A new Analysis lens has been added at the start of chapter one, letting you cycle through detailed visualizations of the map—everything from repair coverage to security clearances. This was one of the most frequent feature requests, and it now includes seven separate overlays: Repair Coverage (Structures), Repair Coverage (Units), Jammer Coverage (with structure reveal), Paused Structures, Deterrence Coverage, Protection Coverage, and Security Clearances.
You’ll also find a new filter dropdown on the build sidebar, allowing you to group structures by category or production chain. If it’s a chain, the build list sorts itself in logical order—ideal for planning complex infrastructure.
Placing repair spiders, repair crabs, or contraband jammers now previews their effective radii in real time. New timelines now let you select difficulty up front (or stick with the original sabotage-based method). Bulk units, converted units, and allies will no longer accidentally shoot down damaged economic transports you’re trying to extract from.
A handful of long-standing edge cases have also been cleaned up—including a fix for furniture delivery to human housing, a rare and harmless error popup on launch, and two threading issues that became more common after recent savegame changes.
“To understand is to perceive patterns.” — Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert
Building the Machine
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If you haven’t yet, I’d love to hear what you think. Reviews help surface what’s working, what’s confusing, and what needs another pass through the Machine.
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Analysis Lens and Map Overlays
- New Analysis Lens: Now available at the start of chapter one, this lens allows you to cycle through various map visualizations. Current overlays include:
- Repair Coverage (Structures)
- Repair Coverage (Units)
- Jammer Coverage (including revealed structures)
- Paused Structures
- Deterrence Coverage
- Protection Coverage
- Security Clearances (human structures only)
- Bugtracker Feedback Welcome: If players have additional overlay requests, they’re encouraged to submit them.
Build Sidebar Improvements
- New Dropdown Filter: A second dropdown now appears above the internal robotics filter. It lets you group structures by thematic category or by production chain. If grouped by production chain, the list sorts in logical build order.
Structure Placement and Radius Previews
- Placement Radius Display: When placing repair spiders, repair crabs, or contraband jammers, the game now shows the active radii of relevant existing structures to assist with placement.
Timeline Setup
- Difficulty Selection Option: When starting a new timeline, players can now choose difficulty directly from the setup screen. The old method via in-map sabotage remains available as well.
Quality of Life
- Map Consistency: When you are on the city map, it no longer acts like your mouse is over buildings that you cannot see, unless it would be for the movement of a unit where that's relevant.
- Rings Of Similar Building Effects: When building repair spiders or crabs, you can now see the ranges of existing repair spiders or crabs. You can also see these just by hovering over the type of thing you would build. Same for contraband scanners.
- Building Flares On Selection: When you cycle through buildings, typically your own structures via whatever mechanism, it now puts a blue flare and circle around them, to draw your eye to them. Very helpful when things are super dense.
- Vulnerable Building Visibility: When you have a building that is low on required deterrence or protection, it now has an icon shown above itself.
Targeting Behavior
- Economic Transport Targeting: Bulk units, converted units, and allies will no longer target damaged economic transports. This allows you to disable and extract from them without interruption.
Bug Fixes
- NPC Cycling Exception Fix: Fixed an exception that could occur when cycling through NPC units if one had recently died.
- Furniture Gathering Fix: Resolved an issue where humans would not collect furniture if other housing was under construction. All tested edge cases now function correctly.
- Startup Keypress Exception Fix: Fixed a harmless but annoying error that could occur if keyboard keys were pressed during the first few hundred milliseconds of game launch.
- Threading Fixes on Load: Fixed two rare but frustrating threading exceptions that could appear when loading save games or generating new profiles or timelines. These became more noticeable due to recent save file compression changes.
- Minor Grammar Fixes: Fixed a trio of these.
- Deterrence and Protection: Corrected these so that units riding in vehicles cannot provide these (they are not visible to be scary in this way).
- Tungsten Methylator: Corrected this to properly only run when it actually has scraps to process.
Full Changelog
A full, comprehensive breakdown of every change from this patch can be found in the Heart of the Machine Wiki, found here.
Guides to Tame the Machine
Even the most brilliant mind needs guidance when faced with a system as vast as this one. To help you navigate, we’ve pinned two essential resources from the Heart of the Machine wiki:
- Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
- How to Improve Engineering
- Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?
New Minds, Start Here
For those just stepping into the Machine’s world, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the basics. The Heart of the Machine Beginner's Guide is your gateway to understanding the systems at play and building your foundation. After all, every complex network starts with a single connection.
Connect with the Machine
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.
Here is a link to prior recent patches in case you missed them.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/2001070/announcements/detail/524212840420081803
https://steamcommunity.com/games/2001070/announcements/detail/521959859806013753
https://steamcommunity.com/games/2001070/announcements/detail/521959859806013349
Related Screenshots
Repair Coverage:
Repair Coverage (Map View):
Vulnerable Structures:
Deterrence Coverage:
Repair Coverage (Units Only):
Raptor Party (I don't know why, it's just a fun shot):
Furniture Build Chain (New Groups View):
What's Next
April is a bit of an odd month, because I'm only planning two builds for the month, rather than an average of two a week like has been the norm up until now. This is the first of those two builds.
Broadly speaking, I'm working on a number of really large things, and I just need the extra time. These pieces are very large, in terms of what they bring to the game, so it's as productive a month as prior ones -- just a different release cadence.
I am currently working on a complete revision of the prologue, and a heavy revision of chapter one, which will also include a few exciting things for players who are already past that point. This is the big project for me for the remainder of April, and that next update is expected right at the end of the month.
In May, I'm going to be shifting to work on tier two and tier three goals for chapter 2+ which is what a lot of people who already have 50+ hours in the game are most looking forward to. I'm also really looking forward to that! Thank you for your patience in the meantime. I expect I will have builds roughly weekly during May, but in the case of a few large ones, I might do them biweekly.
June has some other surprises in store for the end of time, as well as more content for people who are past chapter one. I'll also be taking a larger look at some of the general feedback that is coming in during June, whereas I'm doing a bit less of that (on average, there's still some) in April in particular.
Beta Branch
During the period between now and the end of the month, there will be beta-branch updates that you can opt into if you want to give feedback on my works in progress.
These will only be in English, only on Steam, and things will be WIP and subject to change on this branch, etc. So it's something to only get into if you're interested in giving feedback on what I'm working on.
If you want to opt into this beta, you can do so on Steam with the password previewterminator.
If you are not using Steam, or don't speak English, never fear -- you'll get the polished version in a few weeks, anyhow. Thanks for the understanding on that.
There's no NDA or other restrictions related to anything you see on the beta branch -- you can discuss whatever you see freely, but of course still be kind and spoiler-tag as appropriate.