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.
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.
Thanks for reading and for playing.
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Update 32 Changelog
Quality Of Life
- 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.
Clarity
- 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!
Balance
- 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.)
Civil War Updates
- 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.
Bugfixes
- 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.
Full notes here.
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