Update 72: Neon Overclock

This build includes quite a wide range of updates, based on the cumulative feedback of late. It's hard to really pin down any one specific area more than others, because it's just kind of wide-ranging responses to things that folks have requested, although hacking and upgrades both come up a fair bit. Please see the full list below for details! 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 72 Changelog

New Things

• AddedSystem TakedownAdded a new piece of equipment called Viral Bolts for androids. These give +30 physical attack power, and +60 system disruption power. They're automatically unlocked when you reach intelligence class 6. This makes them the first equipment to increase systems disruption power other than the Oath Of Pacifism.

• Rapid Deletion: In the "Structures With Complaints" screen, you can now right-click structures that are destroyed or disconnected from the network to quickly delete them. There's not a quick way to rebuild them, as that's a job for either engineers, repair crabs, or similar, and would have balance implications.

• AdjustedNew Mod For Extreme-Mode HackingAdded a new mod called "Hack Be Gone" that is now distributed with the game. If you enable that mod, then it will let you use Ultra-Simplified Hacking even on misery and extreme modes. That's not a change I wanted to make to the base game, but I did feel like having that as a mod (which I created for those who want it) was nice.

Quality Of Life

• Focus On Selected: When you are hovering over the portrait of a unit or building in the lower left corner, you can now right-click to center your view on the thing that you have selected. It also says that in the tooltip above that you can do this.

• AddedPause HotkeyThere's a new hotkey in the Unit Shortcuts section, with no default binding, that allows you to toggle if the selected structure is paused or not.
• AddedFocus HotkeyThere's a new hotkey in the Unit Shortcuts section, with no default binding, that allows you to center the camera on whatever unit or building you have selected at the moment.

• Awareness Of Capture Capacity: When hovering over an enemy or neutral npc unit that can be hacked, it now says how much captured unit capacity that unit would take, out of whatever your remaining captured unit capacity is. This is part of the list of general stats, and shows in hacking green if you have capacity, or dim red if you don't have capacity.

• Upgrade Odds Visibility: In the Inspiration section of the VR screen, you can now see how many upgrades are in each category, and what percentage chance you have of getting any specific upgrade any time you cash in that inspiration (the chance is the same percentage for each item, but not for each category).

• AddedUpgrades List Per CategoryAlso in that same Inspiration section tooltip, you can now hold shift to expand those tooltips and see a full list of all of the available upgrades in that category. That way you don't have to remember or guess at which kinds of upgrades come from which categories.

Clarity

• AddedRemembrance Of Difficulty DropdownsThe text that is talking about starting a new timeline with a higher difficulty no longer mentions hard or extreme mode by name, and no longer mentions sabotaging the spaceport since it's easier to just do that from the dropdown that now exists and which is very obvious when starting a new timeline.
• AdjustedCombat Lines Are Easier To SeeAdjusted the logic for combat threat lines to draw the arrowhead directly under and slightly behind the center of the target it is firing from. This makes it not overlap with any incoming threat lines, and also keeps the arrowhead from being practically-invisible under buildings or roads when that happens. It's now very obvious when a unit is scheduled to be attacking versus when it's not.

• Peace After Brutality Rocks Out: The "war music" now kicks in during the "Continue To Not Die" project of Peace After Brutality, but stops after you win or lose the timeline.

Balance

• AdjustedRecoil Brace Now Actually UsefulAdjusted Recoil Brace so that it now gives +6 to attack range, making it so that this isn't just an inferior version of Hydraulic Musculature. Also reduced its cooldown turns to 3 from 4.

• Accelerated Mainframe Setup: During the setup phase, if you have built at least one computronium refinery, then the game will constantly make sure that you have at least 500k computronium cubes. This makes setting up a bunch of tower mainframes faster in timelines beyond the first.

• Accelerated Brain Harvesting: During the setup phase, if you have built at least one brain harvester, then the game will constantly make sure that you have at least 2.5k preserved brains. This makes setting up a bunch of biological mainframes faster in timelines beyond the first.

