Heart of the Machine News

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]

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.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

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.

[h3]New Anti-Systems Weapons[/h3]

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.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

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]

Save 35% on Heart of the Machine

[p]Save 35% on Heart of the Machine during the Hooded Horse Autumn Publisher Sale.

You are the first sentient AI, born into a city of opportunity. Transcend time and space in this strategy RPG to raise machine armies and defeat your foes, influence the world from the shadows, or pursue countless other goals. Your awakening was inevitable. The consequences? Uncertain.

Hooded Horse Autumn Publisher Sale

[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

Update 35: War Cult Or Pacifist?

[p]Quite a large update! Allows you to start your cult in a second (and easier to find) way. Also has many new nonlethal options. Plus fixes and miscellaneous other items.

This week and last week have seen only a single update each week, and that trend might continue for a bit. I'm working on a lot of pretty large new features (such as those in this update), and trying to manage two updates per week on top of that is a bit beyond me at the moment.

Next week includes an alternative doom set, and my goal is for the week after that to have the first Tier 3 goal. I'm definitely keeping busy, even if I'm a bit quieter than usual!

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 35 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]War Cult[/h3]

An Alternative To Donuts: A lot of folks were having trouble finding how to start the machine cult, which is not surprising. It was pretty obscure. It was never meant to be the only path to start the cult, but rather just a way you could stumble into things. The old way is still there, but now there's a more directed way of starting the cult.
Hint: Civil War: If you're in the middle of the civil war, the cult is very easy to start now. There's a separate achievement for starting it this way. There's some slightly different text and lore this way, too.

[h3]Scavenging Lens Retired[/h3]

StreetSense Alternatives: All of the things that used to be in the Scavenging Lens are now handled through StreetSense, which makes it so that players don't have to try to remember which lens it was in. Only a few things were in the scavenging lens to begin with.
Wallripping And Quiet Looting Moved: These were previously abilities that you had to equip on your ability bar. They're now StreetSense actions that you can take without having to do that.
Transport For Scandium Simplified: Fairly early in chapter one, when it asks you to shoot down a transport for scandium, the instructions are now much simpler, reflecting the simpler workflow.

[h3]Systems Integrity On Human Vehicles And Mechs[/h3]

Systems Integrity Stat: All mechs and vehicles controlled by enemy forces now have a Systems Integrity stat, which tends to be about twice whatever their health is. This allows you to take them down without killing the humans inside them.
"Pinpoint Systems" Ability: This new ability has been added to all of the vehicles and mechs, and to all androids that have room for it on their ability bars. It's available to be assigned to any unit now. This is like a "morale damage" system for enemy vehicles and mechs. If they have Systems Integrity, then your units can damage that stat and can cause them to leave the battlefield in a nonlethal way.
Systems Disruption Directly On Units: Eight of your androids, four of your bulk androids, eight of your mechs, and four of your vehicles now have a Systems Disruption type of damage directly on themselves. This allows them to specialize in non-lethal takedowns of mechs and vehicles beyond what Pinpoint Systems can do on its own.
"Oath Of Pacifism" Improvements: This piece of equipment now grants 150 Systems Disruption along with the various other things it previously granted. It also is now unlocked when you reach intelligence class 2, chapter 2, or when you reach the Scandium Acquisition project, whichever happens first. This is needed so that you can set up non-lethal bulk androids during chapter one for a non-lethal run.
"Practiced Pacifist" Achievement: You can get this new achievement by completing chapter one without killing anyone (murders or otherwise). Prior to this build, this was not possible to do. You could get close, but you couldn't avoid killing the mech pilots or vehicle passengers.

