Heart of the Machine News

Hotfix 32

[p]Just a quick update for a couple of things people noticed that needed fixing.[/p]

[expand]
[h2]Hotfix 32 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]General Updates[/h3]

Not Miserable Enough: Quick fix to make it so that Misery is actually properly selectable from the start new timeline menu. That wasn't set up right, but doing it from the spaceport was working fine before now.
Slightly Too Many Kids Trapped In Your Basement: Fixed an issue where the "Trapped Child" contemplation would appear if you did organometallic form via working with STATION, rather than the older-style way. This dates back to the release of civil spycraft as an issue, but it was just discovered today.

[/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]

https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380035094 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380035089 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380034905 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380033936

Update 57: Misery, For Those Who Desire It

[p]There's a tradition in Arcen titles that we've had a high-ranking difficulty level known as Misery. It's not in all our titles, but most of them. If you asked me a month ago if this game would have a Misery Mode, I probably would have said no.

The thing is, in today's earlier build, I relaxed a few things in the late game that were punishingly difficult. That made most people very happy, but it made a few people a bit sad. They were very polite about it, but they liked that... "this is agonizing and takes forever, and you have to minmax like crazy, and you wonder if it's even mathematically possible" sort of challenge. To me, that sounds absolutely miserable, and that's probably true of most people reading this.

So: we now have Misery Mode. That allows me to keep those sorts of challenges in the game, for the few people who want them, while balancing Extreme Mode to be something that your average advanced strategy player can probably handle. There are no achievements tied to Misery Mode, and there won't be in the future. However, it does track which ones you've done in the game, since of course it should. As a developer, I don't want you to play Misery mode unless it calls to something deep inside you. It's not part of being a completionist -- it is actively un-fun unless you're the sort of person who inherently hears its siren call.

I'm releasing this out to everyone now so that it can get more testing from the people who want to use it. The controls related to it are in English only for now, but the actual content is in all the languages the game is in.

For most of you, you can just be glad that the truly sadistic balance falls into this alone. For those who are interested in this mode, a lot of them are clustered on the discord for the game, so if you have ways you want me to make it even more painful in this mode, I don't mind.

My main focus for the next few weeks is still going to be on Tier 3 goals for everyone, but once I'm past the content sprint, I'll be doing various polish, and can also throw in some extra horrible stuff for this mode if there are spots where that would be welcomed.

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 57 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Balance Fixes[/h3]

Balance Implosion: Fixed an issue where players were getting 6000 extra dark matter particles and Novichok-17 if they started a new city. Players are only meant to have 255 at most, so for now I'm leaving that consistent across difficulty levels, and we'll see what happens.
Dark Matter Storage: The storage of dark matter particles has been dropped to 255 to make it so that existing saves that were having the inflated numbers can now be re-attempted with real numbers.

[h3]Misery Mode[/h3]

A New Difficulty Level Above Extreme: This is not meant to be fun for most people. It's meant for the extreme min-maxers who like playing AI War on difficulty 10. The name of this mode is not an accident.
The Stat Changes In This Mode: Morale and Systems Integrity are multiplied by 3.6x on misery mode, compared to the 2.8x on extreme mode (or 1.4x on hard mode). Unit squad sizes are 3.8-4.2x in Misery mode compared to 3.1-3.6x on extreme mode (or 1.5-1.8x on hard mode).
Other Insanity: Fighting the citizen advocates requires you to defeat more of them on misery mode. Even more ships appear in Stars Beyond Reach on misery mode.
"Peace After Brutality" Is As Brutal As Possible: In Peace After Brutality, you need 8 million fedcorp unrest rather than the 6 million on extreme. Also here, the number of squads spawning in are roughly equal to what they were in extreme mode before the nerf. Not completely correct, but... close. This is offset by the fact that you have a proper number of dark matter particles now.
Mark 6 Mechs: The game now includes Mark 6 mechs exclusively for Misery Mode. These are 1.32x stronger on all the main stats compared to their Mark 5 counterparts. However, their armor piercing is not increased at all unless that would be lower than their armor plating, in which case it's increased only enough to cover that. In practice this means a bit of an increase for the machinist and convictor, but not at all for the other ones.
No Achievements For This: There are no achievements for misery mode, but it does track your prior wins on misery mode in your profile. If you beat a goal on misery mode, then it also counts for extreme and hard, and gives you those achievements. Achievements for this mode would be cruel.
Cross-Timeline Resource: A new Misery resource has been added to the game. You gain +1 for any Tier 1 goal or side goal, +2 for any Tier 2 goal (no that's not fair), and +3 for any Tier 3 goal (even less fair). This is not shown on the top bar unless you've ever gained some. The amount you've gained across timelines, and in a specific timeline, are both tracked.

