This build is one that a lot of folks have been waiting on for quite a while. The second half of Civil Spycraft is now here, and brings to light several twists and turns. Related to that, you can also pet dogs... and fail to pet dogs. Mimics are the only units that can pet dogs, but your early-game mimics have... issues.
There's also a new thing in this update where you can meet... a tricky robot. You may have briefly met this robot in the past, if you have played through International Scrutiny a certain way. If that's the case, then keep an eye out, because you may find this robot appearing in places you don't expect. I'm being horribly vague here, but this is a case where I'm trying not to drop spoilers.
There are some other balance updates and bugfixes in this build, too.
Lastly: in English only, the second path through chapter one (the one where you "choose fire" and then don't wind up housing the homeless) is now in place. This will be available in all languages late next week.
Speaking of my schedule, this is pretty much everything done for 1.0 except for the Tier 3 goals, which is very exciting. I'm going to be spending the rest of the month working on those T3 goals, and then localization for those will happen in January. Beyond that, for 1.0 it's just going to be balance tweaks, any needed bugfixes, and any other quality of life enhancements that come up.
I am planning post-1.0 content already, so don't worry about that. But 1.0 is a really big milestone where you can play through the game and a bunch of endings, and I'm excited for folks to experience that.
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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Major Update 51 Changelog
Civil Spycraft Act Two
- Two Distinct Routes: One of these routes involves the second Obsession seen in the game, the other involves something completely different.
- A Big Betrayal: This has been out in the beta branch for a while, so I'm relieved that players have reacted well to it so far. But in terms of the story beats that happen in this part of Civil Spycraft, as a writer I'm definitely "playing with fire." I've been glad that players so far have been angry at individuals in the game, and not me as the writer. That's good, as it will make the revenge sweeter in-game.
- Petting Dogs: Mimics no longer try to just rescue wild dogs, but try to pet them. This is ultimately related to one of the two paths of Civil Spycraft.
- 9 New Achievements: This build has 9 new achievements in all, most of which are related to Civil Spycraft, but a few of which are related to the Tricky Robot.
First Meeting With Tricky Robot
- How To Initiate: Make sure and play the International Scrutiny dooms set if you have not already. Also make sure that you complete the Dog Of War achievement. If you've already done that, you don't need to do it again. In other timelines from that original one with the achievement, you should see some new stuff before long.
Balance
- More Microforges: You start with 90 of these rather than 80.
- Raven Cost: These no longer cost any Neodymium. This has very little impact on anything except for players at the end of chapter one having an easier time, particularly if they have nuclear skimmers rather than geothermal power.
- Chapter One Project Removed The "Extraction" project in the main path of chapter one is now removed, as it's really an extra step and not needed.
- Scandium Buffs From Transports: Shooting down military troop carriers for Scandium now gives 10x what it used to (the same amount it used to on extraction only), and the amount they give on extraction is now 1.5x to 2x.
- New Wealth Source: You can now earn some wealth by shooting down or extracting regular haulers around the city.
- New Neodymium Source: You can now earn some neodymium by shooting down or extracting mining haulers around the city.
- Vegetable Seeds Retired: This resource has been removed from the game in general, as they did not add anything to the game in terms of meaningful complexity or content. In the non-simplified economy, you can grow hydroponic greens based simple on filtered water and biomulch, that means.
- Faster Repair Spots: Repair Spiders and Crabs are now built instantly rather than taking 4 turns to install.
- Faster Decoy Rebuild: The Decoy Tower is now built instantly rather than taking 2 turns to install.
- Faster Network Expansion: Network range extenders and Point-To-Point Microwaves are now built instantly rather than taking 2 turns to install.
- Post-Structure-Construction Boosts: This new mechanic has some structures give you extra resources after they are built. In all cases, they do this during chapter 1 and during the setup phase of new timelines, OR only on some interval that has a cooldown per type of job doing this.
- Computronium Jumpstart: Computronium Refineries now have a +250k post-construction boost of computronium cubes, with a 50 turn cooldown.
- Drones Jumpstart: Drone Factories now have a +8 post-construction boost of drone frames, with a 10 turn cooldown.
- Aircraft Jumpstart: Aerospace Hangars now have a +9k post-construction boost of morphologic lattice, with a 10 turn cooldown.
- Android Jumpstart: Neuroweave Factories now have a +2.5k post-construction boost of neuroweave, with a 10 turn cooldown.
- Build Unit Jumpstart: Robotic Motivator Factories now have a +45 post-construction boost of robotic motivators, with a 5 turn cooldown.
Bugfixes
- I Don't Want To Share: Fixed an issue where equipment changes to captured units (which was newly added in Update 49) were also applying to the versions of those units controlled by third parties.
- Faster Scanning: Fixed an issue where sometimes when you built a structure that would give you increased visibility (like a scanner), it wouldn't give you the visibility for a little while.
English-Only Preview
- Second Path Through Chapter One: Choose to "solve it with fire," and then when it prompts you after you flamethrower a bunch of things, say "I Really Don't Want To Be A Landlord."
Full notes here.
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