HotM: After The Transformation

Reporting Bugs

• Any bugs or requests should go to our mantis bugtracker
  • If you need to submit log files, those can generally be found under your PlayerData/Logs folder in the folder your game is installed in. The most relevant one is called HeartoftheMachineLog.txt. You can send us the whole thing, or just strip out relevant parts.
  • In rare cases, mainly if your entire game crashes (that almost never happens), we will need your unity player log. That gets overwritten the next time you run the game after a crash, unlike the other log. These can be found here:
    • Windows: C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\Arcen Games, LLC\Heart of the Machine\Player.log
    • macOS: ~/Library/Logs/Arcen Games, LLC/Heart of the Machine/Player.log
    • Linux: ~/.config/unity3d/Arcen Games, LLC/Heart of the Machine/Player.log

0.531

(Not Yet Released)

• Fixed a visual bug where in the discussions/events/etc, the blur in the background did not look right at 4K. Essentially, it looked like a completely different effect, and was missing a lot of the kind of bokeh feel to it, and thus was a much harder screen to visually parse because of all the excess detail in the background, compared to 1080p.

• A bunch more of the icons that could be visible in the background behind the blurred view during discussions, etc, are now turned off while the blur is there. They were getting caught up in the blur and putting unattractive blobs of bokeh in what should otherwise have been a fairly neutral background. It made things look a lot less polished, and more visually distracting.

• When you are able to complete a project with multiple choices, and have already indicated your preferred choice, it now auto-completes when that choice is valid to finish.
  • I had been intentionally making players click the choice so that if they wanted to change their mind, they could. But this was confusing and also not-needed.
    • If you want to change your mind, you have a long time where you can do that, and there's no reason not to do that as soon as you do change your mind.
    • In the case of later "I'm not ready for whatever comes next, so I want to hold back" items, I'm just not going to do that sort of thing.
      • In some cases where a bad thing happens when a project completes, it's mild enough not to matter. Just roll with it. This already was the case with minor projects, and is not new.
      • In the case of anything really significant that would happen, that needs to be based on your choice of something new, not the completion of something old, and that's just the pattern I'll need to stick to.
  • This was in general needlessly confusing at best, and extra clicks that did not feel good to have to do (two extra clicks! Seriously ugh, not sarcasm) at best.
  • Thanks to Leximancer for suggesting.

• Fixed duplicated text in the wiretap action.
  • Thanks to Norax for reporting.

• Magneto-Harmonic Engraving now unlocks instantly, rather than taking two turns of research. This is more thematically-appropriate for what just happened, and also prevents confusion or needless waiting.
  • Thanks to Leximancer for reporting.

• Potable+ Water has been renamed to Filtered Water, which is vastly more clear and should hopefully solve the confusion issues that a number of players have had with the prior.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for the suggestion.

• Added the following text to the Securing Water project: Groundwater is not potable. You'll need to investigate a water filtration plant in order to improve groundwater to a better standard.
  • Thanks to Leximancer for suggesting.

Standby Mode

• There is a new "Standby" ability where the gather ability used to be. This has two functions.
  • Left-click, or using the number key to trigger the ability, puts a unit into temporary standby, which ends after one turn.
  • Right-click puts the unit into indefinite standby, which does not end until you take it off.
  • Units in standby mode are identical to any other unit, however they will not come up in the spacebar rotation. They will still come up with the P key rotation.
  • Thanks to a lot of folks for helping to figure this out, and to Leximancer for organizing the cumulative thoughts. In particular thanks to Leximancer, relmz32, gigastar, stuffy, lordtrogg, b0884, Mintdragon, and ScrObot.

• The manual "Gather" ability has been completely removed.
  • At the start of each turn, but AFTER resources from jobs have already come and gone, the equivalent of the Gather ability now automatically runs, but better than before.
  • It now includes units in vehicles, which it was erroneously not doing before.
  • If you have remaining mental energy, then it also cashes that in for your highest-scavenging-skill units that are not busy with an action-over-time.
  • This also solves the "slurry softlock" timing issue.
  • Thanks to the folks mentioned above, and then also Shadow and mblazewicz for additional information and suggestions.

• The spacebar no longer cares about which actors have AP remaining and which ones do not. It just cycles through all the ones not in some kind of standby.
  • However, if ALL your units are in standby, then it will cycle through those instead.
  • If you are on your last mental energy for the turn, then it will only cycle through units that are not-in-standby and which also have at least one AP.
    • If nothing meets that criteria, then it will end the turn despite you having one mental energy left, even if some of your standby units had AP. This all just gets cashed in for gathering, anyway.
    • Unless you're on your very last mental energy for a turn, this situation does not come up. So there's no longer a way to accidentally end the turn early when you have six mental energy left but all your (presumably very few) units are out of AP. Instead, it cycles through those units.
  • I had considered "Units which are awake and out of AP will not spacebar cycle unless no awake units have AP"
    • However, I wound up rejecting that in practice, at least for now. If you have several units that could use mental energy, but all are out of AP, then what winds up happening is that you can only get to the single unit you recharge, then you can get to all of them after it discharges, then repeat.
    • The presumption is that people will do a lot of standby for units they don't need in the near future, so whatever their current "focus team" is should be cycled through even for those who are out of AP (unless it's on the last mental energy, as noted above).

• The function of the P key is unchanged, just in case anyone is wondering. That cycles through all your units.

• Units that are in standby mode have a different indicator above their head in the streets view.

• All of your own unit icons are now drawn 20% larger on the city map.
  • Your units that are in standby are now drawn with a dull blue style, rather than the whitish glowing cyan style.

• A new button has been added by the radial menu, which takes all of your units out of standby mode if some of them are in it.

0.530 Hotfix

(Released June 31st, 2024)

• Fixed two regressions in the prior build related to targeting other units with thrown items. The first was that for vehicles and mechs doing this, it would draw the attack lines and do the attack. The second was that for all three kinds of units, it would not actually do the item on right-click.
  • Thanks to Trogg and Felix Winterhalter for reporting.

0.529 Wallripper

(Released May 31st, 2024)

• Fixed an exception that could happen when npc actions are belatedly started from a background thread and do a popup because you skipped straight to the next turn. This is an absolutely fine thing to do, I just had missed one instance of handling this right.
  • Thanks to skanx for reporting.

• Added a new ActivityDangerType table, which helps me to differentiate various kinds of threats that player may face from certain aggressive actions without it just being bland and numeric. The response will often be something that is tied to some specific kind of faction, which also is useful. I'd been debating exactly how to handle this for a few months, but this is very flexible.
  • Also a lot of other supporting data and structures have been added for related content you'll see after this build releases.

• NPC managers can now target actions over time associated with an ActivityDangerType.

• Finished the next new ability players will be using a fair bit, but spoilers.

• There's a new filter that opens up when you get the new ability, and it's available on the radial wheel in both the main view and the map view.
  • You can now find some sites that are extremely well-defended and dangerous, which you can do your best to gather from.
  • These sites have the new kind of danger ratings on them, and several of them are really quite tame. However, the ones that are tied to corporate executives are incredibly dangerous to the point I'm not sure if they're winnable with the current kit that people can get up to -- that said, it can be fairly close, and if you use some of the stuff that unlocks at intelligence class 2, or use bulk androids cleverly, then it's definitely winnable. For that I'll probably need to add in the next level of escalation in the arms race, but for now if people can crack it, then more power to them. Victories well-deserved in those cases.

• Adjusted some things with the homing logic for the SecForce Cruiser, so that when it's firing at certain kinds of locations it doesn't do a "spinny shots are circling you" thing.

• Once you have paving over squalor, you can now build over a lot of the abandoned buildings from the worse parts of town, and farm lean-tos, now. In addition to the things you could already build over.
  • There really are a ton of choices in where to build your giantest buildings, now, even if it does take a bit of looking.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for the report.

• The new scavenging sites view on the city map now also includes npc units that drop resources on either death or extraction.

• More work on the new scavenging interface. It has separate colors for each kind of resource now, and doesn't show resources that are not yet unlocked, etc.

• Extraction drones now are blocked from being launched against any sort of vehicle that does not have at least one actual discovered resource that you can extract from it right now.
  • If it would have something later, the wording makes that clear. If it would not, in the current build anyway, then that's also noted.
  • The new scavenging build makes all of this easier to manage in general.
  • Thanks to ptarth and crazykid080 for reporting.

• The new scavenging view now is unlocked as soon as you get extraction drones, making it far easier to find extraction targets.

• The "Ambush Corporal" streetsense event has been entirely removed. It was only mildly interesting, and it seemed to suggest different avenues in the gameplay than really exist. You go about getting better clearances through equipment unlocks, not these streetsense events. Basically, this was too confusing, and also of too little use, to remain.

• Removed the ability of the electrical parasites to be installed in network or relay towers. That was an old design.

• Added a new power source, and a very interesting contemplation required to get it, which brings you to the most interesting key contact yet.

• Added the ability to have certain resources only ever show up if you have some of them right now. This is how the nano-seed works now, to keep it from being in your inventory and empty for 99% of the game.
  • This is also now used by some one-off resources that are things connected to special events, where you get a thing that you can use, but then once it's gone it just isn't taking up space anymore, either.

• Added two very powerful new jobs that you can get, although to make full use of them will require more deterrence than you can quite muster yet.
  • In the case of this, it's again setting you up to want the thing you don't have yet, rather than just giving it to you immediately. You will get it shortly after, but you can't in this build yet.

• Added a new storage facility for rare earth metals, and there's a couple of those that are either newly-acquirable, or just new in general.

• Fixed a regression from last week where buildings were not being properly lit up in the range of network towers or scanners. I didn't realize this until reviewing draft trailer footage!

• Increased the scan range of network towers and scanners by a substantial amount.

• Increased the attack range of all vehicles, which also increases their fog of war cutting range, even further.
  • This lets you hit things from further away with your vehicles, which is often important if they are the sort that are "inherently alarming" in particular. But it also just gives you a better sense of vision from having them around, even though it is cosmetic-only.

• The mipmaps of the final bloom pass now tones itself down on higher-resolution screens, linearly by the height of the screen. So this won't negatively impact ultrawide monitors. But for monitors that are fundamentally more in the 4K range, it will prevent the game from becoming overly bloom-y on ui elements and enemy icons.
  • This doesn't address some of the threat lines being a bit under-bloomed, or explosions being a bit the same, but this is more subtle and I can't quite make that match 1080P without causing other elements to over-bloom in the process. For now at least, this is as close between the two resolutions (and the intermediate steps) as I can probably comfortably get it.
  • The over-bloom was something that anyone could instantly notice, but the slightly-lower-impact threat lines or slightly-less-glowy explosions (and not even all of those) are perhaps getting into nit-picking territory where I was the only one who would notice it too much.

• Slightly raised the threat lines, as I think they were just a hair low, which was probably what was causing a difference on 4K monitors in terms of them being a bit too faint. If I'm wrong, it won't hurt anything, and it looks slightly nicer at 1080P, as well.

• Greatly expanded the methods available for targeting items, so that they can have a bunch of custom functionality as well as the standardized functions.
  • Targeted items can now also do other general sorts of on-hit logic beyond just applying status effects. This is used now, but the use is redacted for spoiler reasons.

• Implemented the start of a new way of handling soft-targeting of certain abilities, which allows them to do their extra thing that is whatever they do (via right-click), but if it's not immediately available, they can do their other logic as-normal.
  • The first to get this treatment is items. For targeted items that have to be used within your range, it was incredibly painful to have to try to figure out where a target was, get out of the item targeting mode, and then get back into the targeting mode and then use the item on the target.
    • Players had not really experienced this much, except possibly with the engine-driller or extraction drones. But those are not used super heavily, so it never came up. Same with throwing small insects or arachnids.
    • However, some of the new content in this build uses highly-targeted items, and it was absolutely maddening for me. So the general functionality is altered now, and it's vastly more fluid now.

