HotM:After NextFest

Next Release Notes

Moving To Chapter Two

0.563 UI Tour

(Released July 2nd, 2024)

• Updated my localization-export system so that duplicate text that merges is now something that has to be opted-in to.
  • This overall is done for things like descriptions, as it saves everyone a lot of work, but the names and short-names would be deadly to merge because the whole point is that in some languages those would need to be abbreviated, and in others they would not.
  • With no merging at all, the word count increases from 56k to 61.8k. With the opt-in merging that is more conservative, it goes back to 57.4k. Trying to optimize every last bit would be a waste of time and effort, but making sure that things are not too-merged, while still having sensible merging, is certainly important.

• Further updates to the localization spreadsheet exports so that the Key column is now fully in the format I want for reading things back in.

Improvements

• All of the city map lenses now show the POI regions, but they only show the related icons if you mouseover the region of that POI, or if you hold Shift or Ctrl. This can be toggled off in the filters for each lens.
  • Thanks to Fluffiest for suggesting.

• If you are out of mental energy or out of AP for a unit, you can nevertheless now still see the preview of what damage a unit would do to a target. The tooltip shows as red, and it shows that you would have negative AP after this action if that's what the limitation is, etc.
  • This can be very useful for deciding if you want to recharge a specific unit in a circumstance, or it can just be a curiosity.
  • Thanks to Trogg and Leximancer for suggesting.

• A bunch of updates to command mode:
  • Generally speaking, all the stuff uses right-click now, to be consistent with the rest of the game. This was the last holdout of some left-click stuff.
  • When left-clicking to select a different unit while load or unload abilities are open, it no longer exits command mode.

• Player vehicles that are not registered to anyone no longer show "Registration: None," wasting tooltip space.

• Player vehicles that have seats now show what kind of seats and what their fill state is within their tooltip.
  • Additionally, when considering a vehicle type for configuration or construction, it also shows what kind of seating capacity they have.
  • Thanks to Trogg for suggesting.

• Troopships can no longer carry one large mech, and instead have one extra slot for carrying androids. Making it 4 androids and 3 small mechs that they can carry.
  • This means that the mech carrier is the only vehicle that can carry large mechs, which makes more sense.

• Added a new style of "small yes/no window" that is for asking certain kinds of questions that will definitely never need scrollbars, and should be a bit smaller and more cozy.
  • This is used for the bulk of the in-game minor prompts, like "are you sure you want to __"

Introduction And UI Tour

• When you first start the game, after the chapter message goes by it now pops up a brief explanation that this is a turn-based game and a mix of genres, and invites the player to do a brief ui tour to orient themselves.
  • It also explains quickly that the things moving in the background are just scenery.
  • Thanks to Igor Savin and several other folks for mentioning the initial panic that could happen if the player doesn't know this is a turn-based game.

• The "here is the electricity" arrow has been removed, since now with things being up in the upper right corner, that is really not needed and just got in the way in early chapter one.

• The controls primer in the upper left now shows on turn 1 of a new profile, whether you do the prologue or not.

• On the first turn, it no longer has arrows pointing to the controls primer and the task stack. Those indicators are now part of the ui tour, so either that has already happened for the player, or the player has opted to skip it.

• The handbook icon no longer shows on the main header bar until there is something to see in it.

• The actual UI tour is now in place, in eight parts. There are explanations for each part of the UI, and it shows them one at a time, making each one a lot more noticeable and explaining what it is for.

• The start of chapter one is now a bit more consistent with the start of the prologue, if you jump straight there.
  • It allows people to do the ui tour if they want it, for example.
  • It also has the "bunker time" message and indicators that normally happen at the end of the prologue, in case someone has forgotten how to do that, which is reasonable.

Clarity And Handbook

• The "Combat" section of the handbook has been split into two parts, with half of it going to a new "NPC Unit Mechanics" section, which makes this section not so overwhelmingly-huge.

• The first time you damage squads of humans, squads of androids, or a vehicle with a crew, the game now unlocks new handbook entries which explain how each of those function.
  • Thanks to Waladil for suggesting.

• The tooltip for the forces sidebar now shows your current bulk android squads out of the cap of them, same as it does for androids, vehicles, and mechs.
  • Thanks to Eggland's Worst for suggesting.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a regression where clicking to replace a unit was throwing an exception because I accidentally removed a language key in the prior build.
  • Thanks to Shalax for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where the "approach gang members" events in the prologue used an incorrect color for its icon.

• Fixed an issue where if a bulk android was killed, you could still attempt to move it. Also fixed an issue where if you had an excess of bulk androids, it would still let you move them.
  • Thanks to ptarth, The Grand Mugwump, and mblazewicz for reporting.

• The "finding water" project now properly populates the suggested buildings in the build sidebar
  • Thanks to Mateusz Błażewicz for reporting that this was missing.

• Fixed an issue where if there were alarmed guards still in their base, your bulk units would still try to target them even if they were not in the same base, thus perpetuating aggro.
  • Thanks to Wolfier for the savegame... I think.

• Fixed an issue where bulk units who were in the same POI as guards who were defending a non-alarmed POI would not properly defend themselves.
  • Thanks to Paladin852 for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where private bunkers could be established in POIs. They should not be valid for this.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where right-clicking out of territory control mode flag placement did not work consistently with the rest of the build menu.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where player AOE damage to NPCs was not being properly lowered if the intensity of that AOE was less than 100%, such as with the Sledge.
  • Thanks to Ithuriel and Trogg for reporting.

• Fixed a threading race condition where the list of valid minor events that could seed could include some newly-invalidated entries that show up on the next pass of StreetSense.
  • I never could actually duplicate the problem despite multiple tries, but I can see logically where it would happen due to validity not being re-checked on the calculation thread. It should now be impossible for this to happen again, but will require retesting.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where structures that were still under construction were showing the name of the underlying structure instead of the name of the job, and same for the icon and description, both of which were very confusing.
  • Thanks to Cblln for reporting.

• Bovine replicators no longer always suggest building them to max, since you may have them but not want to use them at all. Now the meat-related project simply suggest you build 9 of them.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Player mechs now draw their attack range circle like other types of units do.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Mechs are now able to properly be loaded into transports via the normal means of just selecting them and right-clicking the transport. This works if they are in reposition mode or not.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Bastion, the troopship, and the mindport now all have the proper particle scaling for when they are in load or unload command modes. I just had not set those up yet.

• Unloading mechs using the command mode tool is now fully functional.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where there was some very old code associated with canceling construction of a mech, and it was causing an exception with every resource type in the game. The last one in the list was the one that would show to the user.
  • Thanks to Justin Vannerson and mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where if you could not afford a mech, it was not blocking you from creating a new one in your troopship. And then also fixed an issue where it was not deducting the costs in any case.

• If a unit is in cover at a building that is destroyed, they now pop out of cover.
  • Additionally, buildings that are destroyed are no longer considered valid buildings at all, for units to return to cover in or do other building-specific things.
  • Thanks to B for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where if your unit is standing on the same location as a mission, the mission was clipping into the icons above the unit.

• Fixed an exception when clicking the Survival Plan header in early chapter two. Someone reported this, but I can't find their report at this point.

0.562 Resource Views And Handbook

(Released July 1st, 2024)

• The "recall" ability for bulk units has simply been removed, as it was confusing and potentially unbalanced. It really only applies to fairly-niche circumstances in general.

• The "build microbuilders" no longer shows at the start of chapter one until the slurry spiders are completed.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage and The Grand Mugwump and others for bringing this up.

Full Text Pass Complete

• Even more wording improvements and clarifications, finishing everything currently on the radar.
  • There are still a few remaining to go through, but the total word count reduction from this is moving from 63k words down to 55.4k words.
  • The main point of all this has been clarity rather than lowering the number of words, but in many cases those go hand-in-hand, as overly-wordy sentences tend to be less clear.
  • Thanks to Kara McElligott Park for doing these!

• I've gone through a full pass of all of the changes from Kara, making any final tweaks that were needed based on her tweaks. This was also a large job, but only a fraction of the time she put into the actual edits. Very nice to have the current set of this done from both our ends.

Activity Overview

• The "Activity Sidebar" has been removed, as that was a very under-used thing and kind of pointless.