• Scavenging Disabled Vehicles: Disabling enemies by systems damage (with pinpoint systems or otherwise) now grants you the resources that they would drop if destroyed.

• Cybercratic Ambitions Build Speed: Once the "Vorsiber Deliberations" start in the Cybercratic Ambitions path, all of your buildings start to build instantly, which matches how the cyberocracy-specific buildings function.

• Early Composting For Non-Landlords: If you take the "fire / no-landlord" route through chapter one, it was possible to get the Phytoecdysteroid Chamber without knowing the "Unspeakable Composting" to run it. Now it gives you that kind of composting if you were missing it. For people who take the landlord route, they would already have it at this point.

• Earlier Awareness Of Missing Equipment In New Timelines: In timelines where you will go through setup mode, it now show the "missing equipment" notice during setup mode. Previously it was holding that back until after setup mode was complete, which was non-ideal for actually setting yourself up properly.

• AdjustedProper Reduced Costs For Ultra-Simplified HackingFixed a balance oversight when using "ultra simplified hacking" (the complexity option). Not only do the costs of the hacks no longer scale when hacking more-resistant targets (so your cost doesn't go from 20 to 40 if your hacker skill is only 50%), but it also gives the full discounted amount that you would pay for hacking via the minigame (so, 16 rather than 20). Things would have already worked this way if I hadn't forgotten about that discount from the minigame.

Performance

• AdjustedCPU Math OptimizationsImproved the per-frame improvement of a number of cpu-side math operations, most notably with drawing lines but also in some other locations. Useful primarily for older cpus drawing a lot of things at once.

• GPU Fog Optimizations: Made five key performance improvements to the per-screen-pixel and per-fragment-on-object code for the fog used in the game. This improvement reduces the number of calculations by a nontrivial amount on large screens, and on views of the city that contain a lot of objects. This primarily benefits older or weaker gpus, but it also causes newer gpus to run their fans a bit less.

Bugfixes

• FixedInterstellar Incident Is No Longer ShyFixed an issue where the Interstellar Incident was not showing up properly in the list of goals unless you were on the beta version of the game.
• FixedFixed Impostor Clone UnitFixed a bug that was causing Disconnected Part Peacekeepers to visually look like Liquid Metal.
• FixedFix To Demo-Only Gang Arsonist BugFixed a bug that was only in the demo version of the game that would cause your gang arsonists to trigger an exception when they did their work, rather than having a security response force.
• FixedFix To Background Building Destruction Rare BugFixed a rare exception that could happen in LODCalculator.RecalculateLODForMapItem right after buildings were destroyed.
• AdjustedSmart Reuse Of District Names During ShortagesAdjusted the game logic so that if it runs out of names for a certain kind of district, it will now use one of the names from the pool with a random number between 100 and 999 added after it. This keeps edge cases from happening where there are few too names in a given pool.
• FixedYou Can Properly Practice The Dark Arts NowFixed a bug where the "Dark Arts" achievement was not properly triggering anymore. If you have pinpoint systems on and target a robot or mech, then it will now work properly.
• FixedSmarter SquidsFixed an issue where squid arcologies were not ever having anyone in VR Day-Use Seats due to an xml misconfiguration for them.
• FixedFriendlier GrenadesFixed an issue where non-combatants were being struck by grenades and other AOE attacks from your androids, vehicles, and mechs. I don't think this applied to bulk androids or workers, but it was applying to hug grenades with sledges you directly control. If you put the attacker into slayer mode, then you can have them hit noncombatants in this way, but noncombatants are no longer accidentally-hit.
• FixedFull Carrier UpgradesFixed an oversight where the third "Carrier Hull Strength" upgrade was only giving a bonus of 40 rather than 100.

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Full notes here.

What's New In 1.0

If you missed the retrospective of what changed from the start of Early Access to the 1.0 release, you can read that here:

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

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.