• Flamethrower, remote demolish, and a new ability all now use right-click to activate, and otherwise control like regular movement.
  • People had not complained about these yet, and they were not the worst, but they in general function like contemplate.

• The second feud that you can trigger is now in place. You can also wind up with a wicked amount of danger to your own holdings if you're being reckless with your word.

0.528 Unforgivable Composting

(Released May 29th, 2024)

• The wishlist and discord buttons now have an "are you sure?" prompt when opening an external website.
  • This is largely for the protection of live streamers, to prevent them accidentally showing anything personal on stream.

• Fixed an issue where the action over time details which were already written were not being shown properly on the "cancel an action" hover.
  • Thanks to Cyborg for reporting.

• Added in a new Wiretap contextual action that you can find via streetsense, which is only really possible now because of the rate-limiting addition that was added initially for cold blood.
  • This is a quick way to get a lot of wealth, using any android you want to.

• Split the ability to hollow out buildings into two sizes for now, rather than just the one that was previously there.
  • Different sets of buildings are valid for the two kinds of hollowing, and the build rates are different, etc.

• Fixed an issue with the destructive route where you then were not properly able to get homeless housing, completely blocking progress in chapter one.

• Fixed a bug with contemplate not being pointed-to properly in the ability bar. Basically, it was pointing at the bar, not the actual contemplate icon.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for reporting.

• When a job is completely unable to do anything because of being below its threshold for shutting off in terms of electrical outage, that is now shown in a vastly more clear way, and also shows a differnet color of lightning bolt.
  • Thanks to dragorislordofmercy for reporting.

• Fixed a remnant from an older control scheme, where in a couple of the sub-tips in the controls breakdown, it said right-click to deselect units, which it should have been left-click.
  • Thanks to Jake Cooper for reporting.

• Your deals with the underclass are now vastly more forgiving about lapses. This thematically makes more sense.

• There is now a fourth options on providing food to humans, and it's very dubious.
  • It unlocks a new resource and a new building, and establishes a different deal with the humans.
  • Also, this causes drone construction to be unlocked earlier, although it doesn't have anything to do with launching from vehicles yet. That still comes at the normal time later, but it does show some of the flexibility in order of operations for certain things, kind of as a preview of that aspect of chapter two.

• Made it so that there's a bit more small arms research available at intelligence class 1, although you can still get blocked up on inspiration if you do things in an order where you have almost no weapons unlocked but still accomplish a lot of other things. That's not actually a problem, just an observation.

• There is a new "distance restriction" on jobs, which is optional, and which can enforce that certain jobs with the same restriction must be a certain distance from one another.
  • Rather than simply preventing the stacking of any job that requires deterrence from being too close to one another, this allows for that to be a bit more nuanced. Also, this has utility on things without any deterrence at all, such as the new unforgivable cannery.
  • This is my chosen method for handling deterrence otherwise being infinitely-stackable in a local area; it's a lot simpler than making deterrence itself stack, and it has some interesting construction implications over time. Please note that for territory control flags, those can go in any density right now, and probably will be in general; I can't guarantee that all the seeding options would be possible any other way, and it's a comparably minor issue (compared to other things that will require deterrence) with major consequences if the player loses the deterrence they're trying to hold on a bunch of flags all at once.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for a related report.

• Demoted the "failed to spawn unit at location" notices related to npc managers to being invisible logged warnings. When they are infrequent, it's just an order of operations thing across threads and perfectly harmless. If ever there was a flood of them, that would need some attention. I have yet to see an actual problem case, happily.
  • Thanks to WhereAmI for the most recent report.

0.527 Wednesday Test Group

(Released May 29th, 2024)

• Fixed a colon being at the end of "has emergency power supply."
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• In cases where exceptions happen during rendering, the visuals should be less prone to disappearing
  • Also have instrumented the streets mode extra so that if the "delete a lot of buildings in a quick succession" error can be replicated (I cannot duplicate it), then there should be more info on how to find it.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where the loadout screen could be opened for NPC unit types that you don't actually control. That in turn also let you scrap them. Both are fixed.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Added some hardening to the GetHasVisibleComplaint and GetHasAnyComplaint methods, which seem like they were able to throw exceptions when selecting a structure of that sort after it was recently deleted.
  • Thanks to Jake Cooper for reporting.

• Repair spiders should now repair bulk units, allied NPCs (you don't really meet any of those yet), and vehicles. Have not tested this yet, but it should work. Please reopen the ticket if it does not.
  • Thanks to Trogg and relmz32 for reporting.

• Fixed a funky timing bug related to loading a savegame that was from the very first turn, and which still had been in the middle of spawning some outdoor grid spots during the save.
  • I've reworked how this loads so that it's ultimately harmless now, and also does not throw a visible error. So it will just work fully properly.
  • Thanks to strandofgibraltar for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where invalid filenames that were entered were throwing an exception after nicely telling you what the problem was. Also it now removes the invalid characters so you can just click again if you want.
  • Thanks to Alias50 for reporting.

• The brief text in the upper left on the first turn is now simplified to just say "left click to select units" rather than mentioning deselection, since the wording could be unclear and was likely not needed in general.
  • Thanks to nas1m for suggesting.

• The "Incoming Damage" now says "Incoming Damage Next Turn" to make it clear that this is not reaction damage.
  • Thanks to strandofgibraltar for suggesting.

• Further revised the StreetSense tooltip to help clarify its contextual nature even more.

• The private bunker now mentions that it will form the center of a new network of structures the player can build, so that the player has the expectation of a network before networks are first mentioned.
  • Thanks to B for reporting.

• The Android Chamber Trio was legitimately confusing as to what it wanted from you. Its second line now says:
  • Build at least three separate chambers, with at least one set to build a CombatUnit, Technician, and Nickelbot, respectively.
  • Thanks to Alasseo for reporting.

• Three new options have been added under the Accessibility subcategory on the game tab of settings: Disable Street Traffic, Disable Delivery Drones, Disable Background Gunfights.
  • They all have the same note: This is visual flavor. If the visual movement is distracting, you can disable it.
  • Thanks to strandofgibraltar for suggesting.

• The "Should you wing it?" message during the first fight has been completely rewritten.
  • It now says: This is a good chance to experiment.
    • This fight is a teaching exercise that allows you to experiment and learn what a few of your options are. The next fight you encounter won't be nearly so chaotic.
    • Both you and the humans can field large numbers of replacement units rapidly in this fight, so this is a perfect time to test cause-and-effect without worrying about longer-term consequences.
    • The most important tip is to always examine enemy units with unfamiliar icons to see what their goals are. For example, stopping investigators is the only thing that matters for winning this fight.
  • People were routinely putting way too much pressure on themselves in this first fight, and also were prioritizing trying to do things right rather than trying to test cause and effect.
  • Thanks to many folks for the feedback that led to this change, but PersephoneSidekick in particular.

• In general, contextual actions that you find via streetsense can now be put on cooldown.
  • Cold Blood is now hidden for 1-3 turns after you make use of it. It doesn't tell you that anywhere, or show you the cooldown remaining. Cold blood itself now says "can only be done once every few turns," to get the idea across without being too specific.
  • Thanks to Trogg and B for reporting the infinite-energy glitch that machines bathed in blood could otherwise cause.

• Previously there were some cases where if the nearest connection for a new building was a network tower, then it would act as it it was going to join that subnet rather than starting a new subnet. Relays did not seem to have this issue. It now says "new subnet" in all of the proper cases, to avoid confusion.
  • Thanks to B for reporting.

• The contemplation ability tooltip now also suggests using the radial wheel version.

• After contemplation is available, there are now arrows that pop up and point at the ability on related units' bars, and on the radial menu in map mode.
  • A lot of people were missing that this exists at all, so this should prevent that.
  • Thanks to Leximancer for suggesting.

• There is a new Game At A Glance on the main menu, which gives people a thing they can read if they're coming in blind and want some orientation.
  • Thanks to Dad's Gaming Addiction for suggesting, and to many folks for helping edit it.

• The wishlist button on the main menu is now a bit more prominent.

0.526 Destruction

(Released May 28th, 2024)

• The game now spells out "zero key" rather than using the numeral zero when a hotkey is bound to that. Otherwise, in some of the fonts, it looks a lot like the O letter.
  • Thanks to Alias50 for reporting.

• This will only apply to freshly-generated cities:
  • All comm stations, "mining and science" installations, and large oil-mining sites now include water purification plants.
  • This should naturally give more friendly options for people who are very unlucky and might otherwise have seen all of their options be inside military bases.
  • Thanks to Yap for reporting.

• Added the following text to the bottom of the prismatic tungsten's mission tips: Remember that you can have any mix of unit classes you want. This will probably require multiple CombatUnits working together to pull off. In general, your early unit mix should skew heavily towards these and any other heavy combatants you might have.
  • Thanks to Esoop for reporting.

• There is now information imploring you to use the shift key to see tooltip details right in the controls shown on-screen during the first turn, and when you have the system sidebar open.
  • Thanks to b0884 for suggesting.

• Fixed some bad grammar early in chapter one.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where players who skipped the prologue were given a red CombatUnit right away.

• Fixed an issue where player-controlled units were having their attack range capped to the maximum range that third party NPC units are allowed to have, which is too low for some of the player weapons.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• Completed integrating a generalized targeting framework that allows for some new abilities to target buildings or units in a slightly new way.
  • This is used by one of the new abilities you can get for taking one of the new branches early in chapter one, and the lower-end version of that project is now complete-able. You monster.

• A whole bunch more targeting additions, and a second very-interesting ability is now done. This one is even more destructive than the first. It's been on my backlog for almost a year, and finally there's a good reason to break it out.
  • The higher version of this new project can now be completed.

• Also updated some of the AGI Researcher first meeting text a bit, so that it fits in either context.

• Massive code extension to the "NPC manager" feature, under the hood. Hopefully I did not break anything, but this basically governs all of the things where NPCs are doing things periodically, or in response to something.
  • The reason for the big split here is that I realized I also have a very common case where I need to trigger in response to something much more direct, without any larger context. Often something along the lines of a reaction to a random ability use you might do, if it's an egregiously aggressive ability. I needed to be able to pull on the same sort of code without having to recreate that a second time, so this refactor may temporarily break random things, but hopefully not.

• A new mechanism for triggering complex NPC spawns manually from certain key things that happen is now in place.
  • This is now being used as a reaction to a very destructive ability you have, and it is able to run at one intensity earlier in the game, and another intensity entirely later in the game. I can further titrate this as-needed later. This is very very useful, not just for this one ability, but for other stuff later as well.

• Which NPC units can be set on fire is now tracked. Why that would be required... goodness, who knows.

• New status for units: on fire.
  • Damages them, and can cause them to flee in fear.

• The first branch in chapter one is now complete, at long last. Took longer than I had anticipated, but it's one of those things where I was adding a bunch of mechanics to support it.
  • Essentially, when you are normally just forced to build housing for humans, you can make a different choice instead. It gives you a couple of new abilities that involve a lot of destruction, and a new project you haven't seen before.
  • Don't get too excited: after that divergence, it does take you back to the main path for chapter one where you do need to actually build housing for some humans. But you'll have a better understanding of possible reasons why you need to do this. And you'll have a better understanding of the motivations of your future self.

0.525 So Much Clarity

(Released May 27th, 2024)

• Added in some extra protection against an error that could happen if you were hovering over a specific tooltip at exactly the frame the game exited to the main menu.
  • Thanks to ScrObot for reporting.

• Added a new bit of text to the Refinery Overdriver to make it more clear how it's meant to work:
  • This not only increases the production output, but it has a corresponding reduction in precursor inputs required.
  • This makes it all upside; you don't need to be concerned that your usage of precursor will increase, because that will remain flat despite the output increasing.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reportging the confusion.

• The Extraction project has been updated to have its text properly talk about the Drone Factory rather than the old consumables screen, and also to say drones not zones.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• Fixed an issue with outdated text on the damage types still referring to color-pair oppositions, which were shifted months ago.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• The shift key extra explanations of damage predictions to targets now explain what is going on with the percentage numbers, since that is unusual. It also explains the benefit of representing it this way, since it is skipping a conversion step that players otherwise have to do in their head.
  • Thanks to DadsGamingAddiction for the report.