• There is a new "Activity Overview" that has been added to the game, which basically combines what the activity sidebar used to do, and also takes the non-inventory parts of the inventory and moves them into this new screen.
  • Deals, key contacts, city and action statistics, and project history are all in the activity overview now, which is much more comfortable.
  • The hotkey for this is now the O key, whereas previously the activity sidebar was the U key.

• The inventory sections have been reorganized to be more sensible in the context of this being an inventory.

Handbook Updates

• The way the machine handbook is displayed has been updated dramatically.
  • There are now sub-sections that can be expanded and collapsed, and there is now full-text searching of the handbook.
  • In general, the visual stylings have been shifted around to be a bit easier on the eyes.
  • The window is also wider and taller, and no longer moves to the side when a sidebar is open, as well as no longer causes the task stack to move over.
  • Thanks to Strategic Sage and others for these suggestions.

• Some additional sub-sections have been split out for the machine handbook to make it easier to see certain groupings.

• There is a new "Construction Is Low-Stress" handbook entry that pops up when you are first building in chapter one.
  • Thanks to (eXplorminate) Rob for suggesting.

• A new "preparing for combat" section of the handbook has been added, and a few things have moved there from tactics.
  • Additionally, there is a new "Loadouts Changes Are Free" and a new "Don't Stress About Color-Matching Preparation" entry. These both answer common questions, and the prologue no longer answers the former quite as directly.

• Added a new "More Stat Details On The Left Sidebar" handbook entry.

• A new "Sorting Units By Capability" handbook entry now opens up when you're at or beyond the Alumina project, since that's the first time you are likely to need to do that.

• A new deterrence section of the machine handbook is now in place, and it has three sections covering range, density, and the specific formula for deterrence. Very common questions that came up over and over again.
  • Thanks to Arcanestomper and c67f for suggesting.

Build Menu And Resource Views

• There are now short-names on the build menu categories again, and the buttons for the categories are now rectangular to allow for them to squeeze in there.

• Both TPS Reports and the Ledger are now gated behind a new unlock that doesn't happen until after you finish dealing with the corporate aggressors, to keep there from being too much information shoved at players during that early point in chapter one, as well as also to prevent the complaints about insufficient storage for slurry before you can even build storage.
  • Thanks to Draco18s for reporting.

• When you are short on storage for slurry and similar situations, it now properly suggests the storage for that in the Suggestions tab of the build menu.
  • There are a few different ways for you to be short a resource, and this one was not being handled properly.

• A new Structures tab is now in the inventory, which gives a report of all of your structures, with any that have any issues at all shown at the top, with those issues in red.
  • This is another one which shows up contextually with red counts for problems like the ledger and the TPS reports. It lets you jump to specific buildings with an issue, including "does not have a job installed."
  • Thanks to a number of people for requesting things along these lines, including c67f, Cyborg, and others.

• The button on the upper right header that shows complaints now shows ALL complaints, and left clicking it now opens the new structures report on the inventory. Right-clicking it now cycles through all of the structures with any issues at all, which is a new hotkey that is now the K key (previously K was just the "major issues" hotkey -- that hotkey is now unbound by default).

• The inventory now has an Input/Output tab, which allows you to see reports per-resource (or electricity or computing cycles) of all the top producers and consumers.
  • This does not include territory control sites or deals, but it has everything else.
  • This is one of the top requests from players, and it's something that will probably need some refinement over time for various reasons, but for now it allows folks to answer the most-important questions that they have about where their electricity or microbuilders or similar are going.
  • Thanks to Alias50 and many other folks for requesting.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a rare exception that could happen directly after a job was installed in a structure, or lost from a structure.
  • Also cleaned up some extra logging that was left in place by accident related to the new lenses.
  • Thanks to Andrew Mayo for reporting.

• Fixed some exceptions that could happen related to completing an investigation, since the switch to lenses.
  • Thanks to Waladil for reporting.

• Fixed a bug that was causing the "switch jobs" function on an existing structure to not work if you couldn't afford the cost for TWICE the cost of building the underlying structure, which was wrong on two counts.
  • Thanks to Karen and GC13 for reporting.

• Fixed a bug in general on the new build menu where the game was always insisting that you have twice the structure costs. It would only charge you for one of them, but it would block you from building, and it would show in the sidebar itself, that you needed twice the real requirements. The actual tooltip would show the proper amount, though.
  • Thanks to Waladil for a related report.

• Fixed an issue where if you were hovering over a third-party unit it would say "incoming damage to your unit next turn," and instead it now says "incoming damage to this unit next turn."
  • Thanks to Jake Cooper for reporting.

0.561 Build Mode Revamp

(Released June 27th, 2024)

• Added a new system for deleting old xml files, which Steam and similar won't reliably do (because of not wanting to mess with mods, I imagine).
  • Essentially, if an xml file ever needed to be renamed or split up, this wasn't really possible, because for many people the game would wind up with a copy of both, and then throw errors.
  • This was a limitation that has always existed in Arcen titles because of Steam, and in AI War 2 in particular it led to a lot of really outdated xml filenames and just general messiness.
  • So there is now a system in place so that, for HotM and onward, the game keeps track of older files it should get rid of, and does the deed itself if it finds them.
    • This is also something modders can make use of in their mods, as this was an issue that modders for AI War 2 ran into a number of times.

• The related resources for projects are now set based on the outcome you have selected, rather than being global to the project itself.
  • This makes it so that when you select a specific food goal, for example, it doesn't show you all the unrelated food resources.
  • As part of this, also did a pass over all the projects and marked a bunch more resources as being properly related to outcomes where some were missing before.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Even more wording improvements and clarifications, all through chapter one and the prologue.
  • Thanks to Kara McElligott Park for doing these!

Build Mode Overhaul

• A completely-revised build menu is now in place. It is a panel on the left side of the screen, with larger displays rather than tiny icons down at the bottom of the screen.
  • At a glance, you can now tell the following new things: what the name of a job is, what your cap for it is, if you are at or under that cap, if you can afford the job, what resources it costs, what you are unable to afford if you cannot afford it, and if that job is new to you.
  • It also includes much more sensible categories, and more of them in general, since it's now possible to have more thanks to the vertical space for said categories.
    • Each category is also sorted a bit better, and then there is an All category which is just sorted by name.
      • A given job can also be in multiple categories, as-needed for relevance, which is also very useful.
  • There is also a new filter textbox that allows you to search all of the specific items in the category you are looking at, including mentions of later resources used -- so you can quickly find out anything that uses microbuilders as part of its ongoing chain by typing "micro" in there, for example.
  • The buttons for jobs also are now only lit up if you can afford them and the structure, since the alternative was not really used by anyone and was confusing.
  • Thanks to a lot of folks for the feedback that led to this shift. This general style of build menu has a lot more room for the ways that the game will expand, as well.
  • Thanks to Mateusz Błażewicz, ptarth, The Grand Mugwump and others for the discussions.

• There is a new Recommended section on the build menu sidebar, and it gives you really helpful lists of things that are related in some way to what is going on.
  • Projects are now able to flag what buildings are related to specific outcomes, and it shows those if they are unlocked.
  • If you are having some sort of resource cap issue, then the storage for that resource will show up here.
  • Some specific jobs, like slurry spiders, biomulchers, and microbuilder mini-fabs now just always show here if you have anything less than full cap of them.
  • Thanks to Yonder for suggesting this feature.

• Territory Control Flags are now handled through the new build sidebar like any other structure. This is a lot nicer as a flow, and gets rid of the strange flow in the Task Stack checklist.
  • These show up in the recommended section, as well as in the general territory control flag section, and have some added information that makes them much more clear as to what the intent is.
  • Thanks to a variety of folks for noting how odd the old flow was, and Trogg in particular.

0.560 Resource Trends

(Released June 26th, 2024)

This build is not included on the demo branch yet. There are enough changes to the turn-change process that I'd like this to have a bit more testing before heading there.

• The checklist in the upper right-hand corner is now called the Task Stack.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon, Paladin852, and Destructively (Half) Phased for suggesting.

• Fixed a bug where all of the lens default filters were not being properly set when starting a new profile.
  • If you had loaded a prior save before that, it copied those. If you were starting one fresh after loading the program, then they were all blank.
  • Thanks to Irl_VriskaSerket for the report; some other folks had mentioned some confusion as well, but this report actually showed the problem.

• A variety of grammatical and textual errors have been cleaned up.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for the reports!