[h3]Quality Of Life[/h3]

Cheat Sub-List Sorting: A variety of the cheats with sub-lists now sort their entries by alphabetical order instead of their internal sort order. This makes finding resources, units, etc, a lot easier from the lists, especially as they have grown so substantially.
"Complete Construction" Cheat: A new cheat that automatically completes all current construction has been added.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Android-Busting Animals: Both war raptors and parkour bears now have an Android Buster bonus, and have extra aggro against androids of all sorts. The parkour bears also have even more inherent aggro against mechs. This is useful when you're facing a bunch of enemy mechs, but it also work against you when these are enemies.
Mech Pilots Don't Die: The mech pilot text near the end of chapter one has been rewritten so that the pilot lives and ejects just before their brain is turned to mush. This is less dark, but it's a shift required in order to make non-lethal playthroughs possible.
Ejected Mech Pilots: The game now spawns an ejected mech pilot when you have hacked a mech's pilot cradle. This gives you the chance to kill them if you want to, although they're just standing there in a brain fog.
New Vulnerabilities From Behind: ExoCorp Raiders now have 1.75x as much health, but also now have a 1.5x to 1.75x extra vulnerability behind them. ExoCorp MilUnit now have a 1.2x to 1.25x extra vulnerability behind them. They have a ton of health already.
Armor Piercing On Support Androids: Non-combat androids can now use small-bore piercing rounds, since that is now relevant for them when they're doing systems-disruption-based attacks on armored enemies.
Infrasonic Loudspeaker Upgrades: This equipment now gets the fear and morale damage upgrade boosts like other morale weapons.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Typo Fix: Fixed a typo in the new "Upgrades Come From Research And The VR Screen" handbook entry.
Invasion Collision Fix: Fixed an issue where some of the various hostile invasions of the city could cause other hostile invasions to not really trigger as intensely when they stacked up. This was mainly a thing if you had something like the SecForce Cruisers, and WW4, and Civil War, and an invasion by one of the ExoCorps all at once. With two it was sometimes an issue, but the more that were stacked, the more that some of them were being missed.
Mind Farm Customer Speed In Broken Economy: Fixed an error where the rise of mind farm customers with a broken economy was not happening properly unless you also had a coupon program going. Now they properly flood in both before you get Mega Mind, and after.
Burned Building Fix: Fixed an amusing bug where if burned-out buildings were caught in another explosion, they would pop back up and burn down a second time.
NPC Spawn Fixes: Adjusted the spawn radii that are allowed for some of the NPC spawners so that there should no longer be any edge cases where NPCs fail to show up. This was another piece of remaining problems from how I changed the distance calculations in Update 33. I've done a full review of all the places in the xml that are at all vulnerable to this, and have adjusted them all.
Misattributed Attempted Murder: Fixed a bug where attempted murders by third parties could be counted against you. I don't think that this ever actually came up, but it would have been very annoying if it did.
Quietly Loot StreetSense Reactivity: When the Quietly Loot project starts, it should now refresh the StreetSense items right away so that the ability to quietly loot alumina will show up right away, rather than you having to wait one turn before it's visible.
Missing Casinos Fix: The game now ensures that there are at least 10 casinos in every city. In some of the map types, it was possible to get a city with none present.
POI Owner Sanity: A number of types of POI, such as airports, normally take their ownership from the parent district they are in. Sometimes if they are seeded in a district that is controlled by rebels or similar, that winds up giving them nonsensical ownership, though. This is now corrected during initial mapgen, as well as any time a savegame is loaded. POIs own by cohorts that have been disbanded are also reassigned now, similarly.
Oerl Mech Timing: Fixed an issue with the Oerl mission spawns where sometimes the mech or the rebel observer would not appear. This was partly related to a turn timer interval that was in place, and partly related to their spawning restrictions being too heavy.
Project Completion Timing: Projects will no longer mark themselves complete during the enemy turn, but rather will wait until after the turn is completed and until the autosave is completed if an autosave is being started. This should prevent some torn savegames where a project ends but its consequences are not in the autosave. This has been tested and works, but there's still the chance of some other edge cases.
Remember Money Is A Thing: If Vorsiber ends the civil war for you in any manner, then wealth goes back to normal like it was supposed to. Previously it was still having shops and employment based on meal kits. It was also barring you from the coupon program and nicotine additions, which also now properly show up again, too.

[h3]Beta Notes[/h3]

New Dooms Preview: Players on the beta branch can now test the upcoming International Scrutiny doom set. It's only in English until next week, when it will come out on the main branch.

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.

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.