• The attack prediction information when you hold shift now also shows the current target health out of its max health, right after the "final damage" line, just to make things easier.

• Fixed an issue where I meant to add proper always-there support for 1920x1200, but accidentally did not due to a typo.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• The scan range on your units has been removed.
  • It's still a feature on the scanner jobs, but nothing else.
  • The visual circle of what is revealed by any other kind of unit is now correlated exactly with its attack range, for the sake of simplicity.
  • This now makes it so that a lone unit working somewhere can see more buildings, typically.
  • In general, the nature of the scanning mechanics as they were was kind of vestigial, and a lot of people were continually confused by them.
  • Thanks to Mateusz Błażewicz for suggesting this alternative.

• Gamepad input is now disabled by default, to prevent devices from giving unwanted input. Most players will not use a gamepad, as this is not a gamepad-based game.
  • However, the gamepad is key to the Steam Deck, and so this setting has no effect on the steam deck.
  • Thanks to Zeratul for reporting their endlessly-spinning view.

• Fixed an issue where clicking and dragging from within the ui to the main view would cause the view to orbit, when it should not orbit from that.
  • Thanks to Bobtree for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where bulk units were allowed to keep moving when you didn't have enough energy for them to do so, as long as it wasn't a sprint.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• Chapter two can no longer be selected from the "start profile" screen, and now has a revised name and description.

• Skip to next turn now clarifies that units without orders will do a Gather.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting the confusion.

• Slurry spiders in general now have extra information in their tooltips about resource sources being infinite unless otherwise specified, and instantly transferred to central storage.
  • Thanks to b0884 for suggesting.

• The initial investigation during the prologue now only includes 3-4 districts, rather than what was commonly 45-55.
  • It also ensures that one is right by the camera if at all possible, and that one is by your smartest unit, again if possible.
  • This makes for way less clicking around during that period, but still a bit of clicking around, since learning to use the map is the idea.
  • Thanks to b0884 and Strategic Sage for suggesting.

• There are four new handbook entries.
  • Three of these pop open when you finish building your first slurry spiders. They explain that resources are centrally stored, that gather spots are infinite unless otherwise specified, and that resource display is contextual but can be pinned.
  • The fourth pops open when you build your first large wind generator, and it explains that electricity is per-network, and where to see the current amount for it.
    • This one pops up in a way that is more aggressive than the other three.
  • Thanks to b0884 for suggesting.

• In general, reworked some of the logic for how the arrow indicators show up to tell you various things, to prevent there ever being cases where they flicker. It's now strictly hierarchical, so the flicker is no longer possible.
  • Thanks to relmz32 for reporting.

• Added a new indicator to point out the display of network-wide electricity whenever you first open a structure that would let you see it (aka select any structure).
  • Thanks to b0884 for the most recent report, although a number of players were confused by this.

• When you're replacing units by deploying a new one, it now always shows the arrow pointing at this to indicate that you need to choose one to scrap.
  • Basically even after you've done this once or twice, it's otherwise still too similar to the "change type of unit to build" without the high-visibility reminder. And the first time you encounter this, it's not clear at all.
  • Thanks to b0884 for reporting.

• Added a new settings option that allows for the full tooltips to always be shown, rather than having to hold shift to see them.
  • Thanks to b0884 for suggesting.

• When you get your third android during the prologue (since depending on choices in the intro event players can start with two androids), it now hides the checklist and points out the forces sidebar, ensuring the player opens that sidebar before they are allowed to resume. Basically giving them the added awareness of their list of units very early.
  • Thanks to b0884 for suggesting.

• Did further updates to the "equip slayer ability" part of the prologue, both in the tooltip in the upper right, and the at-mouse tooltip.
  • It makes it really clear that you do have to learn how to equip it, but you don't have to actually use it.
  • Thanks to b0884 for suggesting.

• A new handbook entry has been added right when you first unlock slurry spiders.
  • This one is called "the most important tip," and explains about holding shift to see more detailed tooltips.
  • It's not a crisis if players miss this before this point, and they already get a lot of info in the prologue. But after this point it is a crisis if they miss it, and this is a relatively quiet period for new information, so hence my choice to put it here.
  • Thanks to b0884 for suggesting.

• Made it so that left-clicking a handbook entry notification now pops open the handbook screen and does not mark it as read. Right-clicking the handbook entry notification acts as before, clearing it and also marking it as read.
  • Thanks to b0884 and Cyborg for suggesting.

• Fixed a regression that was super annoying, where it was possible for the highlighting from embedded structures to stick around in build mode when it should not.
  • Thanks to Bobtree for reporting.

• If you are in build mode for a job, any existing buildings that are already that job will now show up with a green highlight, in addition to the other highlighting that was already being done.
  • Thanks to Bobtree for suggesting.

• Fixed an intermittent exception that could happen in StreetVehicle.DoOnNewWaypoint. It was harmless but definitely annoying.
  • Thanks to Shimaaji and mblazewicz for reporting.

• Reworded "Enemy Attacks Planned" to be "Your Items Targeted By Enemies"
  • Can't say units, because it also includes structures.
  • Thanks to Bobtree for suggesting.

• If you try to select an incompatible piece of equipment with a unit, it now properly blocks that.
  • Thanks to Half Phased for reporting.

0.524 Black Market Contacts

(Released May 26th, 2024)

• Removed some old data that was the way I used to detect if a building was a valid spot for a bunker/tower a long while ago. It was still being used by some of the code, and mostly lined up with the new way that it actually highlights buildings, but not entirely. This led to some cases where you could get all the way into starting to establish a network, and then it just doesn't work.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon and Alias50 for the detailed report.

• Extra information is now given on NPCs being controlled by npc managers, beyond just what is in their stance. It gives a more direct explanation of why they are doing something.
  • In a lot of cases this is just minor flavor, but it can add a lot to the game.
  • In other cases, it's key information, because you run into some units who are fighting over something you did half an hour ago, and it makes it clear the connection between your past actions and these current units.

• The food missions now prevent you from even trying them if you haven't gotten your weapons and armor properly yet. It has a message about it, as well.
  • Thanks to RED for reporting.

• The pmc imposter now properly uses the prefix IMP instead of SEC.

• The event gate-by-city logic is now included in the validity checks for contemplations, which lets flags more easily block contemplations from coming up again if you do something like murder a key contact for no reason.

• The game now supports making certain contemplations limited to only actors in a specific collection.
  • The general idea here is that this lets me then make the events more specific, which tends to be a good thing.

• Fixed an issue that would spam errors about certain multipliers not summing correctly on M1 macs.
  • It was harmless, but basically the floating-point math on M-series macs is... different. It really doesn't matter in the slightest, but it is just a slightly different specification from intel, and it gives a slightly different result
  • The code in question has been adjusted to work around that, and I don't anticipate any ongoing problems from that.
  • Thanks to strandofgibraltar for reporting.

• Fixed a (thankfully, harmless) serialization issue that could happen after doing certain sorts of contemplations and then saving the game.

• Fixed some very frustrating delays when switching turns, where it would make you wait for some NPCs to move that were off-screen and not actually something you even care about.
  • In general reworked a bit how some of that is calculated, and it now all flies by properly. This has no effect on NPCs that you are actually meant to see, and how those act.

• Further improvements to make sure there's not a gap waiting on npc units doing things. This time it was on the city map where it was happening. Should all be resolved now.

• Added new logic for managed NPCs that spawn at POIs, to be able to keep them from spawning near players if desired.
  • This is now used for the PMCs that fight one another if you do a certain contemplation.
  • Previously they could randomly spawn in your actual area of control, and make a right mess of your buildings with no warning or mercy. Yeah... too much. They always spawn further out, now.
  • The health and power of those PMC forces is no longer so overblown, either; they were too tanky to really deal with directly.

• In general, some of the flags and metrics on key contacts are now fully able to be tripped by events. These were not used yet before, so had not been fully tested, but now the flags at least are fully tested.

• Fixed an oversight where the stats of the weapons were not actually showing the attack types that they would make available.
  • That's now visible as one of the stats in the equipment stats line, and so things are much more clear.
  • Thanks to Half Phased for reporting.

• Adjusted the smart pistol to be graphene rather than osmium.

• When you're doing contemplations from the map, it now flips you over to streets view and focused on the location you are at, so that the background looks nicer during the contemplation, and also so that when you pop out of it you see where you are in a more immediate way.

• In general, there are a number of new black market options available from fairly early into chapter one, and you can get something like four new weapons and one new armor.
  • You can also meet three new key contacts which come into play later, or you can senselessly kill them.

• Added some general functionality to allow for a more robust kind of targeting flexibility for abilities, which includes allowing mods to do as much separate targeting stuff as the main game does.
  • Converted structural engineering over to this, and have verified that it works.
  • There's a new ability in a new chapter one branch that is partially complete, but disabled for this build as I didn't have time to finish it tonight.

0.523 The Sunday Testers

(Released May 26th, 2024)

• Reverted most of the changes from the prior build related to the mouse click detection in the main game. They evidently made things worse.
  • I did keep the relaxed "area your mouse has to stay in during a click," to help with folks who have shaky hands, if that winds up being a thing. It shouldn't hurt anything.
  • Thanks to Bobtree for reporting.

• Added in another adjustment to the mouse click detection, which should solve a case where, at low framerate, if your mouse click was faster than two frames, it would not register in the main game map.
  • Essentially, if it was down one frame and up the very next frame, then it would not register it as a click, which was an error. But one that was almost physically impossible to hit at 60fps or higher.
  • I had thought that this was a problem with slow-clickers, but actually turns out this was a problem with fast-clickers. Near as I can tell, pending feedback about any further problems.
  • Thanks to Bobtree for reporting.

• The text on the apply changes for customization on the loadout screen now has a bunch of extra information about customization being per-class, and why that is.
  • Thanks to Bobtree for suggesting.

• The wording around the investigation progress during the prologue has been reworked a lot, to make it clear what the stakes are and are not, and who is doing what and why.
  • Hopefully this should make it clear what the goals are, and what you get if you win, versus what you stand to lose if you fail. This was all very opaque, previously.
  • Big thanks to Bobtree for the specific suggestions and points on where things were unclear or seemed to clash with the narrative elements.

• In the part of the tutorial where you are asked to do the loadout, it now has a handbook entry that opens and which explains that loadouts are per unit class, and why.
  • Thanks to Bobtree, Trogg, VSX, and others for the commentary on the confusion that was caused without this.

• Fixed a couple of places where it was not properly clearing the buffer before writing a tooltip, which could lead to it writing a way-too-long tooltip and then having an error and then drawing part of the game invisibly, as well.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• Fixed a critical error that was eating the economies of players who were using overdrivers.
  • Basically, the goal of an overdriver is to increase the output of a thing, right?
  • But, if it also kept the rate of resource inputs the same as it increased the output, it would be very complicated to deal with, as it would unbalance your economy, and I did not want that.
  • So, I originally put in logic that would make it so that the equivalent inputs now give a larger yield, which makes it so you don't have to think about that at all.
    • Except, no, that's NOT what I did. I did the math backwards, and actually made the inputs be consumed at a LARGER rate than before, making the ratio even worse, and making the problem I was trying to solve happen pretty much instantly and with huge severity.
    • This has been fixed now, with the inverted math now working properly. So expect to see your economies swing massively in the proper direction if you were using overdrivers.
  • I'll be honest, I was wondering about all the people with ledger issues in their savegames. I don't use overdrivers very often, and had not tended to have any issues. Now I see that the overdrivers were what were driving people's economies into the ground.
  • Thanks to Trogg for finding and reporting the issue.

• After you complete your first contemplation, it now pops up a new handbook entry that explains to the player that the checklist is the key path forward, and mentions the Dialog Available in particular.
  • Now that contemplations are earlier in the game, it was definitely possible for folks to not realize this was the case. New problem as of yesterday.
  • Thanks to VSX for reporting.