• Fixed an issue where "damage from behind" bonuses were not calculating if the two angles being compared were on opposite sides of the 360 degrees cutoff.
  • For example, comparing 352 degrees with 8 degrees was showing as a difference of 344 degrees, and thus "not behind," when in reality the difference between those two is only 16 degrees, and very much behind, because of how degrees wrap around. I already had some logic in place to deal with this, but not enough.
  • Related, I have thus reduced the angle difference required back to 90 degrees rather than 110 degrees.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz and Mintdragon for reporting.

• In general, the timing of what is "this turn" versus "last turn" on the turn-change is now very different. Rather than incrementing the turn after everything has happened, it now increments the turn after you have hit "next turn" and all the npc units take their shots.
  • This makes it so that things like what turn a research was completed on are more sensible, and also so that there is no longer any confusing "this and last turn" amount required on things like trends. It is clearly separated into this turn and last turn, which is much better.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz and Bobtree for reporting.

• The trends for resources are now shown in a new way, and also include specific job types that are adding or removing specific amounts from them.
  • Thanks to a number of folks for requesting this.

• Even more wording improvements and clarifications, all through chapter one and the prologue.
  • Thanks to Kara McElligott Park for doing these!

0.559 Inventory Dimensions

(Released June 25th, 2024)

• A new method for seeding more events related to certain kinds of things in StreetSense is now in place. Basically it will seed at least one somewhere in one of the related POIs, but then will seed more than that based on a random chance, and then leave those stable for the turn.
  • The end effect is that the prismatic tungsten, seeds, pollinator queen, and bovine tissue samples are all now easier to collect, although there is still some movement between turns that... may be a problem with the queen be, but probably not any of the others.
  • We'll see if this needs further adjustments, but this is pretty useful.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for suggesting, and Lord Of Nothing for reporting the problems that not having this were causing.

• The TPS Reports now properly include precursor elements that are available in all circumstances, rather than under-reporting availability. If you run into any more cases where it reports something wrong, please let me know, but I think I got all of the cases.
  • This was really confusing and made the reports far less useful, so I'm definitely glad to have this fixed. With that said, in existing saves, it won't be updated until you end turn one time.
  • It is possible that when storage is full for the output, there might still be some problems. I have not checked those yet, so please let me know if that is the ase.
  • Thanks to many people for reporting, including Darloth.

Inventory Improvements

• Furniture that is in your central inventory should now properly fill any gaps you have in specific buildings where the humans have not gathered it. I have not actually tested this, but it should work in theory.

• The resources and consumables tabs of the inventory now have search boxes that allow you to filter down to specific things by name.

• There is now a search feature on the unit types section of the inventory.

• The resource tab of the inventory screen now has a variety of collections that you can filter to, which eliminate the display of all resources not related to that collection. These are arbitrary topics I can set up however makes sense, and things can also be ordered within them as-appropriate. The initial set makes it a lot quicker to see general relationships between things, but if there are some that don't seem quite right either in the ordering of things or what is included/excluded, feel free to make suggestions.

• The unit types tab of the inventory now allows you to filter by type of unit, and also to separately selected alternative tabulated-and-sorted views that show who is best at various things, like providing the most deterrence as an example.
  • This has been a big item on my todo list since before testers first arrived, and I'm glad to finally have this in place. It allows players to quickly answer questions about which units are good for what purpose, without them having to manually scan through all their units.

Bulk Android Accuracy And Clarity

• A bunch of math updates have been made to properly calculate the stat estimates for units that do not yet exist. This mainly affects bulk androids.
  • Essentially, some of the math was just not properly handling multiplicative upgrades in general, and other parts of the math was inconsistent in how it applied equipment upgrades. All good now.
  • Thanks to Trogg, Michael Dunkel, and others for reporting.

• The Bulk Android Depot has been renamed to the Bulk Android Launcher.
  • Additionally, the Troopship and Mech Carrier both now mention more clearly that they also work as Bulk Android Launchers, to match how the Foundry is handled.
  • Thanks to Michael Dunkel for reporting the Troopship issue.

• The Bulk Android Prep Center is now renamed to the Bulk Android Kit Factory.
  • It also now has a description for the first time.
  • Thanks to jmvbento, Void00, Mintdragon, and Wolfier for reporting.

Other Fixes

• When the technology or save-game windows are opened, they now clear any text that was previously in their text field.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• The "Coroutine couldn't be started" bug that could happen in rare cases when just loading into the game should no longer happen.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• Added always-there support for the resolution 3840x2160, since unity sometimes does not properly report that a monitor is capable of that.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Issues with the frames around recruitable androids being inconsistent, and other similar icon issues prior to the android security patch, should all now be fixed.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed yet another city vehicle life threading exception that could randomly strike folks.
  • Thanks to Wolfier for reporting.

• The text for the handbook entry about Recharge now says "Units Can Recharge To Take More Actions"
  • Thanks to Wylker and Wolfier for suggesting.

• Fixed a regression where the network tower was again visible in the prologue next to the private bunker.
  • Thanks to Lord Of Nothing for reporting.

• Network towers / private bunkers are now properly prevented from being placed into buildings that have a beacon associated with them.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Extended my ambient sound player so that it can take in a randomized time range on which to start new tracks that it is crossfading in.
  • The various ambient wind, rain, and such sounds now start at a random spot somewhere in the first 30 seconds of their track, rather than always starting at the same location. This makes switching from a low altitude to the game map not start on the same repetitive sound each time.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for suggesting.

• The strategy tip for the slurry spiders now mentions "These can be placed anywhere, at any density, with no ill effect. These are picking up trash and debris at a scale that is small enough not to deplete the local area."
  • Thanks to (eXplorminate) Rob, Pingcode, and Glimpse for reporting.

0.558 Research

(Released June 24th, 2024)

• Updated the airports and spaceports to not use the giant black tarmac ground, which did look like a hole in reality to some folks. The runways are still there in airports (and yes, the corps don't use those, but lore-wise they're a legacy construction left over from before hover taking over everything). But the big black patches are gone.
  • This will only affect new savegames.
  • Thanks to Mateusz Błażewicz for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where your own units could catch allies in their AOE.
  • Thanks to The Grand Mugwump for reporting.

• Fixed a regression where directly after ending an investigation, it could spam errors at you.
  • Thanks to B and Paladin852 for reporting.

• If the "disable rain" option is chosen, it should now stop the actual rain sounds from playing as well.
  • Thanks to Waladil for reporting.

• The events portion of StreetSense have been updated substantially so that they move around a lot less.
  • They now shift primarily only once every turn, or after you complete an event. This applies to things like tungsten and seeds, and weapons from enemies, etc.
  • Thanks to Lukas for reporting.

• When the turn is not ready to change yet because there is a project you need to set the outcome for, it now properly shows the icon of that project instead of the "next turn" icon, and the tooltips also explain what will happen when you hover that icon.
  • Additionally fixed several other cases where the tooltip was not properly informative if you were all out of units who could act.
  • Thanks to blazewicz for reporting.

• Added a new option to the Game Flow section of the settings menu: Notifications Are Dismissed Before Switching Units
  • With this option on, using the spacebar or similar will interact with notifications before cycling through your units. With this off, it won't interact with the notifications until the end of your turn.
  • This is NOT the same as the old way that things used to work, where you could not give orders to units or use their abilities until you dealt with all the notifications. That was frustrating. However, this is a way of making sure that players get their notifications cleared in a more timely fashion, specifically via the spacebar itself.
    • This is a much better flow in the prologue, but frankly in the game in general. However, for people who don't want to have it on, it is an option.

• Even more wording improvements and clarifications, all through chapter one and the prologue.
  • Thanks to Kara McElligott Park for doing these!

Choosing Tower Location In Chapter 1+

• When skipping straight to a chapter beyond the prologue, or when starting a new timeline in an existing profile, the game no longer auto-places a tower for you. Instead, it gives you a nano-seed and the whole thing about the "private bunker" confusion, to establish where you character is in that timeline.
  • And more importantly, it lets you choose the location of your own tower. This has been something a ton of people have either directly requested or wondered about.
  • Thanks to a ton of people, but also ssamgang 2 and Scott for requesting this.

