Heart of the Machine News

Update 49: Pacifism And Simplicity

[p]This update simplifies a few areas that were frustrating players, and adds non-lethal options (and general customization) for captured units.

Alongside the late-game content that I'm working on, I've been designing a "reduced complex / accessibility" set of options for a while now. In the areas of the economy, defense, and offense in particular. I thought about having just a "story" mode, but these options instead would allow for specific things that overwhelm specific players to be cut down in complexity. At some point I also plan on writing up the rationale behind the complexity of certain aspects, since that's probably interesting in general.

That said, there were some areas where the level of complexity just didn't add anything except confusion or busywork even for advanced players, and the most notable ones of those have been cut down in this build for everyone.

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 49 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Clarity[/h3]

Hiring Resource Visibility When No Staff: Fixed an issue where wealth or meal kits would not show in the resource bar as a suggested item if you were at absolutely zero staff because of a shortage. Now it shows if you are supposed to have any staff at all.
Staff Vacancy Visibility: If you have fewer than your intended amount of scientists of any sort, then those sorts all now show up in the top bar. This makes it a lot easier to see when you need to do some hiring, or when your hiring is failing due to lack of funding.

[h3]Non-Lethal Expansion[/h3]

Pacifist Vehicles And Mechs: There is now an Oath Of Pacifism for mechs, and another for vehicles, allowing you to make them fully non-lethal. This is particularly useful for anything that is captured, since there is no other way to make them non-lethal.
Captured Unit Customization: Captured units can now have a single augment slot of equipment customized for each of them. This allows you to customize them slightly, including adding the oath of pacifism so that you can have non-lethal captured mechs and androids for the first time.

[h3]Subtractive Design[/h3]

Hiring Is Now Always Automated: The manual process for hiring scientists has been removed. This process has been simplified to always work in the fashion of automated personnel management. As soon a you are in chapter 2 and have a shell company, all of the science buildings become available for you to build if you wish to do so.
Purple Murnong Simplified: Purple murnong no longer has to be stolen from a transport. This didn't add anything but busywork and confusion for players. Once you build a murnong patch, then if you have less than 20 purple murnong, your units will passively scavenge 20 for you. This makes one of the more confusing areas of the game much simpler.
When The Beef Runs Out: If you are out of bovine tissue samples, and you have bovine replicators, then it now makes sure you have at least 200 from automated unit gathering. You no longer need to do this via streetsense. This declutters the streetsense view, as well as removing a friction point.
Post-Apocalyptic Strays: If you get jumped to the final doom early, it now does a better job of making sure that any units leave who are from dooms that are now past.
When Experiencing A Veggie Deficiency: If you are out of vegetable seeds, and you have hydroponics towers, then it now makes sure you have at least 2000 from automated unit gathering. You no longer need to do this via streetsense. This declutters the streetsense view, as well as removing a friction point.
When Needing To Pick Flowers: If you are out of wild zinnia, and you have a hidden zinnia garden, then it now makes sure you have at least 2000 from automated unit gathering. You no longer need to do this via streetsense. This declutters the streetsense view, as well as removing a friction point.
Cotton Picking: If you are out of cotton precursor and you have a hidden cotton farm, then it now makes sure you have at least 200 from automated unit gathering. You no longer need to do this via streetsense. This declutters the streetsense view, as well as removing a friction point.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

Earlier Mining Skimmers: "Skimming The Mines" has been updated so that it now triggers on securing alumina being complete, rather than after you are intelligence class 2 with improved housing complete. This was a point of confusion for a number of folks in chapter one, depending on their build order.
Minimum Movement For Units: Adjusted some of the minimum-value clamping for units so that units that can move aren't able to have status effects reduce their movement range below 5, and same with attack range. Some recent changes had made this not take effect properly for androids.

[h3]Beta Branch Previews[/h3]

Peace After Brutality: You can play further into this, and death is no longer guaranteed so quickly. However, it still isn't ready for you to really test all that much.

[/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 48: Zoom, Fog, And Homing

[p]This is another build on the smaller end of things, but lots of pieces are coming together soon, and many are now on the beta branch.

This build mostly is about polish, and I also wanted to highlight a few things you might have missed from recent hotfix builds that were also pretty notable improvements. Some folks don't notice the hotfix build notes.

As for upcoming things:

Civil Spycraft, which I've been talking about for what feels like forever, is finishing up localization and will be ready to release to the main branch in the next week. There's also some other bits there that are currently in beta and will be a cool surprise for folks.

New to the beta branch, there's also a new Tier 1 goal (Lower Levels Of Survival) that is an alternative post-apocalypse scenario that happens if certain conditions are met. It's not possible to trigger this without doing Civil Spycraft at least once in the past, at least for now. This will be something that heads to the main branch in a week or two, after localization is done.

I have still been working on Stars Beyond Reach as a Tier 3 goal, but I realized that there was enough overlap in code with a different Tier 3 goal -- Peace After Brutality -- that it made more sense to slow down and work on both at once. Once you see those two goals, you may wonder why there's any code overlap at all, but it's to do with the fact that both use custom maps -- the space scene for SBR, and the regional map for PAB.