• A bunch of various mode-style abilities are now able to be used by units riding in vehicles, and units can also use items while riding in a vehicle.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz and Trogg for reporting.

• The "skip to next turn" button now unlocks on turn 2 of the prologue, rather than being something off limits until chapter one. This makes a lot more sense.
  • Thanks to nas1m and Trogg for suggesting.

0.522 Earlier Contemplation

(Released May 25th, 2024)

• Having notifications in the bottom right corner no longer blocks your view of the mental energy and AP in the radial wheel.
  • Thanks to Alias50 for suggesting.

• If the "next unit" icon(s) (there are two) are showing, then the text for the AP and mental energy bumps down a little bit in the radial menu. The positioning looks more natural there in those cases, but in the case of the other icons, it would be too low and hard to see.

• The Assistants and Merchandisers cohorts now have full descriptions.

• Some other secret stuff you'll find in this build by playing it.

• Fixed a couple of issues with the order in which the game was deserializing a few things, which... doesn't matter about the details, but basically it was leading to some unexpected results in one test case for me, and would have eventually been a problem. But it shouldn't have affected any existing saves.

• Added a new Awareness Of Filth unlock, which is unlocked when The Thinker was previously unlocked, and which is now what controls the introduction of the filth mechanics in human habitations.
  • This is fully compatible with existing savegames.

• At the bottom of the "Steal Prismatic Tungsten" project, it now says "Be sure it gets put into proper storage once you have some," to avoid some lingering possible confusion.
  • Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.

• Contemplation is now introduced dramatically earlier in chapter one, allowing for players to engage in some side content shortly after they get android chambers.
  • There is a new android class that is a solid combatant that you can get right away from this, too.
  • There's some other new content that is tantalizingly just out of reach at this point, but which you can follow the new android class on a small adventure to resolve.

• Also updated the gate-by-city code so that now I can make it so that multiple projects must be complete before a certain other project is done.
  • Previously, the hungry sheltered people could show up before you were even sheltering them, if you happened to do the AGI Researcher end of things first (which I never had).

• The icon for CombatUnits has been shifted to a shield, which reads more cleanly, especially with another secret addition coming in this build.

• Added in the ability for certain event choices to only work for units in a certain collection.

• Added in the ability to gate certain event options by if you've unlocked a technology or not.
  • This is used at the moment to prevent players from accidentally murdering themselves if they try to make a very dangerous choice way before they're equipped to deal with the consequences.

• Improved the handling of NPC vs NPC violence when both are in the fog of war. It no longer has popups or explosions in those cases.
  • This is very useful for background fighting that can be stirred up by certain actions you take, where it's invisible to you until you stumble across it or it happens to happen near to you.
  • The first instance of this is in the game now, related to one of the new contemplation chains.

• Added some "after deserialization" hooks for the data calculators, which allows for custom logic to happen after that point.
  • This is now used with some of the logic splitting the think from awareness of filth.

• Fixed a rather serious issue where if you had an aerospace hangar, but no valid vehicles to build yet, then it would prevent you from continuing the game until you deleted the hangar.
  • Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.

• Fixed a regression with the embedded structures in build mode, where after changing them to precalculate more widely, the actual set of what was considered a valid click target did not really match what was visually shown to the player. So you could click non-highlighted items, and were barred from clicking some of the highlighted items.
  • Thanks to Bobtree and mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed a typo in the city map view introduction.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage for reporting.

• Fixed an issue with a handbook entry still referring to mental energy being in the upper left.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage for reporting.

• Fixed a regression from May 22, when the way that structure revealing and visibility was reworked to use the scanning towers and not the confusing subnet method. At that time, it also broke the ability for NPC units to attack player structures.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• The general timings for what is considered a mouse click have been increased for the main game view. Things are not selected on mouse down, but rather on mouse up when there is not too long of an interval.
  • The other part is that the mouse cannot have moved too far during the click, or else it's considered to be a drag operation rather than a click. These have also been doubled.
  • So far I don't notice much of a difference, personally, but I can be much more deliberate about my clicks. The concern of unintentionally registering clicks when clicking to drag currently does not seem to be an issue.
  • Please let me know if this isn't working out for your specific setup well.
  • Thanks to Bobtree for reporting.

0.521 Mental Energy Visibility

(Released May 25th, 2024)

• The Alumina Scrapper has been hidden for now, as it wasn't ready to go out yet. Whoops! It had wrong text and its ability is not implemented yet.
  • Thanks to Darloth for reporting.

• Fixed a critical bug in the prior build that broke investigations, because of the new way that ability targeting has been updated. I missed that one.
  • Thanks to VSX for reporting.

• All of the various abilities that have some sort of targeting about them now either label themselves in their tooltip as "mode change" or "targeted ability."
  • In each case, it explains what to expect from the controls, in a brief and simple way.
  • This should help folks differentiate what to expect from any given new item they encounter of that sort, in a natural way.
  • The actual functionality being different between these two styles does seem to feel the most natural, so just making sure that each is clearly labeled was the natural next thing.
  • Thanks to Darloth and lordtrogg in particular for the notes here.

• The escape key no longer flashes the system menu when you're on the main menu.
  • Thanks to VSX for reporting.

• The escape button now properly cancels out of targeted abilities, but then also does NOT cancel out of mode changes.
  • It also cancels out of build mode or command mode.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporging.

• Fixed another minor issue, where clicking another ability from the ability bar was not closing the popup of the prior ability (multiple investigations, item choice, etc) if there was one open.

• On the ability footer bar, the AP display is now slightly larger, and is also more colorful, so it's more noticeable.
  • Additionally, right next to the AP, it also now shows the mental energy, with tooltips functioning for both.
  • The idea is that people can then immediately see the connection between these two things. But of course, this can't be the only display of mental energy, since if you don't have a unit selected, there is no ability bar in this fashion. Regardless, having it twice on the screen is way better than not having this connection be clear and helpful in the cases where it's relevant.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage for suggesting.

• The radial menu has been updated a lot.
  • It now shows the count of units you have remaining to use directly under the "go to next unit arrow" if that is being shown, and otherwise does not show that information if it's any other icon.
  • In the place where that count used to be, above the center icon, there's now new contextual things:
    • If some sort of dialog is blocking, or the turn is changing, nothing.
    • If NPCs are still waiting to act, it now shows "NPC Action Phase" in red, which helps make the icons of the npc units more clear to understand why they are there.
    • If none of that is going on, and you have no unit selected, it shows your mental energy, with some colorization to draw the eye as well.
    • If you DO have a unit selected, then it shows the mental energy and AP for the current unit, same as it does on the bottom bar.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage, stuff, and Darloth for the suggestions.

• Mental energy is no longer shown in the top left of the screen, as it does not behave like other resources in general. And it's now shown elsewhere, more clearly.
  • If there are too few resources relevant to your current activities, elemental slurry and microbuilders now join wealth in the upper left corner, to keep it from being too narrow of a bar.

0.520 Structural Violence

(Released May 24th, 2024)

• If a unit is blocking your unit from moving to a place, it now says so in the tooltip at your mouse cursor.
  • Different message for units you control, versus not.
  • Especially when moving a large distance to an unseen spot for a contemplation, you could wind up being blocked.

• Contemplations now do a better job of making sure they are at place you can move right now, rather than a place an enemy is standing.

• A bunch of secret stuff you'll see in the next build.

• Added failover support for the resolution 1920x1200, which basically mans that if your hardware or OS or unity does not properly detect that you monitor is capable of that resolution, you can still choose it anyway. This was a gap in the larger list of resolutions we keep on file for that.
  • Thanks to Mateusz Błażewicz for reporting.

• The tooltip for structural engineering is now a lot more clear about how it is meant to be used. Let me know if there is still a lack of clarity after this build.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• The android structural engineering can now be done via sprinting.

• In the event that you can see contemplation targets because you are in that mode on the radial wheel, the game now allows androids to move directly to do a contemplation as if they were in contemplation mode, even if they don't even have contemplation mode equipped!

Background Violence

• This will be new to testers, but it's a returning feature from a few weeks before testing began.
  • Basically, there are now shootouts around the city that happen at random, but which are using much smaller visuals in a different style from the regular NPCs that you can interact with.
  • These almost blend into the background entirely, but you can see their flashes of gunfire in realtime as you move around the city, and it makes things feel much more alive.
  • The fact that you can easily miss them unless you happen to see gunfire and then zoom in actually helps contribute to the idea that there are even more than there are.
  • Compared to a few weeks ago, this feature also triggers more densely now, and uses new visuals, and also has the different groups themed either around gang, military, paramilitary, or secforce.
  • None of this has any gameplay impact, but it was long an important part of giving the proper feel of the dystopian cityscape where violence is happening out of your view. And that's really been lacking.
  • Thanks to :[þs\)\?] in particular on this issue, but also stuffy, Mintdragon, Destructively Phased, relmz32, Darloth, and ptarth for weighing in.

More Mouse Changes

• In general, further refining the mouse controls. Essentially, for abilities that are triggered in a targeting-style way, there are now two kinds, which should be naturally intuitive:
  • 1. Those that just change something about how your normal actions work. StreetSense, Slayer, and Contemplation are the biggest examples.
    • Nothing at all is changing here. You're just your normal self, but with a modifier on.
  • 2. Those that are actually doing something different, in a targeted way. Vehicle and mech movement mode, throwing items, structural engineering, and some other stuff you haven't seen yet.
    • These used to be kind of a hybrid of being able to move around, and right-click would trigger them. Left click would just switch to some other unit. This was confusing, and at odds with other RTS games that otherwise share a control scheme with this game.
    • The new behavior is that now they do their function with left-click, and you can cancel out with right-click (as in build mode). While in these modes, you can't select units until you cancel the mode.
  • Thanks to Alias50, Cyborg, and especially lordtrogg for reporting and discussing.

• The command mode functions now are consistent with how the unit abilities work, and with how build mode works. Right-click cancels, left click focuses, etc.

• In command mode, when you're in the deploy units section, it now shows you the count of each one deployed if there are any, and lets you right-click to cycle through them. Same as what jobs allow you to do already, in build mode.

0.519 QOL

(Released May 24th, 2024)

• Fixed an issue where the "speak to a rebel" prologue item was still saying to left-click the rebel, rather than right-click.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• Fixed several cases of text that were still outdated about consumables. Specifically, the tooltip over that category in the inventory, and the text over each "use item" ability in the footer.
  • Thanks to Darloth for reporting.

• New accessibility option to reduce mis-clicks, and it also changes the default interaction behavior.
  • Larger NPC Hitboxes During Targeting
  • Only applies to human-scale units, not larger vehicles or mechs. When you have one of your units selected, the clickable region around every NPC unit scales up so that they are easier to target.
  • The range of this is 1x to 3x, and it defaults to 1.5x. This feels notably better, I think, in terms of being able to quickly target enemies, or npcs to speak to.
  • Let's see if this removes the need for an accidental-move-undo feature.
  • Thanks to Darloth and Mintdragon for suggestions in this area.

• The popup tutorial notice about the "automate your units" has been removed entirely.
  • Instead, when this would have happened, it now just points out the new "Skip to next turn" button and does not really explain itself more. That button has its own tooltip, and the use should be apparent from that, knock on wood.
  • The prior automation text was still referencing features that were removed.
  • Thanks to Darloth for reporting.

• The 30 prismatic tungsten that the hackamajig costs has been replaced by 980 microbuilders, for thematic and balance reasons.
  • Thanks to Darloth for suggesting.

• Fixed a bug where right-clicking an empty slot in the ability bar would cause an exception.
  • Thanks to stuffy for reporting.