Research Window

• There is a new Research window, which unifies the history of the unlocks and upgrades with the actual act of selecting them.
  • This looks visually different from a lot of other windows so that it is easily recognized by context, and it avoids the issues of the old tiny-research-in-the-corner (of being very invisible if you didn't know where to look, and of not allowing you to open it if you did not have anything available to research, and also having the current research very disconnected from the history.
  • This also removes three section from the main inventory, which is great, because it makes both screens less overwhelming.

• The prefixes for unlocks of specific sorts now are color-coded by type for easier skimming of your invention history.

• The ability to pin research has been removed, as it was thoroughly pointless to the degree I'm not even sure anyone ever noticed it was there.

• On the new research window, you can now conveniently see how many points of inspiration you have in available research domains, as well as seeing what kind of thing will be unlocked by named technologies at a glance.

• There is now a text-search feature on the unlock and upgrade tabs of the new research window.

• Thanks to ptarth, DasBreitschwert, and Strategic Sage, among others, for suggesting many of these things.

0.557 Filtering And Lensing

(Released June 23rd, 2024)

• Large set of balance adjustments to the housing and employment opportunities for a lot of the classes, but the lower and middle classes in particular.
  • Some of the various sectors like construction, agriculture, mining, etc, now have more jobs correctly. And the slum towers are now much more dense. These things have effects on elements like the Protein Canneries being able to work in more parts of the city without it being problematic, etc.
  • Thanks to Wolfier for handling the first version of this.

• Fixed another regression from two builds ago that was causing player androids to not be able to move to buildings without contemplations at them if the contemplation lens was active.
  • Thanks to Hawk_v3 for reporting.

• Fixed a longstanding issue where the description of the Originalist World Temple was the same as their extremist sect.
  • Thanks to Gloraion for reporting.

• Fixed an issue with how certain keybinds were being requested to trigger, as this was causing them to not properly be blocked by overlapping keybinds with a modifier.
  • For example, Ctrl+F should not also trigger a keybind F, but because of the way the triggering was being checked, it was.

• The controls window now displays its categories on the left sidebar a bit more condensed than they previously were.

• A new Lenses category has been added to the controls window, and most (but not all) of the current lenses now have hotkeys set up, which you can rebind if you prefer other options.
  • Thanks to Trogg for suggesting.

• Tiles no longer try to mirror during mapgen, as that was not required in order to make a proper city in the first place, and it was likely the culprit behind certain road pieces being randomly flipped wrong in some savegames. That was a super rare thing that would happen, but it's been driving me nuts for like a year. So we'll see if that ends it. It would only be in new cities that things are different.
  • Thanks to Paladin852 for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where if you went the Flamethrower route, it never asked you to get more microbuilders, and then also never asked you to get more weapons and armor. This has been an issue for as long as the flamethrower option has been there, turns out.
  • Thanks to Paladin852 for reporting.

• Fixed a regression with the switch to the new StreetSense lens logic where two gang-related events were not seeding because they were not using building tags in the way all other events do.
  • The game now forces the use of building tags, and self-checks if there is something wrong with those. You can now properly interact with those.
  • Thanks to Paladin852 for reporting.

• Anahuacom is now noted as owning the southwestern coast of North America, to avoid confusions with Calgartek.
  • Thanks to Gloraion for reporting.

• Fixed a bug with Universal Islander Holding having a tab where it should have had two spaces.
  • Thanks to Gloraion for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where NPC Units were able to attack multiple times in a single turn. I have not tested this super thoroughly, but it does seem to work, and it also seems to resolve a slowness that had appeared in the turn-change period sometimes.
  • When I double-buffered the attack plans a couple of days ago, it seems that this regression was introduced.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz, Wolfier, and Mintdragon for reporting.

• Fixed things so that if there is a research complete note, but no more research to do right now, hitting spacebar does not open the tech history.

• Fixed two places in the geothermal power contemplations and project where it was talking about parasitic power draws in addition to wind. Now it just talks about wind.
  • Thanks to Luke for reporting.

• Corrected elemental slurry to mention fluorine rather than fluoride, as that was inconsistent with the other element names.
  • Thanks to Yog-Sothoth for reporting.

• Even more wording improvements and clarifications, all through chapter one and the prologue.
  • Thanks to Kara McElligott Park for doing these!

Lens Filters

• A large new "lens filters" setup has been put in place, and allows for people to turn on and off parts of the lenses that may be getting in their way.
  • The idea is to also add more filters to allow for even more customization, but the first part was to make the existing lenses more modular.
  • As part of this, the POIs and Beacons lenses have been removed, as their functionality can now be handled in the Navigation lens.
    • These two lenses were really information-overload in general, and not important in any way to normal gameplay. So having them be more hidden like this, but still accessible, makes more sense. It's much preferable rather than every player constantly having to scroll past all of them.

• The ability to turn off job complaints as icons above your buildings is now in place for a ton of the lenses, and it's only on by default in a few of them, now.
  • It was overwhelming to many folks that this was visible in every last lens previously, especially when you already have summaries of this information in the top-right corner.
  • However, I didn't want to chance people missing out on the info if they happen to just kind of set up camp in a specific lens for a long time. So this winds up being the flexible solution for that.

• The forces lens now has a variety of new filters, which allow you to exclude useless clutter from whatever you are looking for at the moment.
  • This includes ignoring economic units, or passive guards, and some similar things like that.
  • There will certainly be a need for more filters over time later, but as it is, this one lens can now tell you most of the things you would want to know, quickly and without being overwhelming.

• The structures lens, which also cross-applies to build mode in general, is now able to filter out a variety of kinds of job (storage, refinery, procurement, electrical) separately, and also able to toggle on and off the network lines without having to go all the way to settings if it's just for a few moments.
  • More can and will be done here later, but that's enough for now. The main idea is to make sure that players are able to get a less-overwhelming view of things when relevant, and this is firmly establishing the patterns for this and that this works for that general purpose.

• You can now hold Ctrl or Shift and hover a target to make all of the threat lines disappear that are not coming to or from that entity. When hovering nothing, it draws all the threat lines as usual.
  • In the new filters list for a bunch of the various lenses, this can also be turned on without having to hold any particular key.
  • Thanks to Wolfier for suggesting.

Prologue Improvements

• During the first turn, it now shows a message that you need to read the message from the city feed, and to click it.
  • Instead it was talking about clicking on a rebel, which was not there yet.

• If you wind up clicking in such a way that one of your units is not selected during the first turn before combat starts, it now selects one of your units again.

• The instruction text about the rebel by your cursor now mentions that you may need to zoom out as they may be on top of a very tall building.
  • Thanks to donblas for suggesting.

• The "Improved CPUs" upgrade now explains: All 'Additional CPU' equipment becomes more effective.
  • Additionally, it is no longer a possible reward after the first fight, because players are not yet exposed to equipment (in the revised flow).
  • It also is now called Augment: Improved CPUs.
  • Thanks to Wolfier, Strategic Sage, and kenken244 for reporting.

• In the prologue, it no longer has you go in and equip the slayer ability; that is just available right from the start, now.
  • The slayer ability gets a lot less attention in the prologue now in general, which is fine.
  • Overall, this skips the entire section about managing equipment, as this can come up later much more organically, and there's enough info on the first turn as it is.

• The wording for the prologue showing StreetSense is now matching the actual radial wheel functionality that now exists, and in general it's also a lot more clear.

• A lot of the toast that was stacking up in the first fight and forcing you to read it -- including about cover, and melee leaps, and enemies coming in and out in waves -- now just goes into the handbook in a mid-visibility way.
  • This is a lot less overwhelming for players, while still giving them all the functionality.
  • Melee leaps are required functionally, as it can be a softlock situation without them. But having to read about them is not all that important.
  • Thanks to Wolfier for the suggestion.

• The way that investigations are introduced during the prologue is now consistent with the new Lens-based style of that feature.

• The "A network is never cramped" handbook entry is now mid-visibility rather than getting all up in your way.

• Fixed the "out of network range" issue on the private bunker for sure this time.

0.556 Resume Thinking

(Released June 23rd, 2024)

This build is not included on the demo branch yet. There are still some things I need to fix up before it's ready for that, but this fixes a blocker in the prior playtest-only build.

• Removed the handbook entry "electricity is per-network," as that is no longer true in the sense that has any meaning.

