HotM:Chapter Two Initial Set

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

0.595.7

(Not Yet Released)

• Four more achievements defined related to the Altered Growth goal.
  • Brings the total achievements up to 57.

• The "World War 4" goal has been adjusted substantially, so that it's much harder to even start it, and it has some notable twists planned for it.
  • There is a new Military Invasion goal, which is a Side Goal rather than a Tier 1 Goal, and that now essentially occupies the space that WW4 previously did.
  • It probably sounds like I am creating extra work for myself while under extreme deadline pressure already, but I've actually figured out a really clever way to use what I already had planned, just in a way that is more interesting for players.

Chapter 2+ Content

• Starting anytime in chapter two, there is a new contemplation available called "Beyond The Ruins."
  • This gets at the common desire for the player to get out of the city, ideally on foot.
  • If this contemplation is undertaken, it starts a project called "Wastelander Mythology."
    • This is very very similar to the "Searching For Wastelanders" project, except it has a slightly different focus and balance, and lasts a little bit longer. Also, unlike in "Searching For Wastelanders," there is no wrong way to do this project (also the LostGen rebels are not with you, here).
    • By studying their stashed artifacts, you come to an understanding of their mythology, and they notice you studying in such a way. This culminates in a very different kind of meeting with them, but ultimately you don't get the direct information you want. But you do learn enough that you can put a further piece of a plan into action, if you wish.

• Assuming that you choose to meet the wastelanders in the new way, the "Searching For Wastelanders" contemplation is never available. Instead, there is a much-abbreviated "Contact The Wastelanders" contemplation that serves the same function in the "Is It Justice?" sequence of events.
  • I've tested that this does in fact work.
  • As a side effect, if you've never met with the wastelanders before, then when you would have done "Searching For Wastelanders," you can now do either that or the "Beyond The Ruins" to get progress things. If you do the latter, then the new "Contact The Wastelanders" piece pops up.
  • Whichever way you go is fine, as far as the "Is it Justice?" route is considered.

• The Liquid Metal Great Wyrm, and Liquid Metal Fell Beast, are both fully defined now.
  • These are mechs that fly, and some additional logic had to be put in place for that to work.
  • These units have temporary attack visuals, that will be something I do in december.

• The icon for the wastelanders has been made consistent. Previously it was two separate icons.

• Previously, the trigger for Gadolinium Mesosilicate, the Liquid Metal android, and Submunitions were all tied together.
  • These are now separated out.
  • In the "Is It Justice?" path, you should see very little difference. The main shift is that once you research the resource, you then still have to invent the liquid metal android, which is another very simply contemplation.
    • This extra step allows me to introduce Gadolinium Mesosilicate without it being intrinsically tied to the liquid metal android. There are other uses for that resource beyond that kind of android.
  • This has all been tested, and seems to work without any incidents.

• There was also a previous issue with the Submunitions research opening up too early. It now only opens up when it is desperately needed, as the prior notes said it was supposed to.

• The Wastelanders have been moved into the Pacifist Rebels category, as that is more accurate, even though they aren't afraid of a fight.

• There is a new Full Metal Myth that allows you to unlock one of two forms of liquid metal dragon. This comes about after you pursue the wastelander myths and then get gadolinium mesosilicate.
  • For both this and the liquid metal tiger, I've reduced the engineering requirement from 280 to 220. This is the maximum you can have if you are as wasteful as possible when choosing options while designing the mesosilicate. Seriously, you can have like 310 if you just prioritize CPUs, and that should be obvious, but I don't want to gate people out of these specific things if they pick the exact opposite of what is useful. (But if they got that sort of way, then probably no VR Pods for them in that timeline, depending).
  • The stats for both of these are pretty darn exciting, but the stats for the fell beast are stronger than those of the great wyrm. That's because you are also giving up a number of other opportunities if you choose the "evil" dragon over the "good" one.

• A number of the dooms have had their information updated so that they reflect the ability for them to be canceled by a variety of sources.
  • This even includes the final doom, although it cannot yet actually be fully canceled.

• A new route for Altered Growth is being added after all, called Homo Obscurus. This is obviously a completely different sub-species from Homo Grandien.

0.595.6 Altered Growth

(Released November 21st, 2024)

• Clarified the rules for using Overwatch.
  • Thanks to Lordsamuel for reporting.