• NPC units just got smarter about targeting. They already avoid overkilling targets when they can, but this is dependent somewhat on the order in which they choose targets.
  • Higher-priority targeting like AOE still goes first, but within a targeting priority class, it now will have the lower-attack-power units target first.
  • This means that, all else being equal, a group of same-targeting-priority NPCs will now divide their damage amongst possible targets even better than before.
  • This doesn't really reduce the utility of the hackamajig, since it's best used against large AOE units that still target first, anyway.

0.518 Expanded Deterrence

(Released May 23rd, 2024)

• Fixed another random ContinueToNextWaypointEarly exception.

• Hovering over the icons for embedded structures that go in human buildings now highlights properly without you having to click into them.
  • Additionally, it now shows all of the buildings in the entire city when you're on map view, rather than just those that are closer to the camera.
  • In general, it now pre-calculates the list of valid buildings on a background thread, rather than having to do it every frame, so this sort of thing becomes possible. I thought this was going to be a nice-to-have, but it turns out I really need this as it stands for Bauxite mining, like right away.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• The deterrence system has been split and expanded, so that it now can be used for jobs, not just for territory control flags.
  • For the small and large electrical parasite, these are now totally reasonable to use IF you can maintain the deterrence values that they specify. If you don't have the troops for that, you're going to get absolutely hammered even harder where you build them.
  • I'm actually not going to explain this any further, because the game will do the talking for me. If it's not clear, you having read it here shouldn't make it any clearer.
  • Anyhow, a bunch of extra UI bits and pieces have been implemented to make this all more convenient, and this is in general as major a mechanic as, say, electricity.
  • I'm going to need to rewrite the "it's a trap messaging around these, as that's no longer accurate."

• The icon for humans investigating a suspicious power draw, and for the "armed response interval" has been changed to something more threatening. It's going to come up a lot more, and the other one was always temporary and a bit silly (pitchfork, but not a good-looking one).

• Completely reworked the introduction of parasitics, and made it so that even people who already had those unlocked will have them re-unlock so they'll see the new message about them.
  • The new message no longer calls it a trap, but instead talks about proper deterrence methods.

• Added a new redacted resource, which you'll encounter soon.

• Added the contemplation that will unlock the Bastion. It's pretty much just requiring you to get to intelligence class 2, nothing complicated.

• Contemplations can now be gated by projects having to be active, or completed, which is useful for me.

• Events can now have flat skill requirements on specific options. This means no randomized result based off of a DC skill check, but instead a gate that you can't pass without having the required value.
  • This is now used on the Bastion contemplation event in addition to the intelligence class requirement.

• Added even more gating flexibility onto the contemplations, to make sure that a project has ever been started, meaning a contemplation can linger after completion if desired.
  • And then also added the ability to skip certain project status checks if someone is in a later chapter. This primarily will apply to people who skip chapter one, later.

• Added a new computing parts storage job.

• Added in some extra hardening to ExtractDictionaryOfAvailableBuildingsThatMatchTag. This should fix an exception that Darloth encountered, but if not I'll have to harden it further. I got what possibilities I could see.
  • Thanks to Darloth for reporting.

• Player units that were riding in a vehicle were considered active in their vicinity for a variety of checks, including enemies attacking them, or for deterrence purposes. Fixed.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• The "repair nearby" ability was still talking about an older alternative (very inferior) way of healing that no longer exists in the game because it wasn't very good. Whoops!
  • Thanks to Darloth for reporting.

• Added a black border around the incoming damage indicators, to make them more visible against a variety of background colors.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• Attacks of opportunity are normally only triggered when you move out of the range of attackers, spatially on the map.
  • This presented a problem when a vehicle they are moving to is still within range of the attacker. They now are considered to always be moving out of range when boarding a vehicle, and thus the attacks of opportunity always happen if the unit is being targeted and moves to any vehicle.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• The infamous water purification mission now has a couple more changes:
  • Sublimating shells are unlocked instantly, rather than two or more turns later. This gives the projects for what to do next immediately, and in general starts the player on the path of actually being able to defeat that encounter.
  • Secondly, while those other projects are active, it prevents the player from doing the water purification again, since it is unwinnable. It tells them this in the tooltip instead, and says to work on getting armor piercing bullets.
  • I am greatly reminded of the "red slime" story that I like to tell from the intro of A Valley Without Wind. During a tutorial, or really any time there's a situation in a game where there is only a singular solution, there has to be absolutely no ambiguity about what is happening, or players who are fixated on the goal in front of them will miss it. This isn't a slight on anyone that happens to, as it's just part of human psychology, and happens to me as well. It just strikes a person when it strikes them; it's up to the game to avoid that situation.
    • I just found it mildly amusing, because I haven't seen this scenario so starkly since 2011, to my recollection. It just goes to show, more than anything about players, that usually I just don't make games with one linear solution. The tutorial of Valley 1, and the tutorial here, are outliers amongst the rest of the games in question, or the Arcen catalog in general. Just a curiosity.
  • Thanks to Shadow for the report -- this would have bitten a ton of players on Steam, since it's going to hit a subset of players the wrong way. Now, hopefully, the next round of testers won't even run into this in that sort of friction-filled way.

0.517 Thursday Tester Wave

(Released May 23rd, 2024)

• Fixed another occasional exception that could happen in the background vehicle movement logic. Harmless, but in the way.

• Hardened RecalculateSubCells against a very random exception I encountered.

• The "use the city map" notification now comes up after you do a single investigative click, rather than after two.
  • It's possible for the first click to clear all the buildings you can easily see, and without the information to go to the map, some folks can wind up lost if they're not used to the flow of zooming out to look around.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage for reporting.

• Buttons throughout the general interfaces of the game are now easier to see. It's perhaps most important on the loadout screen, but it applies to most screens in general.
  • They now have a visible border, and are darker, and there's a light bit of animation to their edges. This makes it clearer that there even IS a button.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage for suggesting.

• During the "spread to four androids" part of the prologue, it now has a "you must adjust the zoom" handbook entry that comes up in a non-optional way.
  • This basically establishes the idea of zooming in and out for those who would not find that to be their first instinct. And then it remains a part of the handbook in general after that.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage for suggesting.

• The game now has new mid-importance handbook entries about Mental Energy Vs AP, and how to use that; and then about Sprinting, and how that relates to both of the above.
  • Thanks to Cyborg for the questions that led to these.

• When you are trying to move a unit to a restricted area they lack clearance for, it now clearly states that this is why they cannot move there in the tooltip by your mouse cursor.
  • It also has more detailed information about what this is and how to handle it if you hold shift.
  • The very first time you encounter this, after the initial combat at least, it also has a mid-visibility handbook entry that unlocks, but does not block your view.
  • Thanks to Cyborg for the questions that led to this.

• The Android Chamber project was stating outdated instructions that you needed to build a hidden room before installing the chamber, which was very confusing.
  • Now it properly specifies how to build the chambers in a single step.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage for reporting.

• The construction tooltip for embedded structures now specifies clearly that you'll be building inside of a highlighted human building.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage for reporting.

• When you are in build mode for an embedded structure, but you're not hovering over any valid building, it now has a message next to the mouse cursor telling you to click on one of the highlighted buildings.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage for reporting.

• Prevented one issue from territory control flags potentially creating a duplicate territory control option if they were destroyed and then scrapped.
  • Not a sequence meant to happen.

• Prevented territory control flags from being destroyed in general, unless you explicitly scrap them.
  • The only way this could happen was because of splash damage from enemies hitting them, but if it happened enough, it could happen.

0.516 Attack Plan

(Released May 22nd, 2024)

• For various abilities that must be used at a building, it now specifies in the tooltip what that means, to save on confusion.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where the required deterrence at territory control flags was not labeled in a sensible way in its tooltip.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• The required deterrence on flags has a completely different explanation that is more clear and to the point.
  • Thanks to Mac for helping with the wording, and to c67f for reporting what some of the points of confusion were.

• If you have less than 20% deterrence at a territory control site, it no longer lets you activate the flag, and on the turn-change it will deactivate the flag if it's already active.
  • Thanks to relmz32 for helping me work though this one.

• The camera is now more deliberate about making only one movement (usually) when focusing on an npc that is moving.
  • Before, if the camera moved to an npc that was going to move, then it would move to their starting spot, and then they would move over 1 second, and then the camera would move again. Now it moves to their destination spot right off.
  • Thanks to Cyborg for reporting the discomfort.

• The auto-gather stances have been removed from the game.
  • This also means that the "mass auto-gather" and "mass wake up" features have been removed.
  • To be honest, those were an accidental trap for players that could lead to all sorts of circumstances, and also an inferior version of another feature that's right next to them.
  • There is already a "go to next turn" feature that unlocks at the same time that these mass wake/sleep commands do, and it has none of the downsides of accidentally pressing a button to do one thing (select the next unit) and doing something else (go to next turn despite plenty of mental energy, since all your units are asleep). Skipping to the next turn is still a single button press or click (0 key is the default hotkey) when you have extra mental energy left over, and all of the auto-gathering still happens.
  • In short, this removes the trap-for-players, still has equal functionality, and actually involves fewer clicks than before.
  • Thanks to Shadow for the initial report, and then further discussion with Mintdragon, NullDragon, Tiberiumkyle, Cyborg, and Pizza.

• Added a new "Eliminate Enemies Left Behind" part to the handbook, which is unlocked at the same time as "Not All Enemies Go Away After Combat"
  • Thanks to Cyborg for the questions.

• Fixed a bug where the actual slot counts of at least some vehicles were not being properly honored. This would let you put units in a cutter, which has no seats at all, and then you could never get them out again.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• When not all NPC units have acted yet, if the player is on their own units somehow, it now shows a more detailed message that includes information about how to make the NPCs act.
  • Normally, as soon as you end turn, it will select the first NPC unit and they will act. The only way to cause this situation is if, instead of using the spacebar, you manually move over to one of your units and click them.
  • The goal is that if someone does this because they are worried about spacebar in some way ending their turn unfairly, they will see this and realize that's not a concern.
  • I felt like it was particularly important to remove the trap of mass-automated units (in favor of the 0 key) so that this statement can be fully true.
  • Thanks to Cyborg for reporting.

• The tutorial checklist item for building a private bunker now includes this additional text:
  • You can build the bunker at any highlighted building; if no buildings are highlighted near you, then scroll around to find some. All of the highlighted spots are good quality. You may wish to gather your androids near the chosen spot before building there.
  • Thanks to Cyborg for suggesting.

• Fixed a bug with very wide job or network range circles not being drawn if the actual source of the circle was being frustum culled. Now it still draws those if the source is selected.
  • Thanks to Bossman for reporting.

• Added in some extra protections against two background per-second threads running at once, since that seemed to have been the source of a few issues that at least one person was running into, even though that shouldn't be possible. But, stranger things have happened.
  • In addition to that, added extra checks so that if a single per-second thread takes more than 20 seconds, it will show an error every 20 seconds, rather than waiting a full 5 minutes after there's a problem.
  • Thanks to Cyborg for both reports.

• Fixed all of the cases I could find where new npc foot units would spawn in the wasteland out-of-bounds area at the edge of the city.
  • The only things that should be seeding out there at the moment are the regional and international transports.
  • Thanks to Leximancer and mblazewicz for reporting.

• For player units that have incoming damage (but not structures or bulk units yet), there is now a new "incoming damage percentage" meter that appears above them, showing what percentage damage they will take.
  • I had been very distracted trying to overlay that on the health bars, which wouldn't work well for that and are deeply difficult to handle that way with the way I handle instance batching. But this solution was staring me in the face. It makes a big difference when you're shooting at enemies and seeing the incoming damage to your unit go down as their health drops -- I wonder how many players didn't even notice that enemy squads to less outgoing damage when their members die? It wasn't obvious before.
  • Thanks to lordtrogg for suggesting this, and then the discussion about it.