[h3]Destroying Timelines[/h3]

Destroyer Lens: This new lens allows you to delete timelines that you no longer want to keep (typically this should only be done in some pretty rare cases, honestly). This costs either 1000 Aetagest, or 1 of the new Misery resource.
Sensible Constraints: To prevent your profile from getting stuck, you need either 1100 Aetagest on hand, or 1 Misery and 100 Aetagest on hand, when you do the deletion. You can't delete the timeline you're in right now, nor can you delete your first timeline.
Loading Saves From Deleted Timelines: After deleting a timeline, no savegames from that timeline can be loaded as part of the profile. If you copy them to another profile, then they can be loaded (usually for bug report purposes or similar).

Update 56: Late-Game Difficulty

[p]There are a number of improvements to difficulty that are based on player feedback for some late-game scenarios. Peace After Brutality on the beta branch was particularly over-tuned before, so I'm glad to have the feedback from folks on that score.

This build also makes it substantially easier for people to find the Budding Cyberocracy on their first timeline, removing a false-choice between that and and the smaller of the two prison routes. That clears up an area that has been a bit confusing since late 2024, and makes it so that people who are trying to be nice at all can't get themselves gated out of the Cybercratic Ambitions upcoming Tier 3 goal by just playing normally.

Work is going well on the next Tier 3 goal, which got renamed from Cybercratic City-State to Cybercratic Ambitions. A big thanks to the writing group in general, but Ken Schulte and Joe Liu in particular for hugely steering me in the proper direction with this. A version of this should be available on the beta branch in the next week 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 56 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Main Path Clarity On The Victory Screen: In the spots where it lists how many paths you have done out of how many paths are available, it now shows the main paths, and then a secondary section for optional extras like No Murders, No Kills, or higher difficulties. For those just wanting to stick to normal difficulty, this makes it easier to see where there's things you've not done at all yet.
Don't Be Afraid Of Timelines!: When you are absolutely at the end of anything you can do in your current timeline other than The Revelation or any Tier 3 goals, then a new "Consider Starting A New Timeline" item appears in the task stack. This gives some advice for new players, and if you hover it, then the handbook entry "Timelines Beyond The First" appears. These are only available in English at the moment.
My Tiny Murderers Were Blending In Too Much: Homunuculi in destruction mode now use a different color icon to make them easier to tell apart from the incoming mechs.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Stop Distracting Me With Prisons: Please Be Our Cyberocracy now only has one option, rather than being a fork. If they ask you to be their cyberocracy, you can either do it or not do it, versus saying "okay but let's be sneaky" and then getting railroaded into the prison route that has nothing to do with the cyberocracy.
Removed A Confusing And Vague Project: The "Meaningful Social Change" project has been removed, as that was just about one of the two routes to the prison breaks, and was confusing and strange and always has been. It had 80 wisdom that it would grant, but beyond that it didn't actually do anything.
Don't Worry, Kids Still Get Trapped In Your Basement: The "Trapped Child" previously only happened during the "Meaningful Social Change" project (okay so that was the one thing it did), but now that happens if you say yes to the cyberocracy and have not already met the kids. That allows you to get into the prison route the same as "okay, but only if we are quiet about it" used to, but without being a forced-fork.
"For The Sake Of Those Bound" Is No Longer Such A Difficulty Spike: For The Sake Of Those Bound now spawns only about 30% as many enemies on normal difficulty. On hard mode, it spawns the same numbers as before. On extreme mode, it now spawns about 10% more than before.
Peace After Brutality Is Notably Less Brutal: Peace After Brutality now spawns substantially fewer enemies on all difficulty levels, but the various difficulty levels still spawn different amounts. Basically I was testing things out on normal difficulty as if it was extreme, which is... too hard!

