Heart of the Machine News

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.

[/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]

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.

Hotfix 19

[p]I made a fairly stupid error with the civil war code and how it handles the non-beta versions of the game. Perils of coding when tired, so here's a hotfix to resolve that.[/p]

[expand]
[h2]Hotfix 19 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Civil War Fixes: Fixed a couple of errors where the upcoming civil war changes were bleeding over into non-beta versions of the game.
Prison Quest Clarity: Added some extra notes to the "Now What?" option of the prisons section that telegraphs the stakes of "Keep Going For Now" and "That's Enough" better. This will be in non-English versions of the game in a future build.

Update 30: Post-Apocalyptic Dividends

[p]This update includes a lot of updates to the post-apocalypse in particular, but really there are a bunch of adjustments made all throughout the game.

Most of my time at the moment is going into the upcoming Civil Spycraft tier 2 goal, but there are some other updates that have been sent over to localization and are pending for early next week.

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 30 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Post-Apocalypse Updates[/h3]

Probe Exotic Comms Rebalance: Probe Exotic Comms now costs all of your remaining mental energy, or 1 mental energy, whichever is higher. It also causes a lot more aggro than in the past, and has a fixed range of 45, rather than a range of whatever the movement range of the Red CombatUnit is. These changes ensure that later dialogue talking about all your dead Red CombatUnits is accurate.
Network Expansion: The network ranges of the post-apocalyptic hidden relays are now 50% higher.
Android Convenience: In the post-apocalypse, there's now a hidden version of the Android Launcher that unlocks, and which can be built anywhere regardless of your network, making it much more efficient to send units to probe comms.
Construction Speed: A lot of the buildings in the post-apocalypse now install much faster than before. Network connectings in particular are instantaneous, allowing you to expand a lot faster.
Cleared Useless Structures: Remote Unit Controllers and Robotic Motivator Factories are no longer buildable in the post-apocalypse, as they are not needed there and were simple clutter since they actually can't do anything useful.
Accurate Quiet Looting: Fixed an issue with the Quiet Looting project in the post-apocalypse, where if you were already using the resource that you were looting, it would not count correctly.
Removed StreetSense Distractions: A variety of streetsense items no longer show up in the post-apocalypse that previously did. These were all pointless distractions in that context.
Intelligence Class 4 Unlock Visibility: Unlocks have been adjusted so that when you gain certain things for the first time after solving the T1 goal in the post-apocalypse, you get notified about these new elements that previously would not be evident until you moved to a new timeline.