• The standby description has been updated to explain what it does and does not do better, since this was an ongoing source of confusion for folks. It notes:
  • When a unit is in standby, it will not be in the normal selection rotation from pressing Space, but it will still be selectable by pressing P.
  • Standby is for focusing on smaller groups. There is no difference in unit functionality.
  • Putting all of your units into standby has no effect on the Space key. This prevents muscle memory from betraying you.
  • To skip straight to the next turn, press the Zero key.
  • Thanks to c67f for the most recent report.

• Fixed up the tooltips for territory control flag placement in general.
  • It now shows more information about what you are supposed to do in general.
  • If you're out of range of a building, it now says that.
  • It no longer complains about being out of network range, as it does not care.
  • Thanks to c67f, Eggland's Worst, and Trogg for reporting.

• In the prologue, when establishing the private bunker, it should no longer show a warning about being out of network range. This is untested, since I didn't have a savegame to quickly load it up. If there are still issues, please let me know.
  • Thanks to Wolfier for reporting.

• Rebalanced the armor availability for a number of unit types.
  • All of your android models now have an armor slot, even the liquid metal. So now things like Sledge and PMC Imposter have armor that was not previously available.
    • The armor restrictions on a lot of these is basically that they are the "materials coating" kinds of armor, rather than being actual armor like a suit.
  • For the security jacket and similar, there is now a "light human clothes" armor group, which nickelbot and some other not-much-armor units (Mindrunner and Raven, etc) can use. This keeps them from using quite as large a selection of armor as regular-weight human clothing would allow. The Keanu and similar has also been cut down to this, and Carver and Exator have been extended from "coating only" to include this.
  • Also fixed an inconsistency where the bulk technicians could equip heavy human clothing, which was not intended.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for the initial request that sparked the rest of this.

• Fixed an issue where if there was an arrow pointing at a project or countdown in the upper right corner, and you loaded a savegame, it would throw an exception.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

• Fixed a regression in the prior build where, due to my adding double-buffering to contemplations, it was calculating wrong and no contemplations could be done at all.
  • Thanks to Trogg, Eggland's Worst, and Hawk_v3 for reporting.

• Even more wording improvements and clarifications, a lot of these focused on jobs and settings and similar.
  • Thanks to Kara McElligott Park for doing these!

0.555 Lens Reimagining

(Released June 22nd, 2024)

This build is not included on the demo branch yet. There are enough changes in it that I am concerned may be breaking, so we'll have folks on the playtest branch run through the minefield first, and only push it to demo with the next build.

• The milstyle armor, and in theory PMC style armor if it was ever relevant, now blocks the Innately Alarming perk on units. It was an oversight that it does not.
  • Thanks to Choi, thelonebadger, and WingedKagouti for reporting.

• An editing pass has been done on all of the handbook entries, making the language more direct and clear where possible.
  • Actually now a huge amount of the game has gotten this editing pass. Overall this has streamlined out 3k words from 63k words the game had. Being a bit less wordy where possible is really good for general readability. More work is still ongoing on these.
  • Thanks to Kara McElligott Park for doing these edits!

• Adjusted the managerial, scientist, middle class, and uneducated initial occupancies to be higher, as they were artificially low when starting a new city.
  • Thanks to Kenken244 and Andyman119 for pointing out the initial issues.

• The attack power of the fractive and military snipers has been cut to well under half of what it used to be, closer to about a third. Originally I couldn't do super long ranges, so I had done super high damage. But now that super high range is a thing, their initial damage is just too high for how they are used.
  • Don't worry, there will be other kinds of snipers with extra high damage at some point. But these are just not meant to fill that role.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for suggesting.

• The "units behind things" glow and high-visibility glows in general are no longer active at all in photo mode, since that doesn't make any sense for that sort of view.

• Fixed an issue where Contemplation icons could flicker while they were being recalculated, depending on your processor speed and a few other factors.

Lenses

• The lenses for the city map and the streets view have been unified; having them separate was useful at some points in the past, but now with things like contemplations being on the lenses list, and more pieces coming there besides, it was increasingly frustrating to use when you could set something in one view and then switch to peek at the other view and have a completely wrong set of info there.

• The buttons for command mode and build mode are now always visible, but show as locked before they are available, rather than disappearing.
  • This keeps that part of the radial menu from looking funky when there are investigations prior to both being in place.

Investigations

• Both the investigate and contemplate abilities have been removed from androids, as now the Lenses on the main wheel are the only way to do this.
  • Added in extra information to the tooltips for those lenses.
  • This frees up substantial space on the ability bar for all these androids. Technicians now default to having the Repair ability equipped from the start; previously they did not, because there was just no room.
    • Under the hood, the "Repair Nearby" for androids has had its ID changed so that its assignment gets reset. The idea is to prevent duplicate assignments in existing savegames.

• A new dropdown for selecting a relevant investigation from the Investigation lens is now in place.

• The formatting of the investigations is now more clear when one of your units is unable to do that investigation, especially now that you can see those in lenses in general.
  • Thanks to Amon'kurath, Creakit, teo4512, and other for feedback on this subject and the lenses in general.

• When a unit is unable to investigate a location, it now shows which other units could, if there are any who could. And has a general suggestion about what to do if none of them currently can, as well.
  • Thanks to mahu for suggesting.

• When you click on the alert of investigations being available, it now switches you to the proper lens, AND selects a unit that can actually do that type of investigation, if you have one.
  • Before it would just select any unit with the investigate ability equipped, which of course doesn't exist now anyway.

• When one of your units is doing an investigation over time at a location, it now blocks other units from doing more investigations AND stops showing all of the various investigation markers.
  • This makes it so you can actually deal with this without having to switch out of investigation mode, since it could be very overwhelming visually otherwise. And it also prevents possible minor balance issues, or over-investigating a single investigation to no real purpose.

• When you start an investigation or other action-over-time that will trigger enemies to spawn in, they now do so immediately rather than waiting until the next turn for their first attack.
  • This is substantially more dangerous, and makes the flow of the very-short fights with the fields more appropriate. This also gives a lot better visual feedback to the player of what is happening and why, whereas sometimes folks could miss what was happening, otherwise.

• The "Death And Knowledge" message now appears directly after the SecForce Cruiser appears, rather than when you first hover over the water fight. These two things were way too separated before.
  • This message has also been revised to be more clear in the new context, as well.
  • Thanks to riking28, teo4512, and others for suggesting.

• If you are standing on a building, you can now investigate that building directly. I have not yet tested this with contemplations or wallripper, which were the other two requests of this sort.
  • Thanks to Trogg and Vinco for requesting.

StreetSense

• When you are full on androids, and still in the part of the game where you get them from StreetSense, the game now shows their icons with a red border and a slash through it, and if you hover it, the tooltip notes that you are already at android cap.
  • These simply disappearing was confusing to new players in particular.
  • Thanks to a variety of players for reporting the confusion when these just stopped appearing.

• StreetSense has been removed from being an ability on androids, now that it is a Lens.
  • Battle Recharge has been swapped from slot 3 to slot 1, where StreetSense used to be.
  • Use Item has been moved from slot 5, where it used to be, to slot 3, and can no longer be unassigned. Previously this was able to be un-assigned specifically because there was so little room on the bars in general.
  • Slayer mode is now automatically assigned to the three basic types of android, and its internal ID has been renamed so that existing assignments from players are reset.

• Vehicles and Mechs have had their "move" ability switched from slot 1 to slot 3, and battle recharge is now also slot 1 for them instead of slot 3.
  • This keeps the muscle memory for battle recharge the same for people in the new version.
  • The visuals of the move command for mechs have been made a bit nicer.
  • In the case of both vehicles and mechs, the "move" ability is also now called Reposition, which helps to underscore how much less-important this is than a standard movement that is done for an android.

• Huge overhaul to a bunch of code to make it so that StreetSense actions are now calculated on a different thread, properly double-buffered, and are city-wide and can be viewed even when you don't have a unit selected, so long as you have the StreetSense lens selected.
  • This has been... not at all fun code for some reason. I usually enjoy code, but this one has just been gross from start to finish. Mostly because of the way the code previously was; how it is now is really nice.
  • I still need to get more pieces of this working, but the core framework, and things like the licensing agencies being visible from any distance when in this mode, is now in place.
  • Plus lots of things saying when certain kinds of units can't do an action, etc.