The start of Peace After Brutality can be played in the beta branch in this build, but bear in mind that you will get killed in an inescapable way if you go too far into it right now. That's simply still in progress, so when you move to do the things that would save you, they're not there yet. I didn't mean to leave that live in the beta, but some folks might enjoy seeing the first part of it, so... hopefully nobody gets a nasty surprise. I'm expecting that scenario to be finished on the beta branch in the next week, so it won't be a huge window where this is the case.

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 48 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]General[/h3]

Homing Shot Circling Fix: Fixed some issues with homing shots not properly hitting targets quickly enough. There's now a customizable proximity sensor, at which time the shots detonate rather than circling endlessly due to steering angle limitations.
"Lock Movement" Preview: There is a new "lock movement mode" that is available on a new vehicle in the beta branch. This is a feature that, once localized, will come to all the vehicles and mechs. I think it brings together the strengths of the old and new vehicle movement systems, without having the exclusive weaknesses of either one.
Side Goal Identifier Fix: Observe Spaceport no longer claims to alter the Slice of Inferno goal. That was incorrect.
Irradiated Trees No Longer Wander Off: Fixed an issue where after loading a savegame, any burned or irradiated trees would not be loaded back in at the site of explosions or chemical attacks. They now load in properly mangled.
City And Settlement Sanity: Fixed up the number of major cities and small settlements noted for all of the MegaCorps to make more sense with the actual populations that they have. Their population and military numbers were already good, but they had way too many cities and settlements to the point it made no sense.
Post-Apocalyptic VR: Fixed an issue where "Establish a VR environment" was wrongly showing in the post-apocalypse.
Post-Apocalyptic Torpor: Android Torpor can no longer be used after the final doom, as that's not useful there.
Post-Apocalyptic Strays: If you get jumped to the final doom early, it now does a better job of making sure that any units leave who are from dooms that are now past.
Engineer Nickelbot Improvements: "Make Engineers Of Your Nickelbots" has been rebalanced so that it now takes half as many actions to complete. Additionally, it no longer factors the power of your additional CPUs, so that you have to make the direct upgrades regardless of what sort of upgrades you've made in the past in your timeline.
Emergency Network Health: Fixed an issue where emergency network sources were being constructed at 1 health rather than at full health.

[h3]Notable Items From Recent Hotfixes[/h3]

Increased Zoom: The amount of zoom you can use in the main map view is now 50% more than it used to be. This is something players have been asking for for a while, and I wasn't thinking it was a good idea, but it turns out to be needed, especially with the new scenario that I'm working on for T3s.
Defogger: The default fog intensity is now Reduced rather than Normal. I would set it to be even more reduced by default, but that wouldn't work well on older machines.
Fog Glow-Up: The fogs associated with all the weathers for the lowest three fog types (out of four) have been all re-hand-tuned to account for the additional zoom capabilities of the streets view.

[h3]Beta Branch Previews[/h3]

Peace After Death: You can play the start of this, but once you get a certain amount in, you're going to get stuck and killed, just fair warning.
Lower Levels Of Survival: This is fully playable on the beta branch, although it's tricky to find. You need to meet STATION after already knowing LAKE from another timeline, and then get nuked by Vorsiber.

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Hotfix 26

[p]No good deed goes unpunished, right? My improvements to max the zoom able to go out further messed with the fogs in some unfortunate ways. This fixes all that, but also notably improves the fog on top of that. So I guess it was a total net positive in the end![/p]

[expand]
[h2]Hotfix 26 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]General[/h3]

Chunky City Tiles: Fixed a longstanding issue where if the camera was just at the wrong angle, you could catch glimpses of the edge of chunks of the ground in the streets view. This was made a lot worse by the recent increase to max zoom, with it becoming pretty common.
Fog Glow-Up: The fogs associated with all the weathers for the lowest three fog types (out of four) have been all re-hand-tuned to account for the additional zoom capabilities of the streets view.
Fixed Inverted Fog: This makes it so that all of them give you a longer viewing distance than they did before, and there are no longer any artifacts on certain weathers like the fogs turning inside-out.
Contemplation and Mech Draw Distances: The draw distance on contemplation icons and mechs has been increased some in order to handle the larger viewing distances that are now present.

Hotfix 25

[p]A few fixes, and also an increase to the max zoom level![/p]

[expand]
[h2]Hotfix 25 Changelog[/h2]
[h3]General[/h3]

Attacking Big Boys: Fixed an issue where units could not attack targets if the target had a really big collision radius relative to the attack range of the attacker. This meant that, for example, raptors could not damage giant mechs.
Increased Zoom: The amount of zoom you can use in the main map view is now 50% more than it used to be. This is something players have been asking for for a while, and I wasn't thinking it was a good idea, but it turns out to be needed, especially with the new scenario that I'm working on for T3s.
Defogger: The default fog intensity is now Reduced rather than Normal. I would set it to be even more reduced by default, but that wouldn't work well on older machines.
Syndicate Sharpshooter Buff: Their attack ranges have been tripled, to be more in line with their name and role.
Debates Fix: Fixed a regression in Update 47 that was causing the after-debate screens to not appear properly, and which then was therefore also not giving you progress on debates like they should have
People Watching Repair: If you got stuck in the People Watching project in the prior build because of the bug with debates, that now is auto-corrected in your savegame so that you can continue.