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Unable To SysOp Warehouses: Fixed an issue where the warehouse infiltration sysops in Peace After Brutality would fail with an error.
Traitors Have Been Re-Educated: Fixed a general issue where allied NPC units did not recognize your bulks and captured units as being allied in all cases, and would fire on them in a traitorous way. They will still attack your units in these cases if that unit has aggro with their cohort, but otherwise will leave them alone.
Exploration Sites Move If Burned-Down: Fixed an issue where exploration sites could remain locked to destroyed buildings. They now move when the building is destroyed.

Hotfix 31

[p]Amazingly, despite the huge amount of code surgery for the big performance update that was update 55, I have yet to get a single report of a regression from that one. I feel very fortunate for that. There are a couple of other unrelated things that I did want to get tweaks out for, though.[/p]

[expand]
[h2]Hotfix 31 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]General Updates[/h3]

Beta Goal Previews: Various goals and contemplations that are out of scope for 1.0 are now hidden even on the beta branch. They were showing up in a way that clutters things. I'll add these back when I get to them.
Tier 3 Goal Requirements: In order to start any Tier 3 goal, you must now be in chapter four. That means that you have to have completed some sort of Tier 2 goal -- any one of them, not any specific one, and in any timeline, not the timeline you're in right now. In many cases, this will mean that someone may need to leave their first timeline and do something else before they can return and do Peace After Brutality or Cybercratic City-State in particular, as those are the two that will be most visible. The key thing is that it shows you these contemplations, but notes that you can't do them until chapter 4+, so that you basically have a good hint that you can do more things and then come back.
Immediate Networking: Network Expansion is now unlocked during the initial construction project, rather than after it, just in case people are in a spot where they can't build enough, especially with a stealth start.

[/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]

https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380034905 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/497215345380033936

Update 55: Big Performance Pass

[p]Peace After Brutality is the first Tier 3 goal that is fully complete on the beta branch, and it's best described as "what if we just did all the war crimes?" I would definitely appreciate folks testing it out on the beta, but do note that it's only in English for now (the betas always are).

For everyone in this build, there's a major set of performance improvements targeting increased framerates. On my dev machine, my average of 90fps is up to closer to my target of 144fps. On older or weaker machines, it should put more of them at a solid 60fps. There's more that I want to do in January now that I've delved into this, but it will need to wait until after the current content sprint that I'm doing.

In general, I wanted to get this existing performance buff out to everyone just so that people can enjoy it, but also so that I have more time to fix anything that might go amiss with it. I've tested it thoroughly myself, but it's just me on that. There's some really substantial code surgery in here, so there's more of a risk of temporary issues than usual. If there's anything super problematic, then two things: 1) I'll fix that tomorrow or whatever day it's reported; 2) there is a beta called older_but_stable that allows you do opt out of this if you need to. Honestly I don't expect any real giant problems (famous last words), but I also do believe in being prepared for any given eventuality.

Other than fixing anything that comes up, I'm going to be working on the next Tier 3 goal coming up this next week, which is a much more sunny and nice path -- Cybercratic City-State.

