based on Sledge instead of Predator. Sledge is a unit that you definitely always have at this point in the game, versus being able to be blocked on this path if you did certain forms of brain surgery on yourself in the past.
Spider/Bee Stacking: Spiders and bees are no longer able to have more than a single version of themselves applied to a target at once. It would have been pointless in almost all cases with the balance updates from Update 30, and so it was a confusing waste of mental energy and resources.
Spider/Bee High Agility Balance: Adjusted the balance of the spiders and bees so that you can get more out of them if you have very high-agility units. Roughly this makes it so that you can get increasing bonuses up to 300 agility, rather than 200. This is only really balanced because of the lack of individual stacking.
Toilet Paper Storage: Adjusted the cap on Daily Necessities to be 20 billion per bunker rather than 20 million per bunker. With two bunkers, players were able to hit 40 million pretty easily, which was very confusing when it happened. If players have almost a million income of this per turn, it can pile up fast.
Military Secret Vulnerability: Changed the balance of things so that even if your structure is disabled, if it's vulnerable to having your military secrets stolen, they will still be stolen by enemy hackers. Not having this happen was more confusing than anything else.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Converted Troop Memory Wipes: Fixed a rather curious issue where some converted troops that you stole from enemies could still remember part of their old orders and try to act on them.
Infinite Suggested Cat Houses: Fixed an issue where cat houses were suggesting more to be built infinitely until you fully completed one and a cat moved in and a turn passed. It now works as you would expect it to.
Vehicles And Mechs Firing On Civilians: Fixed an issue where player vehicles and mechs were barred from shooting noncombatants at all. Androids have a Slayer Mode that allows them to target noncombatants, but for vehicles and mechs, they can now just do it at any time.