Enemy Attack Plans

• The game now gives an alert summary when you have attacks incoming against any of your stuff, up in the checklist area.
  • In this checklist, it shows the list of the units or structures (up to 30, anyway), and what percentage health is going to be removed via the attack.
  • By clicking this alert, it cycles you through the various items of yours that are in danger in this way.
  • This tooltip also has some information that basically lets you know that the attacks are deterministic, and what triggers an attack plan change, and also the thematic underpinnings of that.
  • With this information, the outcome of the next flurry of NPC actions is not going to be a surprise, which is the idea. You know these things in advance, but your ability to affect the outcome of what you know dwindles as your mental energy gets lower over the turn.
  • Thanks to Cyborg and Leximancer for originally bringing this up, and lordtrogg, ptarth, and Tiberiumkyle for further discussion of it.

0.515 Hotfix

(Released May 22nd, 2024)

• The project related to armor-piercing rounds was utterly broken in the prior build, apologies. It needed to be completely reworked in general, as it had a lot of wrong stuff in it relating to mechanics that have been improved today.
  • This project now asks you to build a stack of x3 armor piercing rounds, and points out how beneficial this is. This is really key information for the player at this early stage, so I had wanted to get that in there in general. Works out in the end.
  • Thanks to Pizza for the report!

0.514 Consumable Flow

(Released May 22nd, 2024)

• The Cold Blood action now has more text that clarifies what is going on with you getting mental energy, and makes it more disturbing in a mild way.
  • Thanks to LilLillyFox for reporting the lack of clarity on what was happening.

• In map mode, there is now a big golden network symbol that always shows above your network tower, no matter what else you have going on with your view. That way you can always find your home, and can orient.
  • Thanks to Draco18s in particular for the suggestion, but also other folks who mentioned confusion.

• Added one more mid-visibility handbook entry that talks about navigating the city and how you will always be a bit lost by design, but reminds you that where you construct things, you have orienting landmarks.
  • Thanks to several people for asking about further orientation, including things like a minimap, which would reduce the disorientation of the wider city in a way that is thematically opposite of what I'm going for. Now the game itself actually properly explains that, hopefully with enough clarity while still being thematic.

• Fixed a spot that said clock here rather than click here.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Fixed a missing localization key related to getting units into vehicles.
  • Thanks to Bossman for reporting.

• All of the various forms of mech rockets and lasers and such should behave more now.
  • They may do some fancy loops briefly, but then they beeline for your unit. And in other cases, no loops happen at all. All of their munitions actually explode at the target, rather than sometimes on the ground.
  • Thanks to ptarth for the most recent report.

• When you switch between the map mode and the regular streets view, it now immediately syncs the position of your views.
  • I was going to make this an option, but it feels so much better this way that I'm just going to make it how it works.
  • A bunch of people had been asking for this, but in particular thanks to Leximancer and Lailah for bringing it up.

• Investigations that are invasive and which will cause enemies to appear regardless of security clearance now tell you exactly that.
  • Apologies for forgetting who exactly asked about this. There were at least two people.

Subnet Vision Rework

• Scanning improvements:
  • The old and confusing way that subnets would grant scanner range has been removed.
  • Buildings previously all provide a small amount of invisible npc revealing capability around themselves, but that also has been removed.
  • The wording of the tooltip on the Scan data point has been improved a lot in clarity.
  • Network towers (not relays, though!) now provide scan range and npc revealing power.
  • A new Scanner job type has now been added, which provides scanning and npc revealing.
  • Thanks to Mac and ptarth for the initial reports on this.

Consumables Overhaul

• The new system for consumables and bulk androids is now in place, where you simply pay for them on-demand when you are going to use them.
  • This is handled at events, and in the items footer, and so on.
  • This has put NanoSeed back into being a resource rather than a consumable, as a small aside.
  • This is fully compatible with prior savegames, but whatever you had spent on making consumables or bulk androids that you had stored will just be gone. It's not that much expense in a lot of the cases, anyway.
  • What I have not yet done is set up some of the intermediate resources, so that's coming next.
  • This also entirely removes the (very confusing) storage space upgrade caps for both consumables and bulk androids.
  • Consumables still have a separate inventory section, just so that you can see what's going on with possibilities of them and browse them, but it has no creation functionality anymore.
    • Bulk Androids do NOT have a section in the inventory at all, because there are fewer of them and if you want to browse them, then that's something you can do in command mode much more easily.
  • To be clear, this also means that there are no generalized cooldowns after you deploy bulk androids or use consumables.
  • Big thanks to :[þs\)\?] for kicking off the discussion, and then lordtrogg, ptarth, and LilLillyFox for helping figure out a solution. And another thanks to Draco18s and many others who reported who stuck they were at the water mission because of the consumables.

• Deploying a bulk android now costs 6 mental energy to do, rather than one.
  • This makes it much harder to use them in a rapid-fire reactionary way, which is not what they're for. But it's not that much of a barrier when you're placing them defensively in advance.
  • Bear in mind that at the end of chapter one, and then into chapter two, you're going to be getting more mental energy per turn.

• Bulk Android Frame Kits, and Drone Frames, are two new resources which are used for those two types of bulk units, respectively.
  • There are also new production facilities in the form of the Bulk Android Prep Center and the Drone Factory. These increase the cap of what you can keep on hand, as well as actually producing these parts.

0.513 Electric Handbook

(Released May 21st, 2024)

• The tooltips for repair spiders and contraband jammers are now vastly more clear, and also give a bit of a hint of how to build off the existing subnets you have.
  • Thanks to Cortexion and lordtrogg for reporting the confusion here.

• Fixed a splice of two sentences that was in place in the optical processing mod.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for reporting.

• Improved the additional CPU description to better point out what it's good for, and also to suggest stacking multiple of those in a single android.

• Fixed a regression from about a week ago where network towers that are destroyed would leave the underlying building in place, while deleting it as a structure.
  • Thanks to KillerFrogs for the initial report, and relmz32 for the repro save.

• About three seconds after loading into a savegame that has extra network towers that are not actually functional network towers, those will all burn away.

• NPC units are now forbidden from attacking your network tower... until a certain internal flag is tripped.
  • That flag is not tripped during any of the current content, and it would not make sense for it to be. I'm just noting that this isn't blanket forever-immunity.
  • There's a solid lore reason for the tower to not be attacked, and also mechanical reasons like certain death-loops you can get into.
  • The lore reasons will be made a part of the game shortly.
  • Thanks to Draco18s and Leximancer for the acute reports about particular pain here.

• Mech Factories have been properly renamed to Mech Parts Factories, and their descriptions have been updated as well.

• Adjusted the color of when investigators are investigating a crime to be the same teal color as their normal magnifying glass, rather than shifting to purple. This was needlessly confusing.
  • Thanks to Cyborg for reporting.

• The default autosave interval is now every 3 turns rather than every 10. This will apply for new players, but not retroactively change anything for existing ones.
  • Thanks to relmz32 for suggesting.

• The number of autosaves kept before pruning in a profile is now 60, rather than 30.

• A large new mid-visiblity handbook entry type is now in place, and basically is able to trigger with a new kind of notice for you when a batch of these appear.
  • They can then be read or ignored, and it tells you about them from the checklist area.

• Added a whopping 15 new mid-visibility handbook entries that explain a wide variety of topics, and which unlock contextually as you go through the game.
  • In your existing savegames, a bunch of them will unlock at once, most likely.
  • Big thanks to ptarth for suggesting most of these, and doing the first writing pass on a bunch of them. Also thanks to Cyborg, Draco18s, and :[þs\)\?] for other questions that are now answered here.

• The number of valid spots to place a starting network tower / bunker is now dramatically reduced.
  • Basically, it sorts out anything directly next to something very scary, things too close to the edge of the map, and things that are not adjacent to enough good other space.
  • This makes it so that any of the (many, many) valid options for a starting network location are now much higher-quality for players, so they can spend less time searching around for that at the end of the prologue.
  • Most of this logic was already in place for the auto-placed tower if you skipped the prologue, but a few enhancements have also been added in.
  • Thanks to ptarth and crazykid080 for reporting the angst here.

• Added in a new explanation (mandatory viewing) handbook entry about how networks are never cramped since you can always use relays to expand outwards.
  • A number of people were not realizing that relays were a thing, and were thus acting like they were trapped in a corner when really they had the whole map to use.
  • Thanks to Mateusz Błażewicz for the most direct report.

• Also added in the restriction for network towers beyond the first, to ensure that they are never placed too close to each other. Not that you can do that in the game yet, but it had been on my backlog forever, and the code was right there.

• Added another four handbook entries.
  • These explain why your tower isn't attacked, why your buildings are, what the deal is with persistent aggro of enemies after combat, and the casual relationship between your androids doing an away mission and those units then wanting to attack your stuff.
  • Thanks to Draco18s for the originally flurry of questions around all this, and also :[þs\)\?] and several others.

• Prevented an exception that could happen when AggregateResidentsAndWorkers was called.
  • Thanks to Cyborg for reporting.

• Jobs all now have a percentage of provided network electricity at which they shut off, or they are noted as having emergency backup power.
  • Brownouts that are mild are still just as mild, but ones that are more serious now start shutting off other structures.
  • This shouldn't affect many situations, at least not in chapter one and prior. But as power needs grow, this is an interesting dynamic. And power doesn't feel fully real without this. It was a thing I just forgot to put in, previously, after originally having it on my list.

• When you are placing buildings, it now states what subnet it will join, in yellow, or if it will be a new subnet, in blue, at the mouse cursor.
  • Thanks to several folks for asking about this sort of thing.

• When you are in build mode, and it's blocked by something, it now specifies what it is blocked by.
  • There was some confusion related to overlapping buildings, and this should solve that.

Chapter One Split

• Chapter One has been renamed to "Tactics" instead of "The Tower."

• A new Chapter Two has been added, and is called "Strategy." The old chapter two is now chapter three.

• When skipping the prologue, chapter one, or chapter two, it now defines a set of upgrades to give you.
  • For the prologue, it's just a single mission reward, so it's no big deal to not have it. But for chapter one, it's a huge amount of stuff.

• The settings option for skipping the prologue has been removed.

• When starting a new profile, there is now a Start Type dropdown, which allows you to choose either the prologue, chapter one, or chapter two to start in.
  • Originally I wanted this to be more hidden, but now I actually have shifted and want the extra visibility so that players quickly understand what is an extended tutorial.
  • Right now it allows you to skip to chapter two, which is basically just an idle city, since that content isn't there yet.
  • It also does NOT allow you to skip to chapter three, but the full game will, later. The demo never will, not that that applies to testers.

• Skipping chapter one now gives you a proper set of upgrades that is kind of my "recommended set" from the various choices in chapter one.
  • If you're thus skipping to chapter two, you don't start out back-footed compared to someone who played through chapter one, in terms of upgrades, anyhow. You still will need to build all your buildings, but not quite as much other stuff.

0.512 Curvature

(Released May 20th, 2024)

• Fixed a bug where the p key, which cycles through all of your units regardless of status, was not actually selecting units after one was selected, but was just moving the camera to the,/
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Added some hardening to prevent errors in StartRoundOfAssignmentsIfNotAlreadyRunning, which was a very funky and rare exception. Not sure exactly how it happened, but it should be stopped from now on.
  • Thanks to Cyborg for reporting.

• There are now small borders around the toast popups, to make it more clear how they are stacking like folios.
  • It might need some tweaking over time, will see. But thanks to the folks who suggested it, whose suggestions I can not currently find for some reason.

• All of the Conflicts data, which was not yet shown in the game, has been commented out in xml.
  • After seeing what testers are enjoying of the game, and how long various things take, I think that this feature that was partly done but not completely done was just going to be seen as un-fun busywork, and also a lot of clutter.
  • In case I am wrong, I'm leaving the code for now, but I don't want the text to accidentally get localized and waste time and money.

• Hardened the MachineAndroid_ActualDestinationIsValid method, but unfortunately did not see where the actual error was in the code. So also instrumented it such that it will be obvious next time this happens. Bit of a good news bad news situation there.
  • If you see the same issue, feel free to reopen the ticket, or make a new one, as it will have the info I need to stomp it out for good.
  • Thanks to bearforceone for reporting.