• Lots of extensions to the revised StreetSense logic.
  • It now is able to seed things intelligently around your units, without having too many duplicates to where it would be a problem, and with still some randomization in there, but not in a way that is as confusing as it was in the past.
  • Cold blood, murder android for registration, wiretap, and hide-and-self-repair have been converted to the updated style.
  • Recruiting androids and stealing aircraft now works in the new style of StreetSense, and boy is that a lot nicer.

• StreetSense is now visible on the city map for the first time, which is extremely useful for a wide variety of purposes.

• The "minor events" part of StreetSense is also now in place.
  • This is dramatically more functional than before, because even if you're not near something that you could do (like get seeds or more bovine tissue), you can now quickly find it on the map.

• Both StreetSense and Contemplations are now dramatically better at responding to mouse clicks, most notably on the city map.
  • This wasn't relevant for StreetSense before, but it could still be a minor pain in the regular view. But now that it is on the map it was a huge problem, and it turns out that also applied to contemplations.

• The colors of the various StreetSense items are now far more custom to make them easier to tell apart.
  • Rather than having "hostile, neutral, good, and event" it now uses custom colors for all of the above, including specific minor events, as-needed.
  • It's also able to have these sized specifically as well, to keep slightly-background stuff like the licensing agencies from taking over the map.

0.553 Fenceline

(Released June 20th, 2024)

• The way that incoming damage is targeted is now double-buffered, as are the attack plans in general. This keeps the iconography and tooltips related to these from flickering. It was more noticeable on some machines than others, but was noticeable to some extent on any targeted unit if you zoomed in and looked at it.
  • Thanks to Cel and mblazewicz for reporting.

• There is now an X close button on the various sidebars, so that you can quickly close them.
  • Previously there was no easy way to get rid of the sidebars unless they were the most recent thing you opened.

• The "unit ready but not selected" indicator is now 50% larger than before. It was indeed pretty tiny compared to other icons.
  • Also, all of the indicators above units have been raised up a bit higher above their heads, just to give a bit more comfortable space to them.
  • Thanks to iacore for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where if you were out of mental energy, it was not showing the "end turn" display properly.
  • Thanks to Andrew Mayo for reporting.

• When you have toast messages waiting, they no longer block your units from acting, and same with choosing a research. They also do not change the function of the spacebar until you are otherwise ready to end the turn.
  • These messages do still prevent you from moving to the next turn until you deal with them, but they don't prevent you from doing the other things you have going on. This was frustrating flow for a lot of people, from what I can tell.
  • Thanks to The Grand Mugwump for some of the earliest discussion on this.

• When a major project is offering you multiple outcomes to go for, it now makes you choose one of them rather than letting you avoid the choice indefinitely. There's no reason to wait, since you can change your mind; but waiting can wind up completely stalling out progress for the player, since they may be missing tools to actually complete it.
  • Additionally, right-clicking a project outcome no longer deselects it.
  • If you are somehow at the end of your turn, and trying to go to the next turn while a project has no intended outcome selected, it now also makes you choose an outcome before going to the next turn.
  • All of this has no impact on balance, but prevents players from getting lost if they forget to select an outcome and then don't have the tools to move forward.
  • Thanks to MikeKimPiggy for reporting.

• The unreliable narrator text has been tuned a bit to be even more clear and consistent.
  • Thanks to ptarth for the edits.

• When you have exhausted all of the ideas in a research domain for your current intelligence class, it now says "Unknown" for the intelligence class, rather than confusingly stating something specific that you meet. The message directly under that already explains why you can't research this, but the intelligence class minimum stating a specific value was super confusing and seemed to contradict that other statement.
  • Thanks to 03noster for reporting.

• Fixed an off-by-one issue that was meaning that the added upgrades that were meant to start appearing at intelligence class 2 were actually only appearing at intelligence class 3, and so on.
  • Thanks to 03noster for the save that made this clear.

• The game will no longer give you a warning about missing equipment for units you have on hand but have not yet unlocked. This pretty much only applies to delivery drones.
  • Thanks to Cblln for reporting.

• In the event that there is something else to do at a building (most notably contemplate or investigate), structural engineering will not block your units from doing that thing.
  • Thanks to Trogg and The Grand Mugwump for reporting.

• Lots of improvements to NPC targeting, with some various extensions.
  • Noncombatants, and guards in a passive stance, are now identified.
  • Black ops attackers, and related defenders, will ignore all of the above even if they would normally shoot at them, as they are busy.
  • Your own bulk androids will also ignore noncombatants, and will also ignore passive guards.
  • Your own bulk androids are also now barred from walking into POIs with a security clearance above 1 (there is no good reason for them to do that, and that sort of pathing was part of what was causing some conflicts.
  • This solves: your bulks firing across the fenceline and being jerks in general; your bulks shooting friendly civilians; black ops units shooting across the fenceline and causing trouble for no sensible reason.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon, dragorislordofmercy, Half Phased, Pingcode, and Qwertyfizz for the reports and savegames.

Added Upgrades

• Added two new kinds of upgrades to the Procurement Efficiency research domain: Better Wind Turbines and Better Microbuilder Mini-Fabs.
  • I know that the second one is not technically procurement, and the upgrade even makes mention of that, but I think people will still find it VERY welcome.

Scaling Icons

• In the UI Scale part of the settings menu, there are now options for making the stance icons larger (this being streets view) or the city map icons larger. Or smaller, in both cases, as well. This has been requested by a ton of people.
  • Thanks to strandofgibraltar and Trogg for the earliest requests.

Toast Popups And Handbook

• There are now differentiated colors for a bunch of different types of toast popups.
  • Specifically for when research is complete, research is now available to do, a project is complete, a project is starting, an upgrade choice is ready to be chosen, and a few others.
  • This makes it way easier to tell what's going on when you have a bunch of things pop all in the same turn.
  • Thanks to Ultrapotassium for suggesting.

• All of the various toast entries now do something on left-click, and are canceled via right-click.
  • A lot of people were very confused by having some things outright disappear when left-clicked. In the cases where that was happening, it was because there's no extra information to share. However, it's deeply confusing when that happens, so now it does a related thing instead.
  • Thanks to Mateusz Błażewicz, Ultrapotassium, and others for the discussion on this.

• When left-clicking handbook entries, it now pops up a dark arrow plate with the handbook entry itself directly next to the handbook screen.
  • It also marks it as read already. Clicking out of the handbook screen in any way thus closes both this singular entry as well as other entries.
  • You can also specifically click this handbook plate to just close it, and keep the rest of the handbook screen open.
  • Thanks to Ithuriel, Mateusz Błażewicz, Ultrapotassium, and others for the discussion on this.

• The handbook screen in general now darkens the entire rest of the screen while it is open.
  • Clicking anywhere in that darkened area, with left or right click, closes the handbook screen.
  • Thanks to Mateusz Błażewicz for the discussion on this.

• All of the various toast popups now say at the bottom of themselves what they will do if you left or right click them.
  • Thanks to Mateusz Błażewicz for suggesting.

• If you left-click a minor project's toast that has no more information to show you, it now does a popup showing the minor project details next to the list of checklist items in the upper right.
  • Left-clicking into toast of regular projects still brings their usual popup, of course.

• If there is a countdown starting, and you left-click the toast of that, it now pops up a message for you to see about it, same as with the minor projects.

• Added a new dropdown on the machine handbook window, and it allows you to filter to certain topics rather than having to scroll through the entire list.

0.552 No Flicker

(Released June 20th, 2024)

This build is not included on the demo branch yet. Hopefully a third build today will be stable enough for that to move across.

• The "attack from behind" bonus now has a 110 degree cone behind it, rather than a 70 degree cone. Let's see how this feels in general.
  • Thanks to Mateusz Błażewicz for reporting.

• Updated the various networking data on machine structures to not flicker when it's in the middle of recalculating.
  • This was always a thing that could happen, but was pretty rare. But in the prior build I made it start recalculating every second, so it could be pretty noticeable depending on if your framerate was high enough compared to your background thread being slow enough.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for reporting.

• Fixed some issues in the prior build where sometimes hovering over a building would show its network uplink rather than its subnet uplink.

0.551 Network Cells

(Released June 20th, 2024)

This build is not included on the demo branch yet. Hopefully a second build today will be stable enough for that to move across.

