All right, this build is... big. Really big. You can pet cats, launch ICBMs, have ICBMs launched at you, find a new calling for nickelbot, murder everybody (even more than usual), develop a new endgame unit, and more.
Overall, this is the "genocidal" endgame path. Where you kind of stack war crimes on war crimes. The way it turns out is something the beta players have been enjoying for the last month and a half, so I'm glad that more folks will get to see that. The big update for next week (currently on the beta branch) is the route where you actually play well with others (or... don't at the last second, in various ways).
That's actually a fun point: both the kind of evil and good routes have some aspects to them that are heartwarming and fun (on the evil route), or allow you to make a heel turn (on the good route). I don't like when things are binary, I like nice shades of grey.
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 60 Changelog
Tier 3 Goal: Peace After Brutality (PAB)
- The Evil Route: This is unquestionably the evil way to end a timeline, but there are some surprising twists along the way that are much more wholesome. Granted, that comes after war crimes stacked on war crimes.
- Don't Forget To Save Before You Start: Most of the playtesters over the last month have reported getting their butts thoroughly kicked the first time they tried this, and then report winning afterward. The consensus has been that it's really fun, but the hardest section of the game yet.
- Think Carefully: You might be tempted to rush once certain things kick off, but just... consider using some restraint at first. If you get too ICBM-happy too fast, it could actually backfire on you.
- New Homunculus Unit: This unit is only used in this scenario, and it's one that I really enjoy.
- New Dark Matter Crab Unit: Again specific to this scenario. And another favorite, sheesh. I didn't hold back with these endgame scenarios.
- Semi-Secret Ending Route: Most playtesters found the primary route easily, but just had trouble winning it. The secret route is one you might not notice without looking for it. A pretty strong hint for you: Kill everybody. Don't do much with ICBMs. Note that your chemical weapons rockets still work after getting silos.
- Regional Map: This is a new screen for this one ending scenario, although others may use it in post-launch updates or DLC. It basically allows you to see Siberia (it is topographically-based), and where the cities and other areas are, and make launches against them.
- Chapter Five: Winning this Tier 3 Goal moves you to Chapter 5 (Postgame), which allows you build on ziggurats.
- 20 New Achievements: Although eight of them are not actually related to this T3 goal.
Petting Cats
- Cats Are Okay With It: Sledges, Nickelbots, and True Mimics are now able to pet cats. These are much easier to pet than dogs, for thematic reasons.
Clarity
- Lens Clutter Reduction: Most lenses now have your units hidden by default, but if you hold the Ctrl key then your units are shown (this is the opposite of how it used to work, but you can disable an option in the lens filters to put it back the other way if you prefer it, per lens). Before, if you didn't know to hold Ctrl, you could barely see what's going on in these views.
- Construction Clutter Reduction: By default, the network lines are no longer drawn between your structures. You can turn them back on in the settings if you want. This was visual clutter that means absolutely literally nothing now, and was a vestige of a version of the game from before Early Access even started. It's only still in there even as an option for people who like how it looks. This has been bothering me for a while, but I hadn't realized how much it was bothering me.
- Main View Navigation Details: In the Navigation lens, the tooltips for the districts and POIs now show up when you move your mouse and cursor around even when you're not in the map view.
- You Now Get Beckoned: If you are intelligence class 4, and The Revelation would be showing, the game now also has a new contemplation. It has information about how you're supposed to proceed, most notably if there's not a T3 ending that you like sitting in the timeline at the moment.
Balance
- Forgiveness For Shooting At Me: After you have completed your control of a puppet fedcorp, and prior aggro your units had caused with that fedcorp is wiped away. This means that your allies are not going to be primed to shoot at you during PAB, in particular.
- A Boost To Accidental Cannibalism: Food Forest now also benefits the Liquefactor. It was an oversight that it did not.
Bugfixes
- No Means... The End: One of the two paths to "no more prison breaks" was not warning that it ends two of the project chains.
- More Farms Required: Added 10 more farm names to the name bank so that the game won't run out of them if it exceeds 30 farms. This was a rare occurrence, but happened to at least one person.
- Brutality Speedrun: Fixed an issue where Peace After Brutality could still wind up appearing far too early in a timeline.
- Don't Trick Me, Game: The game now properly accounts for unaccounted-for missiles if your defender would die before it could use its anti-missile weapons.
- It Still Counts If You Break It: Fixed an issue where in several different projects, the game could fail to recognize your progress in converting enemy POIs if the POIs were destroyed after you got them.
- Misuse Of Grace Periods: Fixed an issue where if WW4 was about to start, then you could also start some T3 goals that are incompatible with WW4.
- The Enemy Of My Enemy Is Still Just Me: Fixed an issue where the units trying to kill you during PAB would also try to kill each other. They now see themselves as acting as a unit. They will still try to kill small animals and civilians in their anger if there's not a better target around.
- Small Ground Explosions No Longer Reach The Planes: Fixed the Aklitoxin Breeder explosions being able to destroy enemies regardless of armor or height above the ground. This was an oversight that did not apply to the LOX Bunker; I had simply not put in the proper restrictions.
- Refusal To Speak: Fixed an issue where if you turned down a specific tricky NPC in the first timeline you met them, then they would show back up in that same timeline later on, but not have anything to say, despite seeming to have something to say. They were only meant to show up in OTHER timelines after that point.
- Die Properly, Citizens: Fixed an issue that didn't really come up much until now where when citizens left the city in tens or hundreds of thousands at a time, NOT in an area local to specific buildings (e.g. nukes or chemical weapons), a bunch of ghost citizens would remain.
- Clearly Starving: Fixed an issue where the wrong text was being shown in the resource history for humans who die from lack of nutrition in mind farms or torment vessels.
Beta
- Cybercratic Ambitions (CCA): This is the "good"/cooperative ending for the game, and it's now currently on the beta branch. I'll tell you more about it next week when it arrives on the main branch!
Full notes here.
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