• When an attack of opportunity is happening, and the shots don't make it to the destination for some reason, the actual after-logic now still happens, rather than stalling the game.
  • This was something I could only replicate at lower framerates than 144fps, but at 30 it happens reliably. Step one was fixing the full-stall, step two is fixing the actual bug in projectile movement.
  • Thanks to KillerFrogs for the save that reproduces it, and Mac and ZeusAlmighty for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where homing shots were being calculated completely wrongly in terms of how their rotation was handled. At very high framerates, this rarely caused an issue. At 60fps, it sometimes did. At 30fps, it always did.
  • Fundamentally, this was because I was using the wrong function, and the effect was like trying to mail a letter with a phone number in the address slot. Good info, but used in a context where it meaningless.
  • Anyway, for all of the homing shots, I had to rework their numbers, so they now look a bit different. If any have trouble getting to their targets, please let me know in another ticket with a save. I've tested the bulk of them in a lot of common circumstances, and they all seem reasonable for now with the new numbers, while looking similar to what they did before.
  • Thanks to KillerFrogs for reporting, and with a repro case for this also. And to ptarth for the first report of this.

• Also made it so that the timeout for shots getting to their destination is now 4 seconds rather than 15. So in the event where something gets really wrong for some reason, it will hang much less long. But you shouldn't be seeing that in general at all, anymore.

• Fixed some inconsistencies in what was considered a combat vehicle, which meant that Foundry and Cutter were not valid for the large bore AP rounds.
  • Thanks to Ant for reporting.

• The old handbook entry that unlocked at the secforce cruiser route about streetsense giving side activities as a key form of difficulty is now gone.
  • The other one that talks about getting some content from street sense is still there.
  • And then the one about difficulty being controlled now talks about contemplation instead, and unlocks after you unlock contemplation.
  • Thanks to KillerFrogs for reporting.

• Structure hidden balance:
  • Relays are now substantially more hidden, since they are weak spots and also it makes sense for them. They also have more contraband scanner resistance.
  • Machine cabinets no longer are hidden at all. That was encouraging self-destructive micro to no end.
  • Fake trees are now much more hidden than before, and a bit more resistant.
  • Storefronts are much more hidden, and a lot more resistant. Ditto hollowed-out buildings.
  • Thanks to Draco18s for reporting issues in this area.

0.511 The Monday Crew

(Released May 20th, 2024)

• Added new autosave options for every turn, and every 3 turns.
  • If you had changed away from the default of 10 turns in a prior version of the game, it will reset that setting to the default, which is still 10 turns.
  • Thanks to Lailah for suggesting.

• Fixed a regression from the prior two builds where if you did not already have a unit selected, and you tried to left-click a unit or structure in the streets view, it would not select them.
  • Thanks to Lailah, Trogg, and ArnaudB for reporting

• The colliders for clicking on units, vehicles, npcs, etc, now are able to be customized with a multiplier in the xml, and I have now adjusted almost all of them.
  • There is not an in-game setting for this to customize this per player, and hopefully there will not need to be.
  • It was too easy to miss clicking on units that are human-sized in particular, and they now have collision areas that are 3x larger than before.
  • If this later needs to adjust by distance from the camera or something, I could also make an adjustment along those lines, but I started with simpler. Seems to handle all of the main uncomfortable cases for me at the moment.
  • Thanks to ptarth for suggesting.

• When a message is blocking your ability to give orders to units, it now states this by the mouse cursor.
  • This in particular makes the flow of hovering over the water plant investigation the first time not an exercise in frustration.

• "Bovine Tissue Per Bovine Tissue" is now "Bovine Tissue Consumed Per New Bovine Tissue"
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting the confusion.

• When you use the spacebar to go to another one of your units (or click the center of the radial menu), it now closes build mode or command mode.
  • If spacebar is just going to the next turn, looking at NPCs, or opening/closing notifications, it will not mess with your mode.
  • Thanks to Lailah and Trogg for reporting.

• Certain actions-over-time from investigations cannot be canceled anymore, based on a flag on their xml.
  • This applies to the three location investigations in chapter one, as canceling rapidly would give you nonsensical advice about failing, without actually losing a unit.
  • Whether this is used on future investigations of that general style will be based on if it would be confusing or not.

• Fixed a further bug with demanding the weapons from gangs. This time it was actually bricking the project, yikes.
  • Thanks to Lailah for reporting.

• Updated the mouse handling again, so that now if you are hovered over a valid target, and you are in command mode or using an item, then clicking left or right mouse button will now use that action.
  • If you're hovering over no target, then the left mouse button will continue to operate as a select function.
  • Hopefully this handles all of the cases where things were confusing about the new control scheme, but if new ones come up then please either reopen this ticket or start a new one.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• The parasitic power techs are now gated until you plant your first territory control flag.
  • These come with a message from your future self about what a terrible idea they are, and how dangerous, and that you should keep an eye out for other power generation methods.
  • Thanks to all of the Saturday testers who build parasitics too early and got really bad constant invasions because of it. It completely colored the impression of how game mechanics are supposed to go for people who took that option early.

• Added a new Smart Pistol piece of equipment.
  • This is now automatically unlocked for research as soon as you get the pulse revolver (and yes, it does back-date that for existing saves. That sort of thing always will.)
  • It's not very powerful, but it provides some interesting new configuration options.
  • Thanks to lordtrogg and Ant for suggesting having more weapons earlier.

• Added a new collection of "can use light firearms," which is the same set of units that can also use rifles.

• There is a new TS-11 shotgun variant, which is half the firepower of the TS-29, but has some extra range bonuses, and which can also be used by this wider group of androids.
  • With that in place, you can now actually give your nickelbots shotguns, which is a nice alternative to the Achilles.
  • You get this as soon as you get the regular shotgun.

• As an aside, by doubling up on smart pistols and extra cpus, you can actually make your CombatUnits smart enough to do investigations that previously only technicians could do. This gives a notably different build very early on for CombatUnits, which is great.

• A bunch of new tooltip info during the first turn locked-movement portion of the game is now in there.
  • It lets you know basically all the things that people seemed to be confused about during that period.
  • Thanks to a wide variety of testers for inspiring these changes.

• Fixed a regression from a week or so ago where the job stats were not properly displayed on the actual structures once constructed. It was literally a != rather than an ==.
  • Thanks to Trogg and Ant for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where the data on the loadout screen would be completely wrong if you made changes and then canceled out, and opened it back up again to the same unit, on the same turn.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• With the equipment screen, if you explicitly click the cancel button, then it cancels whatever you had in progress changes-wise.
  • However, if you switch units, right-click to close, x-key to close, or similar, it will commit any changes you had in progress.
  • There may need to become a toggle about something with this, but on reflection I think this will be the better choice for most people, almost all of the time.
  • Thanks to Trogg for suggesting.

• Hardened the project tooltip writer so that if it has an exception, it will be more isolated and it will tell me exactly where the problem is.
  • Then found and fixed the really stupid error that was invisible in code until then, but which was causing an exception when browsing the project list.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• If you are being super careful and never take any damage to your buildings, then Civil Engineering would never open up, because Repair Spiders never open up.
  • Civil Engineering now opens up when the Aerospace Hangar or Refugee Towers are unlocked, whichever comes first, if not already unlocked.
  • Repair Spiders and such I'm fine with just not happening until the first time you take damage, if you're that careful. But gating civil engineering behind that was a big problem.
  • Thanks to Lailah for reporting.

• Verified that Technicians are indeed providing a massive boost from Structural Engineering. Fully upgraded, and not even with the new smart pistol, they double the speed of construction of a massive structure.

• Fixed a mouse handling bug where if you had a structure selected and clicked into empty space, it would not deselect the structure.

• Toast popups are now accurate on the radial menu about either "click here to open" or "click here to close".
  • Before it said the former always, and was often incorrect.
  • Thanks to ptarth and Mac for reporting the confusion.

• Fixed the issue with a loud noise being made when your unit is in auto-gather mode and being given orders.
  • This was super low priority, but I found it on the way to something else.
  • Thanks to Mac for reporting.

• Dramatically improved the targeting logic of NPCs when they are distracted by aggro, real or service-disruption-caused (aka hackamajig).
  • The first part of this was changing how they search for targets, and making sure that for any units mutually within range, it only cares about aggro and not range for target chasing. This is a more minor bit of things, but it keeps them shadowing the right units if need be.
  • The second is that, the usual "allowed to fuzz to a random other target" is being removed in the cases where the aggro from the intended target is more than twice the aggro of the possible recipient of fuzzed targeting.
  • Units now behave as I'd expect in the presence of the hackamajig.
  • Thanks to Mac and Ant for the reports.

0.510 Death And Knowledge

(Released May 19th, 2024)

• Both regular androids and bulk androids now interact with territory control flags properly, instead of trying to climb on them.
  • This also makes the ability to click the flags more obvious in more contexts.
  • Thanks to Rhys H for the report.

• Androids and similar can no longer climb up high objects that are not buildings, which included things like POI status indicators.
  • The androids are now just directed to the appropriate ground-level spot.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• The Manufacture Armor-Piercing Rounds now tells you all three ways to get into the inventory. It's not super important before then, but it's definitely important then.
  • Thanks to crossbowman5 and CRCGamer for reporting.

• There is now a dedicated button for the inventory in the top right header bar, because so many people were finding this confusing, and it's such a central part of the game.

• Added a new message from your future self, which triggers right before you get into the water purification plant battle, and warns you of your technician's upcoming death.
  • Generally should defuse the surprise and frustration of that moment, or at least help a lot.
  • Big thanks to relmz32 for not only the report of frustration, but also some of the wording.

• In the prior build, there was a regression that prevented you from selecting units on the city map at all, or giving them orders.
  • That is fixed, but also it now works even better than it used to. Even in cases where a unit has no AP or you have no mental energy, for example, it now shows the range rings while the unit is selected, which makes it a lot more clear which unit is selected.
  • Thanks to Ant and lordtrogg for reporting.

0.509 Controls And Visibility

(Released May 19th, 2024)

Mouse Controls

• The entire control scheme for mouse clicks has been adjusted to be more like AI War 2 and other modern RTS games.
  • You now left-click to select things, and right-click to give orders. Sorry about you having to re-learn whatever new muscle memory you have; it's taking me a bit to adjust as well, but it's much more consistent with what I'd expect from this sort of game. Was a complete blind spot for me, but a bunch of testers brought up aspects of this.
  • Command mode mostly now uses the right-click to order your units about, which I think is what you'd expect, and is consistent with the rest of the game.
  • Build mode, however, mostly uses left-click, because that's again consistent with build mode in RTSes.
    • On these last two issues, if there is confusion caused by this, please do bring it up.
  • Thanks to Mac, Lailah, and a few others for bringing this up (I apologize I can't keep track of all the people when it's on discord).

• The left mouse button is now used for rotations, instead of the right mouse button.
  • You can also use the R key or middle mouse button. But this is the keybind that is called out in the controls tooltip.
  • The idea here is that since left mouse clicks are now selection, there is no longer a risk of accidentally giving orders by doing short-rotations with the right-mouse-button. If someone makes very rapid mouse flicks while using the mouse button in this way, it will register as a proper click rather than a click and hold. We're talking about well under a half a second here, and I haven't had it happen to me by accident, but I'm sure it would at some point. Losing an AP and mental energy over that mistake is a lot worst than just selecting the wrong thing, hence the change.
  • This is a freely bindable key in the interface, unlike the other functions of the left and right mouse buttons, so if this is not to taste, it can be rebound.

• When in the city map, left clicking anywhere idle now immediately moves your mouse view into the streets view.
  • Previously you had to hold the inspect modifier, which was needlessly confusing.
  • Thanks to several people for mentioning this.

• The forces sidebar selection now works differently in general.
  • No matter the rest of the context, left-clicking selects the unit but does not move the camera.
  • Again no matter the rest of the context, right-clicking focuses the camera on the unit, but does not alter your selection.
  • The tooltip there now informs you of that, as well.
  • This solves several disparate use cases people had for this window.
  • Thanks to Mac and Lailah for related reports.