• A truly massive overhaul to the way that network ranges are calculated and drawn is now complete.
  • The short version is that, now the ranges are more permissive than they previously were. If the circular range touches a tile on the map, it now spreads to that entire tile.
    • However, certain facilities, like military bases and such, block network connections entirely (which is what they did before, anyway, in effect).
    • The overall net effect of this is that your ranges are a bit larger now.
  • The network ranges are now drawn as outlines around the tiles that are in-range, and this looks a lot more attractive, more machine-like, and is easier to see.
  • The one thing that this does not really do that used to be possible is allow you to build out of your normal network range, using subnets to string things along.
    • So you may wind up with some buildings out of network range in prior savegames, if you were using this and went all the way beyond what the cells touched by the network in the new model. Either just move those structures, or pop in a network relay, depending on your circumstances.
  • Also for existing saves, you'll notice that the network takes a few moments to propagate out, since it has new data that is not in the save. This in turn means that if you were above intelligence class 1, and your structures that are propping up your intelligence are a few hops out, then you'll see your intelligence fall and then rise again. That won't happen in further saves beyond this new version.

• There are now options for disabling either the blue network lines, or the yellow subnet lines, but they are not on by default. This is for people who find those to be too overwhelming.

• Fixed an issue where you were being shown network towers in addition to the private bunker at the end of the prologue.
  • Thanks to dragorislordofmercy for reporting.

• The counts of subnets now only includes active subnets, not ones that were emptied of all buildings.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

0.550 Lone Networker

(Released June 19th, 2024)

This build is not included on the demo branch yet. There are enough changes in it that I am concerned may be breaking, so we'll have folks on the playtest branch run through the minefield first, and only push it to demo with the next build.

• A new "Obscured By Clothing" perk has been added, which has a different icon and description from the Blending In perk, but is otherwise pretty similar.
  • This is granted by the Security Jacket, and it replaces the normal "Blending In" on androids that have that, to no real effect.
    • However, for androids that are Innately Alarming, this now also prevents that status, meaning that a Predator in a security jacket is now actually able to hide as was originally intended.
  • Thanks to B and riking28 for the reports.

• The cap on bulk android squads has been raised from 60 to 300.
  • For more extreme scenarios that will be something we can get into, and the game supports it fine. But this is mainly a thing that avoids making some folks feel sad when they see that the final roof is so low. 60 is actually way more than most people would have in most games, but seeing a number that low doesn't feel good to most people.
  • Thanks to Wolfier for the report.

• The extended section of the system sidebar now has a link to the mantis bugtracker, and another button that lets you open your local folder that has your logs and saves in it.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon and Half Phased for suggesting.

Machine Network Improvements

• The ability to have multiple networks has been removed from the game, as that is something that would just needlessly complicate things. It had a lot of secondary effects, like making certain pieces of information way more hidden in the UI. Going to be working on those bits next. I will probably miss some pieces, so having folks catch those will be very useful.
  • Please note, of course, that having lots of network relays is still a thing. But two separate networks with separated electricity and computing cycles is just not good for anyone.
  • Thanks to a number of people for suggestions that inspired this change.

• Substantial changes to the code under the hood to only do one network rather than multiple. This fixes some potential issues that could have come up, and seems to be working okay. But this was really major surgery, so the possibility of new issues is definitely... way more than nonzero.

• Made it so that the count of networks is no longer shown in the header tooltips, since it would always just be zero or one. It now shows the count of subnets instead, which is more interesting.

• The amount of electricity and computing power provided are both now handled in the manner of "percentage of needs met" rather than "percentage used." The latter was deeply confusing, and different from every other part of the game, too. So now rather than seeing that you are using 76% or whatever of your capacity, you now see that you're providing 216% or similar of what you need.
  • I can't remember who brought this up, and it didn't make it into mantis or my notes, apologies.

• In the event that you cannot build a structure at a location because it is out of network range, the tooltip now says "Out Of Network Range" rather than "New Subnet"

• You can now see your electricity usage, and computing cycles usage, in the upper left part of the screen with other resources IF you have unlocked networks (for electricity) or the stuff that needs computing (for computing cycles).
  • Right now there is no way to dismiss these, but these are important things that are part of your now-sole network in general.

• Computing Cycles are not shown anymore at all if you're not yet to the part of the game that uses them.

• Network drawing improvements:
  • When you are in build mode, on the outer city map, it now draws the underlay of your networks in a better way.
  • It also no longer draws the network and subnet connections for individual buildings, though that will be an option later.
  • When on the streets view, it draws the same range circles as before, but also is now skipping the specific connections unless you hover over a given building, as it's just too much visual info otherwise.
  • I am actually not very thrilled with the way this all looks, even though it is better. The city map is better for sure, but it still feels too organic because of the circle-y nature. And the overapping circles in the streets view is still not good. I have an idea for something better, but I'm going to do that in the next build.

General Fixes

• Fixed an exception that could happen when pruning old autosaves if there was missing data in the autosave itself
  • Thanks to Wolfier for reporting.

• Fixed a harmless but annoying error that could pop up if things happened just wrong after your units were moving out of range of an enemy.
  • This wasn't really an error, but was self-check code to make sure that if I made a mistake, it would let me know. As it is, the only times it ever shows up are false positives, so it has been removed.
  • Thanks to Wolfier for reporting.

• Updated a thing with the mouse, where it was only disappearing after you dragged a large distance because it was factoring in mouse sensitivity in an unhelpful way. Why this shifted after my testing of it yesterday is not clear, but I think I did not test it sufficiently after adding in the distance gate. Prior to the distance gate, in my personal testing, it was bricking the ability to click things at all.
  • This fixed version should require much smaller movements, and not care about your personal mouse settings, but if it's a problem for someone, then I have some other math I could put in place. For now, should be good, knock on wood.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed a regression in the prior build related to the right-clicks in build mode, and how that prevented buildings from highlighting properly as targets for your to building.
  • Thanks to Paladin852, mblazewicz, Mintdragon, and Andrew Mayo for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where buildings that could be built-in were not being unhighlighted when you switched out of their category.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

0.549 Of Mice And Crowns

(Released June 18, 2024)

• Updated the descriptions on the "Stack Armor-Piercing Rounds x3" minor project to also include the following extra explanation:
  • More copies of the armor piercing on an attacker lets you drill through more armor. Think of it like extending a ladder upwards to 'climb over' the armor, metaphorically. The same amount of armor piercing applied to three separate units is like making three too-short ladders to try to get over that wall.
  • Thanks to ainz ooal gown for reporting.

• Rebalanced the investigations at the farm fields in chapter one; they were too long.
  • The bovine carcass one now takes 3 turns instead of 5,
  • The field samples used to require three separate fields, 2 turns of combat each. It now takes only two fields.
  • Apologies for forgetting who suggested this; I can't find it in my notes.

• Powered Armor is too similar to "Power Armor" from some other games, and so has been renamed to "Armor Plating."
  • Other words that don't include the word "armor" (like hull plating, etc) really don't work because of the need to be clear that Armor Piercing works against Armor Plating.
  • Thanks to Wolfier and Mintdragon for suggesting.

• Fixed an issue where item-based attacks on buildings were not marking units as defective. The most notable case of this was the Decrowner Drones, which could stack up truly insane numbers of aggressors who then end your game.
  • Thanks to Rhomplestomper for reporting.

Mouse Control Extensions

• Substantial mouse handling updates:
  • The game now has a grab-and-pan function that defaults to middle mouse button, in roughly the same way that this works in AI War 2 and a variety of other games.
    • You can also set the sensitivity of this on the Input tab of the Settings menu.
  • When you are either in mouse-pivot mode, or mouse-grab mode, it now hides the mouse cursor and thus prevents it from moving over top of a lot of things or out of the window, etc. Without this, it can be very awkward to grab and pan in particular, but even rotation can be problematic depending on how your mouse sensitivity is set compared to your monitor's visual size.
    • Normally this would orphan your cursor back in the center of the screen, which would be super annoying and which is why I never implemented anything like this in the past in prior games (all of the options for this were deeply windows-specific). However, thanks to the new unity input system, I'm able to return your mouse cursor to where you expect it to be, in a cross-platform fashion.
  • Thanks to Bobtree and Cyborg for suggesting.

• There are now individual mouse-inversion toggles in the settings menu for both the mouse pitch/incline, and grab-pan modes.
  • Thanks to Bobtree for suggesting both.

