Steam News20 March 20263mo ago

5.801 Radio Signal

Full release notes here. Most of this build is actually from me, which is unusual. Though Badger definitely added key bits. And told me what to do about the audio issue, come to that!

In this update3

Full notes

Full AI War 2 update

Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.

What changed

0 fixes4 additions2 changes0 removals

UI and audio
Server
Performance
Gameplay
Store

addedMost of this build is actually from me, which is unusual. Though Badger definitely added key bits. And told me what to do about the audio issue, come to that! Most of his work right now is going into an upcoming-cool-thing (for AI War 2) that isn't announced yet.

addedMain Game UpdatesDue to reports of audio being cut off in the new version of the game, the DSP Buffer size has been changed from 1024 to 512, and the number of max real voices has been increased from 32 to 128. Both of these have a mild performance impact, but it should be more in common with what the game was doing prior to the unity upgrade. This was a new feature in the new version of unity. They should solve the audio issues.

addedMain Game UpdatesAdded a variety of performance improvements to the serialization and deserialization code. This has a mild effect on loading savegames, but should save on average about 14% of the cpu time required to process network messages in multiplayer. Great for everyone, but in particular for weaker cpus.

addedMain Game UpdatesAdded performance improvements that affect how the game functions when there are a lot of planets and a lot of factions. This was a mystery for a long time as to why extreme number of planets were causing huge slowdowns even when nothing much was going on. The mystery is solved now, although it only gives like a 4% bonus to simulation speed on reasonable numbers of planets. This is basically fixed cpu overhead that no longer gets incurred, so it is a flat bonus from the start of the game into the late game. If you were having late-game slowdowns because of lots of ships, this doesn't help that much, but you do get that flat 4% bonus in that case like any other. The savings increases on larger planet counts, so those are now more viable on a wider range of cpus.

changedModsThe VisibleCPABunkers mod by Erenussocrates has been updated.

changedHeart of the Machine 1.0 Is Out Now!https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

AI War 2 changes

addedDue to reports of audio being cut off in the new version of the game, the DSP Buffer size has been changed from 1024 to 512, and the number of max real voices has been increased from 32 to 128. Both of these have a mild performance impact, but it should be more in common with what the game was doing prior to the unity upgrade. This was a new feature in the new version of unity. They should solve the audio issues.

addedAdded a variety of performance improvements to the serialization and deserialization code. This has a mild effect on loading savegames, but should save on average about 14% of the cpu time required to process network messages in multiplayer. Great for everyone, but in particular for weaker cpus.

addedAdded performance improvements that affect how the game functions when there are a lot of planets and a lot of factions. This was a mystery for a long time as to why extreme number of planets were causing huge slowdowns even when nothing much was going on. The mystery is solved now, although it only gives like a 4% bonus to simulation speed on reasonable numbers of planets. This is basically fixed cpu overhead that no longer gets incurred, so it is a flat bonus from the start of the game into the late game. If you were having late-game slowdowns because of lots of ships, this doesn't help that much, but you do get that flat 4% bonus in that case like any other. The savings increases on larger planet counts, so those are now more viable on a wider range of cpus.

changedThe VisibleCPABunkers mod by Erenussocrates has been updated.

Full release notes here.

Most of this build is actually from me, which is unusual. Though Badger definitely added key bits. And told me what to do about the audio issue, come to that! Most of his work right now is going into an upcoming-cool-thing (for AI War 2) that isn't announced yet.

Main Game Updates

Due to reports of audio being cut off in the new version of the game, the DSP Buffer size has been changed from 1024 to 512, and the number of max real voices has been increased from 32 to 128. Both of these have a mild performance impact, but it should be more in common with what the game was doing prior to the unity upgrade. This was a new feature in the new version of unity. They should solve the audio issues.
Added a variety of performance improvements to the serialization and deserialization code. This has a mild effect on loading savegames, but should save on average about 14% of the cpu time required to process network messages in multiplayer. Great for everyone, but in particular for weaker cpus.
Added performance improvements that affect how the game functions when there are a lot of planets and a lot of factions. This was a mystery for a long time as to why extreme number of planets were causing huge slowdowns even when nothing much was going on. The mystery is solved now, although it only gives like a 4% bonus to simulation speed on reasonable numbers of planets. This is basically fixed cpu overhead that no longer gets incurred, so it is a flat bonus from the start of the game into the late game. If you were having late-game slowdowns because of lots of ships, this doesn't help that much, but you do get that flat 4% bonus in that case like any other. The savings increases on larger planet counts, so those are now more viable on a wider range of cpus.

Mods

The VisibleCPABunkers mod by Erenussocrates has been updated.

Heart of the Machine 1.0 Is Out Now!

https://steamcommunity.com/games/2001070/announcements/detail/538879349212841215 https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2001070/announcements/detail/503978984819654662

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

Source

Steam News / 20 March 2026

Open original post

Changelog.gg summarizes and formats this update. How we read updates.