• When cycling through things like the list of NPCs who want to speak with you, if you had a unit of your own selected, it now keeps that unit selected (bulk androids aside).
  • It still focuses on the speakers, but does not select them unless you had nothing or not-a-unit-of-yours selected.
  • Thanks to Lailah for suggesting.

• Mode exit improvements:
  • When you are in command mode and select a unit that is not related to the specific kind of action you're doing (like load or unload, or set stance, etc), then it now selects those units takes you out of command mode.
  • When you're in build mode, and you select any unit at all, then that takes you out of build mode.
  • In both of these modes, selecting structures does not take you out of the mode.
  • Also in both of these modes, if you select a unit (not just move the camera to them!) using the forces sidebar, it now takes you out of the mode.
  • Thanks to Lailah for the detailed suggestions, and Mac for backing her up.

• Units can once again directly board vehicles, just by hovering over them and now right-clicking.
  • I removed this on May 1st because I was improving how unit selection worked in general.
  • Now that we have the whole revised mouse handling scheme, this sort of loading is once again possible without losing any flexibility.
  • Big thanks to LilLillyFox in particular for requesting.

Everything Else

• Fixed a bug with trying to start actions over time throwing an exception if you were out of AP on that actor.
  • I believe that it was legitimately a case where it was saying that you should not be able to do that. There's a slight chance that if you have only 1 AP on a unit and try to investigate a spot that it will think you don't have enough AP or something. If people see that, please let me know. From the code I don't think that's what is going on, though.
  • Thanks to Lilly and Rhys H for the report.

• Fixed a further bug where if you were on your last AP and tried to start an investigation at a spot, it would fail. Before it was giving an exception, but in the next build it was set to just do nothing. Now it actually works.
  • Thanks to Rhys H for the additional save for testing this out.

• Fixed a bug where asking for the Gang's weapon would not properly count towards your progression if you were successful.
  • Thanks to Lailah for reporting.

• The effectiveness of structural engineering at whatever your current level of engineering skill is for a unit is now 4X stronger.
  • Let me know if this still seems to do too little with the really large structures.
  • Thanks to ptarth for suggesting.

• The Flying Factories text is now way more explicit about where to build the foundry.
  • Thanks to ptarth and LilLillyFox for reporting.

• Both the mental energy and AP tooltips now explain that the default cost is 1 AP and 1 Mental Energy for unit actions, and that divergences will be explicitly noted.
  • Thanks to Evil Bistro for suggesting.

• Fixed a remaining issue with the Improved Apartments where the percentage was calculating as if it needed more than it did on the first option.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Unit visibility is dramatically better for player units, which were the only ones easy to lose.
  • Several people mentioned this, and in truth I was also having this trouble, but ignoring the feeling and just playing past it. Always a bad idea as a designer, but it happens to all of us at times.
  • At any rate, there's an icon that shows if the unit is ready to act, or out of AP, and the color of the selected-unit gimbal above their head also now reflects the same thing.
  • Also, the bulk android stances now always show on both the map and the streets view. No idea what I was thinking with making them not. I was losing those guys even more.
  • Thanks to ptarth, Tiberiumkyle, and a variety of others for mentioning this.

• The forces sidebar now shows how much AP each unit has, and does colorization based on if there is any remaining or not.
  • Thanks to ZeusAlmighty for suggesting.

0.508 No More Spoilage

(Released May 19th, 2024)

• Hardened SeedAtLogic_CalculateDoesBuildingPassLogic against exceptions that could apparently happen, and also added in more instrumentation to narrow it down if it happens again.
  • Thanks to That one Weeb for reporting.

• Fixed some exceptions that could happen in calculating certain data after buildings were destroyed.
  • Also made it so that these will now be more confined if similar bugs happen again, rather than spilling out and causing more problems.
  • Thanks to ZeusAlmighty for reporting.

• In general I have hardened some of the paths that exceptions on the main thread can come from so that you don't get the game not-drawing most of the map when certain error spams happen.
  • This should hopefully also make it more obvious there is an error spam happening at all.

• The spoilage mechanic has been removed entirely. It was way too harsh, and would bite people out of the blue, and in general was a case of stick rather than carrot.
  • The "excess resource" mechanic in general is still there, but you can leave things improperly stored for an indefinite amount of time now.
  • It still warns you about stuff that is improperly stored, but the only consequence of it being that way is that you can in no way use it. It's just basically in boxes sitting around waiting to be put away, which makes sense to me.
  • Thanks to ptarth and Mac and AC for thoughts on this.

• Jobs that are installing SHOULD now cost power, but I have not tested this properly.
  • I also am not sure about structures that are being rebuilt after being destroyed.
  • If anyone has some spare time to test these cases, that would be very useful.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting the unexpected brownouts.

0.507 Balance And Fixes

(Released May 18th, 2024)

• The daily necessities territory control site now provides 18k rather than 12k.
  • This should prevent any possible cases where people get bricked by this.
  • Thanks to ptarth and Crazykid080 for reporting.

• The furniture is now gathered 4x faster than before.
  • This should make it more reasonable when you have so much more housing than I had expected you to have.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• There is now a multiplier to make the contemplation icons much larger than they were before.
  • It's currently set at 3x, which seems to solve a lot of the issue from what I can tell.
  • Thanks to ptarth and CRCGamer for reporting.

• Ability slots without a default ability can now be set to blank abilities properly.
  • If an ability was already there, you can set it to a different ability, but not no ability at all.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• The overdrive mechanic (auto-win a skill check in exchange for some mental energy) has been removed.
  • To be honest, I forgot that was in there at all, and the way it worked was really counter to the way the game flows now.
  • It was specifically only coming in when you failed even a partial success, and rewarded a certain kind of high-mental-energy-hoarding style of play.
  • It was really unbalanced, and did not add anything of worth.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reminding me this even existed.

• The header tooltip related to units now shows how many units of each type you have out of the current cap for that type, rather than just how many you have of that type.
  • The caps for unit types were not very visible before this unless you knew where to look.
  • Thanks to Mac for reporting.

• When an upgrade would lead to the same value on a given stat, then it now shows the increase from the same stat to itself.
  • This mainly applies to edge cases like the Achilles with muzzle velocity.
  • I have not tested this, so hopefully it looks right in-game.
  • Thanks to Mac for reporting.

• Repair spiders should no longer affect structures under construction, although I haven't tested that yet.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Fixed an error with the buildings construction tooltips saying left-click to cycle through them, when really it's right-click.
  • Thanks to crazykid080 for reporting.

• Fixed a harmless but alarming error with some background mobs throwing an exception in some rare circumstances.
  • Thanks to Rhys H for reporting.

• The rebel watchdog in the initial combat now will always start vastly closer to the player, thus making it not so confusing to find them.
  • Thanks to Mac and others for reporting.

• Bumped down the display of tooltips relative to the mouse cursor a bit, so that in general you can see things next to them a bit better, and in particular if they get shoved to the side because of hitting the side of the screen, they no longer overlap what you're looking at in the same way.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• When mousing over sliders in the settings menu, it now bumps the tooltips lower so that you can see the actual value of the setting you are adjusting.
  • I forget who reported this, thank you though.

• Fixed an issue where certain kinds of "clamp to the right of a thing" could wind up pushing tooltips off the right side of the screen on certain screen resolutions.
  • It now makes sure never to do that.
  • Thanks to Mac for reporting.

• The amount of elemental slurry generated, and the amount of microbuilders generated, have been close to doubled.
  • Hopefully this seems more appropriate, balance-wise. I was being too stingy with these for sure.
  • Thanks to ptarth and Mac for reporting.

• During the prologue initial fight when your movement is locked, it now tells you that free movement is locked for tutorial purposes, since this was confusing everyone.
  • This should make it really clear what is going on, so that then also when that disappears, you realize you now have full movement.
  • Thanks to crazykid080 , crossbowman5, CRCGamer, and others for reporting the intense confusion.

0.506 More Fixes

(Released May 18th, 2024)

• Added a new flag on npc unit stances that prevents the player from having to watch them even if the "Watch Low-Priority NPC Actions" setting is turned on.
  • This is used solely for the transports and haulers of various sorts, and then some of the gathering actions, because those are just way too much clicking-through that is not relevant for the player.
  • The other various stances, military and otherwise, should still work as expected when "Watch Low-Priority NPC Actions" is on.
  • And without that setting on, this should have no effect whatsoever.
  • I didn't test this at all, but the code is extremely simple. So let me know if it doesn't work.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Fixed a gnarly bug where if a unit had an amount of an ActorData only from a status (like AP for player units), then saving and loading while that was true would double the amount on load, and then leave that amount as the new default for that unit until the game was then loaded again.
  • Basically I had two-line mistakes with initializing the data to the status value, making it think that was its underlying maximum. This just never came up in my testing.
  • This is automatically correct in existing savegames, since it wasn't actually bad data, it was bad application of good data, on load of saves in that specific context.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Improved the info on the scan range tooltip to mention about interacting with things out of range.

• Corrected the attack range tooltip to actually have info about the attack range, rather than being a duplicate of the scan range.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Added in a ton more hardening of the code around investigations and abilities. I can't duplicate the current exception being reported, but based on the provided stack traces, this should hopefully solve it.
  • Thanks to That one Weeb for reporting.

• Fixed a regression from last week where I changed how the furniture goal is calculated in the Improved Apartments project, making it so it showed in both options instead of just the second one.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• The Zodiac and The End of Time now have to actually be unlocked first, or you have to be in sandbox mode, for the game to allow you to toggle into them.
  • I kept meaning to make this the case and forgot, and then remembered and wondered if anyone would run into it.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

0.505 Investigation Exceptions

(Released May 18th, 2024)

• Added a bunch of extra hardening to the investigations so that they don't cause nullref exceptions after completing in certain fashions. This was kind of a threading issue, sort of.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting the cluster of these that existed.

0.504 Playtest App

(Released May 18th, 2024)

• Updated the game so that it can properly log into steam on the playtest app or demo app.
  • Since changing to Heathen Engineering's version of the steamworks wrapper, away from Facepunch, there were some differences that I didn't appreciate until today. All seems good now.

0.503 The Return Of Testers!

(Released May 18th, 2024)

• Fixed a bug where a structure without a job at it would throw an exception when it took damage.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• Hardened the InvestigateSpecificBuilding method so that one error that might have been possible is no longer possible. Not sure if that was the error actually encountered.
  • Also added in more direct instrumentation so that if this happens again, I'll know much more precisely what the problem is.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• The rebel you're supposed to find at the start of turn one now has a giant pulsing ring around them, to make them easier to find.
  • Thanks to ptarth for inspiring this change, but he wasn't the only one who ran into this over the last months.

• The tooltip for finding the rebel now mentions some extra details about the fact that you can interact with things outside of your scan range.
  • Thanks to ptarth for the more specific notes related to this.

• The checklist item related to the slayer ability no longer specifies a specific ability slot, as there are several options depending on what unit types you have, and it was referring to the wrong one for the most-likely case.
  • Thanks to ptarth for reporting.

• The "find more androids" tooltip now mentions explicitly that you probably need to turn the camera to see all your options.
  • Thanks to AC for mentioning this months ago.

• Added a further clarifying note when StreetSense is introduced in the prologue that each individual unit is in it separately, so that players know to turn it on for further android capture if they are running lower on units.
  • The fact that StreetSense is not on by default is important for the flow later in the game, so trying to overcome the speed bump the learning experience for players is my goal instead. Hopefully this is sufficient, but if more people run into the same thing, we'll have to see.
  • Thanks to ptarth for the related report.

0.502 A Year Of Updates

(Released May 17th, 2024)

Literally the entire game has been rebuilt from scratch, in terms of every gameplay system, almost every UI, and even a lot of the graphics. It was tens of thousands of logged changes over the span of a year, so be glad you didn't have to read all those notes.

Prior Release Notes

HotM: Initial Tester Groups