• The general mouse input section of the settings has been split into five sub-sections, because it was getting way too long to comfortably read.

• Mouse edge panning can now be enabled for the game, but is still off by default.
  • You can also adjust the speed at which it pans.
  • Thanks to The Grand Mugwump, Endless Rain, and others for requesting.

• Photo mode now properly hides the mouse and works as expected as a first-person view.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Right clicking in build mode now allows you to fully cancel a category you are in, or cancel all the way out of build mode if no category is open.
  • Thanks to teo4512 for suggesting.

• Double-clicking on units in the map view now selects them and goes to the street view. Same with slow-clicking, where basically a unit is already selected but you click them again.
  • Thanks to Monkooky and Trogg for suggesting.

• Double-clicking units on the forces sidebar and similar now causes the camera to focus on them. Again, technically it moves the camera to them them as soon as you single-click them if they are already selected, but the general effect is the same. You can also continue to right-click them to move the camera to them without selecting them at all.
  • Thanks to Trogg and Phase for suggesting.

• The game no longer zooms in on targets when you are switching which unit is selected. If your zoom is too low to see it, it will still zoom OUT to make sure it is in view, but it won't zoom in if you're already at a height where you could see it fine.
  • Thanks to Trogg and others for requesting.

General Bugfixing

• Fixed an improper use of affect/effect in the intro text.
  • Thanks to Winston Smith for reporting.

• Fixed an issue with the collision areas for the build mode and command mode buttons, which meant that the mouse did not interact with them in the bounds you would expect.
  • Thanks to Wolfier for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where if there was only one investigation available at the moment, then it would let you assign it to even units without the proper skills to carry it out.
  • Thanks to The Grand Mugwump for reporting.

• When you have a unit or vehicle factory open, and none of the sub-menus of it open, it now has an arrow pointing to the Deploy button that says "Click here to deploy the unit when it is ready."
  • Thanks to Alias50 and Darloth for reporting.

• When you are at a unit or vehicle factory, and you DO have one of the sub-menus of it open, it now still will show you the normal tooltip from the Deploy button; which tells you if there are some problems, or some things you can't afford, etc.
  • Thanks to ScrObot and ZeusAlmighty for reporting.

• When you cannot afford a unit or vehicle, and you are also at unit cap for that type, it will no longer open the sub-menu for "which unit do you want to replace"
  • Instead, it just shows the tooltip with the cost failure noted in it, and plays the error sound when you click deploy.
  • Thanks to B for reporting.

• The Computronium Factory is now properly called the Computronium Refinery, and is classed as a refinery rather than a factory.
  • This is a funky case kind of, because it's the creation of an intermediate good rather than a final good. So I need to make sure I'm consistent with calling those refineries, except in cases where a good is both a final good and intermediate good in the future (fun).
  • Thanks to Half Phased for reporting.

• Added in extra instrumentation into the map rendering view, to help with hunting down a bug.
  • Thanks to Zeal for the log and repro instructions.

• Fixed a bug where if there was a building POI inside of a larger POI at a cell, then it was checking for the alarm at kind of a mix of both.
  • Split the xml tags so that they can now trigger off one or the other.
  • This prevents the alarms at military base buildings of certain sorts from being in a mixed state of both on and off.
  • Thanks to Cblln and 03noster for reporting.

• Made it so that the prismatic tungsten event can only happen in the larger and midsize POIs -- the ones that are at least a full cell in size, not a tiny outpost.
  • Alarming them properly does not really work on the mini ones, and they don't have appropriate guards, etc.
  • Thanks to Cblln and 03noster for reporting.

• Shelter coordinators, and humans picking out furniture, now both properly show blue outlines, rather than red.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where the normal ability to hold Ctrl and see high-visibility units was not working.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for working.

• Fixed an issue where large vehicles were showing up as kind of behind themselves a bit with the new outlines thing. In general, this is not for large vehicles anyway, so it's not used there anymore.
  • The tooltips about high visibility mode have been updated to note that these only work on smaller vehicles and then human-sized units, but not mechs. Which was always the idea, but nothing in the game said that.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Hardened a per-second background thread method against exceptions that could happen after a lot of buildings were destroyed, and also instrumented it further for if anything like that happens again.
  • Thanks to FroGG2 for reporting.

• Fixed a rather severe issue where if you ever got to zero mental energy, it was immediately blanking out the AP of all of your units. This meant that their gather abilities would not work properly, shorting you resources.
  • Also, if you used your last mental energy of the turn to do Cold Blood, then it was functionally useless, as well.
  • Thanks to veevoir for reporting.

• Unity is having some race condition errors with their version of FMOD, as noted here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/fmod-errors-regarding-subsounds.1510550/
  • There is no known solution for this right now, but it's pretty darn rare to happen, and in the cases where it happens for this game, things should self-correct regardless.
  • So for now, when this exception happens, it is catching it and doing nothing with it, and then trying the sound again, which from current evidence should play fine right afterward. Unity notes that this is some sort of start-timing issue, but there's not a way for me to actually fix their bug in this case. But this should -- knock on wood -- make it invisible and harmless.
  • Thanks to AviKav for the report.

• Fixed the bug where if you were on the city map, and deleted a territory control flag, it would spam errors.
  • Thanks to Thatboi193, Zeal, Wylker, and Lord Of Nothing for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where certain kinds of files in the save and load menus would flicker back and forth every second or so, depending on the sort method if they had identical sort criteria.
  • Also fixed an issue where the sort by name was descending rather than ascending.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Corrected the wrong text being applied as the motivation for your harvester drone, as if it was one of the enemies.
  • Thanks to Lord Of Nothing for reporting.

• Fixed a typo in the word SEcForce in the water fight.
  • Thanks to Wolfier for reporting.

0.548 High Visibility

(Released June 17, 2024)

• Added outlines of units that show through buildings if they are being occluded by buildings. It makes your own units, and npcs of various sorts, easier to find.
  • Also added in the ability to hold the Ctrl key to make all units glow those colors when not being occluded. I still want to refine that a bit more, but it's very helpful when trying to quickly find your units.
  • Thanks to Puffin, Cblln, and lordtrogg for suggesting various elements around this.

• Painstakingly got the outline shaders to work even better. There were a bunch of funky edge cases where they would show various NaN pixel distortions or just not appear at all, because of the nature of the zbuffer not being super precise.
  • I wound up having to make one of the variants (the kind that only shows if the shader is behind something) work on one camera, and the other kind (the kind if you hold Ctrl) show up on a higher camera in the stack, in order to make all of the cases actually work.

• Added a new Use High Visibility Unit Colors option to the accessibility section of the game tab.
  • Normally only shown when you hold the Inspect key. Enemies glow bright red, your units bright gold, semi-allies-or-better bright blue, and guard units and secondary units a dimmer purple.

• Inspect mode now only draws the floors of buildings if you're in either the structure lens or the scavenge lens.

• Vehicles and mechs no longer say "squad of," which was confusing, but now say "crew of," which is actually accurate.
  • Thanks to Cel for suggesting.

• "View Types" were confusingly named, as that is very generic. They have been renamed to "Lenses," since that's something that some other strategy games use lingo-wise, and it's more specific in its meaning.
  • Thanks to Creakit and teo4512 for inspiring this shift.

• Rifle rebalance, Nickelbot-style.
  • The nickelbots are now noted as having "locking arms" that allow them to use some specific rifles that now no other units can use.
    • Other rifles can still be used by the same larger set of units as before.
  • The AN-14 Achilles is now Nickelbot-only. However, it ALSO now has a base damage of 35, rather than -10. So this is a total improvement of 45. This is very very useful in the hands of Nickelbots, which is honestly who this was always intended for. Sorry, Red CombatUnit.
  • The N150 Tactical is also now only for Nickelbots.
    • It has had its range dropped from 30 to 24, and its attack power increased from 15 to 30.
    • This prevents the insane balance problems that it had in the hands of more powerful bulk units, and it also allows you to still set up some bulk nickelbots with a very crazy amount of sniper coverage for your holdings.
  • Thanks to Kenken244, Lord Of Nothing, Strategic Sage, Gloraion, Creakit, EagleShark, and others for the discussion of the sniper rifle balance, and then loads of other people for the nickelbot notes.

Prior Release Notes

After The Transformation