[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Mind Farm Clarity: After the Company Plateau project is completed via any means, the option to do coupons or nicotine additions are removed. A number of people had been confused about why that was hanging around.
Large Number Readability: In your changes over time for a resource, if there is a number that needs to be shown that is larger than 10 million, then it now abbreviates it instead of showing the full number.
Ignored Item Sorting: If you ignore items in the information window -- contemplations and StreetSense items in particular -- then those immediately are sorted to the bottom of the list, keeping them more out of the way. All of the non-ignored items are now shown first.
Nonlethal Takedown Clarity: Substantially improved the feats framework so that clearer information can be given in the case of Taser and Shock Drones in particular. These no longer have extra non-applicable information in their tooltips (things like Ambush bonuses, damage from above or behind, etc, don't apply or matter with a non-lethal takedown). In the event that you do some non-lethal takedowns and then have that same unit do a regular full attack, if it's the first regular attack of the turn, they can get their ambush bonus unambiguously, which is also now much more clear.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Post-Economy Mind Farms: If wealth doesn't matter anymore because everyone is now super wealthy thanks to you, then your problems with your shell company will quickly resolve themselves if sales have plateaued. No nicotine or coupons required.
More VR Pods: The total number of upgrades you can do for VR Pods has increased by 10 (at 60 each, this leads to an increase of 600).
Storage From Disabled Buildings: If you have paused a structure, of if it's disabled until you get the proper deterrence or protection at it, then it no longer incorrectly gives you whatever resource storage it would normally provide.
Post-Economy Wealth Generation: If wealth no longer matters (because you've become a quadrillionaire or more), then the StreetSense options for wealth generation (wiretap, steal from syndicate storage, selling to casinos, and selling to the religious co-ops) all go away.
NPC Targeting Intelligence: Adjusted the targeting logic for npc units (including your own) so that AOE damage is done first rather than second. This makes units target more intelligently. This was the original intent for the targeting logic, but at some point it got inverted.
Nonlethal Attacks From Firing Hatches: Fixed an issue where if an attack from within a cloaked vehicle did not do enough damage to kill a single squad member of the target, then it would not be forced to decloak. And similarly, morale attacks from within it were not causing it to be decloaked.
Aggressive Abilities And Shell Company Units: A variety of abilities that would blow the cover of shell company units are now barred from being assigned to them -- flamethrower, slayer mode, wallripper, remote demolish, and some more esoteric things.
Thrown Spiders/Bees Balance: Throwing spiders, bees, or saber bees onto enemies now has a flat multiplier to enemy movement range, attack range, and attack power instead of it being a flat amount. It also has a cap on just how negative the percentage can be; higher-agility units inflict a higher malus, but no longer a truly paralyzing amount. Spiders and bees are still mainly only useful on extreme mode (the time to kill on normal mode just makes them pointless there), but on extreme mode they are no longer so intensely potent as they could be previously (they could turn certain powerful enemies pretty much stationary and blind). With that said, there may be further balance needed in terms of nerfing them more or relaxing the nerf. If folks have a feeling about that, please just let me know!
Excess Resource Clearing: A large variety of resources now clear themselves out if you have an excess of them, rather than complaining about the excess. In some cases this is for balance -- when some structure gets destroyed, the things inside it go up in smoke. In most cases, this is to allow you to retire structures you no longer need once you're past some part of a storyline that uses them.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Number Abbreviation: Large negative numbers properly abbreviate themselves now, if they need to.
Ledger Warning Overflow: Fixed an issue where if it was going to take more than about 2 billion turns for you to run out of a resource, an integer overflow would happen and the ledger would complain as if the resource was going to imminently run out. This was mostly happening when you have an absurd amount of wealth.
Occult Participation Fix: Fixed an issue where "Occult Participation" was not available outside of chapter one. This meant that the Spooky Nonsense Generator was extremely hard to come by outside of your first timeline.
Doubled Tentacle Fix: Fixed an issue where if you took a certain route through the prison unlocks, you could get two different and identical copies of Liquid Metal Tentacle. It now keeps one locked away if the other is present.
Suppressing Fire Fix At Long Ranges: Fixed an issue where suppressing fire was not being applied to any units beyond range 30, even if the attacker had a larger range than this.
AOE Ability Range Fixes: Fixed an issue where Repair Nearby, Network Shield, and Network Targeting were all unable to boost any allied units or structures beyond range 30, even if the attack range of the unit in question had been buffed beyond that.
Temporarily Invisible Contemplation Fix: Fixed an issue where a contemplation could stick around on a destroyed building.
Stacked Exploration Site Fix: Fixed a bug with exploration sites that could cause two to be linked to the same spot in rare cases. This was previously fixed with contemplations a long time ago, and basically had to do with "remembered spots" pointing to a place that something else had just been assigned. Also fixed the same issue of being assigned to destroyed buildings, same as is being fixed this build for contemplations.
Pollinator Shortage Fix: Fixed an issue where giving a queen bee to a farm via Pollinators Wanted was not properly resolving the pollinator shortage.
Android Launcher Predicted Range Fix: Fixed a typo that was causing the predicted range of the android launcher towers to be incorrect during build mode. It was predicting larger than its actual range after construction
Doubled Exploration Site Fix: Fixed an issue where an exploration site you were already exploring could appear somewhere else, leading to confusion and the potential for doing a single exploration site more than once.
Exploration Site Autosave Fix: Fixed an issue with loading Exploration Sites that were ready to be completed, but had not quite been completed yet. It was marking them as complete (just in case there was an error with the data), but in so doing was preventing you from getting the inspiration points from them. This mainly affected autosaves, but it wasn't technically a bug with autosaves themselves. This was just error-correction logic causing an error, go figure.
Shell Company Torpor: Fixed an oversight where shell company androids were not able to use Android Torpor.
NPC Unit Fog Of War Targeting Fix: Fixed an issue where NPC units that were hidden in the fog of war (this is pretty rare, all told) could not target each other properly in most cases. They would avoid shooting at each other, only shooting at other units out of the fog of war. The normal fog of war restrictions should only apply to player units, since this is only the player fog of war being modeled in that way.
Doubled Prison Observation Fix: Fixed an issue in For The Sake Of Those Bound where you could get two styles of Prison Observation if you followed a specific sequence of events. Now it only lets you do it once.