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 55 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Systems Disruption Does What?: On the Systems Disruption Power tooltip on units, as well as on the Pinpoint Systems ability on units, it now says "This is largely electrical and nanite damage; if you can get past enemy armor at all, then the full amount of systems disruption is dealt."
Too Many Health Bars!: A bunch of unit stances no longer draw their health bars at all times. That was patently unnecessary, and just made the game view hard to understand./*]
Common Battle Questions: New handbook entries now unlock when you get bulk units. One of them explains the Order Of Combat, and the other explains how to use bulks (and captured units) defensively.
Step Aside, Citizen: If the PMC contemplations are forced to be on a spot where there is already an enemy unit because there are simply no other options (it already tries to avoid this, and usually can), then it now deletes the enemy that is there to avoid confusing new players.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

Firewall Probes Are More Gentle: Adjusted the firewall probe attacks to be far weaker than they were before, as a number of people discussed those feeling over-tuned.
Latent Difficulty Application: If you start a new timeline in hard mode or extreme mode, then the game doesn't actually act as if it's in that mode until the dooms start. This means that if you replay the prologue or chapter one for example, enemies won't be buffed. Also, until you finish the setup phase if you start in the chapter 2+ style, enemies won't be buffed. This is not fully retroactively applied to existing saves if they were already in the more-difficult mode too early, but it is partially applied.

[h3]Performance Optimizations[/h3]

Main-Thread Calculation Efficiency: This game uses a lot of CPU threads, but the only one that affects framerate is the "main thread." That's true of any game. I've done a lot of work to isolate some hotspots that cropped up on the main thread, and smoothed those out. Occasional frame-spikes that were happening are now gone.
Additional LOD System: This game already used a "Level Of Detail" (LOD) system for characters, but for various misguided reasons I wasn't using one with buildings. This actually was good for a while, because it made me optimize the building rendering like crazy. But I hit my limit with what I could do without LODs on buildings, and so I've added that in now. I have more to do in January on this, but it is already a 33% reduction in GPU load on the highest levels of zoom.
No More Sub-Cells: I had implemented a sub-cellular rendering system that... actually cost more performance than it saved. That has been there for a solid two years, but I've stripped it out now. Usually this sort of thing helps rather than hinders, but the additional LOD system in this build removes any possible use for it.
New LOD Levels On Certain Characters: Nickelbots, Predators, etc, can be super numerous. When you're zoomed out far from them, they now use a lot fewer polygons even than before. This is in the older character-based LOD system that was already in the game, I just extended it a bit.
Invisible Breaching Pods Slowed Things: This is a thing that nobody has even seen, because it was before the NextFest demo the last time it was visible. However, there were still breaching pods being fired for purposes of some sound effects, and it turns out that they were still (invisibly) simulating and slowing things down. Sigh. I've stripped that out, with the sound effects still being there as you're used to. There were some frame spikes coming from this, too, I think.
Tree Draw Distance: There's now a slider in the performance settings which allows you to adjust how far away trees draw. They will shrink as they go into the distance from the camera, or grow as the camera gets closer. The default is set up for a midrange computer, but the performance presets have different values that apply specific targets. This mostly impacts the farthest zoom levels, but it helps on all zooms.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Bees Before Cats: Fixed an issue where if you did the Pollinators contemplation before Slum Cats, then Slum Cats would disappear. This was an issue with the flags for these events that has been there ever since they existed, it turns out.
A Moment Of Tormented Weakness: Low-Visibility Mode for torment vessels no longer has a window where enemies can spawn in on loading a savegame.
Invisible Super-Stats: Fixed an issue where unit stats that were over 10 million were not showing up in tooltips.
Police Cruisers No Longer Afraid Of Gang Members: Fixed an issue where the cruisers would not appear properly if you still had a lot of gang arsonist kiosks and the suburbs were a certain amount small. The cruisers were not allowed to spawn too close to you, which was an error.
Peace After Brutality Fixes: For folks who were testing the prior version on the beta branch, there are various fixes in this build.

[h3]Beta Branch: Peace After Brutality[/h3]

Two Game Endings: These were originally meant to be the "lame" ending in a lot of respects, but they turned out really cool and involved. Go figure. There's no "bad" ending in this game, but this was meant to be the least impressive. Instead it has a lot of my favorite stuff, especially with the Nickelbots.