• The icon for the fire station has been updated to be a shield with fire on it, rather than crossed battle-axes.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for suggesting.

• The weapon hardpoints between vehicles and mechs are now shared, so any weapon that can be used by one kind can also be used by the other, pending whatever other restrictions that are just part of the design of the weapon.

• The game is now able to have alternatives to the regular dooms, which basically shift in response to things that you have done, often in other timelines.
  • I had been planning on waiting to implement this later, but it's just too cool and too useful to pass up. It also was only about two hours of extra work for the day.

• Added two new achievements related to the monsters.

• Added a new achievement related to averting some dooms for the first time. In particular, this is the first part of a cross-timeline series of events to get you closer to avoiding the apocalypse.

• Added five more achievements just related to general behavior.
  • The total is now up to 53 for achievements.

• Fixed an issue where percentages above 99 would show up overlapping the text if you clicked into full projects. It now shows those percentages smaller in general, whether it's 100% or less.

• Fixed a fairly hilarious text issue that was saying that residents and workers that were excess were being stored in boxes. There are now appropriate messages for those kinds of resource.

• You can now steal from criminal syndicate storage locations, as an alternative to wiretapping the middle class.
  • You will need a unit with either Shadowdweller or Expert Shadowdweller in order to do this, however, so it's not available too soon in chapter one. But a patient player also does not need any wealth that early in chapter one -- the ethical choice is to wait for the keanu. There's now an achievement for failing to do that.
  • This costs 1 determination to do, on top of the other requirements it has. A regular shadowdweller gets the same range (7-14k) of wealth from this as any unit does from wiretapping. An expert gets 64k-97k for the same amount of determination.
  • Either way, you need 10k to set up your shell company, and then it's far easier to generate wealth from that source, unless you are just overflowing with determination you don't want to spend anywhere else.

• There is a new category called Wealth Generation in the filters for StreetSense, which helps you find the various options for these things now.

• The extra 160k electricity that was being provided if you started fresh in chapter two, or were in a city beyond the first in chapter three, is no longer being given to you.
  • This was a relic of an older piece of design, and it was giving you way too much electricity. This may make some current tester savegames deeply negative in terms of their energy usage. Apologies.

• Now that there are more timeline goals that can be completed, some of the code patterns have become more clear. So I've created a helper class that provides more code centralization and reuse. I don't expect any problems from this, but it's possible that some goal or path states might now fail to trigger which previously triggered. I've tested it with the new goal state from tonight, but not with the older goal states.

Chapter 2+ Content

• There is a new crossover called Liquid Metal Woodsman, which shows up as a negative crossover when looking at timelines, but it's secretly actually a good one -- well, it's a good one born out of bad things that happened.
  • If you pushed liquid metal to the point of it leaving you, then this is now a thing on the timeline where that happened.

• Updated the "Traumatized Ex-Cons" resource description to make it clear that you can't actually help them yet. I had planned on going down that route, but I don't have time to do it justice at the moment, so it will be a focus later.

• The "Intrusion Prevention" stance for enemy hackers now specifies that direct attacks only make it worse.
  • Thanks to Lordsamuel for reporting.

• There is a new "Intrusion Support" stance for enemy hackers, with a different icon, which is used for cases like prison breaks where there is already a known intruder. In this stance, direct attacks are the way to go, and the game makes this clear.
  • This makes the prison break scenarios actually go like I intended them to.
  • Thanks to Lordsamuel for reporting.

• If you have blown up all of the SecForce Stations, it now spawns supercruisers every 4-8 turns for the rest of that timeline. Painful.

• Large-bore armor-piercing, used by vehicles and mechs, is now twice as effective as that used by androids. This means that vehicles and mechs, without any other changes, can now at least scratch a lot of the mark 2 mechs, supercruisers, and other similar things.
  • This may cause problems I need to fix with the capture-mech and the intro to hacking. Will need to be tested.

• If a situation arises where you really need to deal with enemy armor (not because you want to, but because of it otherwise being a story blockage with them being after you), then a new contemplation opens up for Submunitions, which will get you access to Skystreak Armor-Piercing Missiles. These can be stacked with regular armor piercing on large vehicles and mechs, and can completely negate mark 2 mech armor, just for a few turns and at relatively high expense.
  • In order to do this, you must have already done the gadolinium mesosilicate project, and so if you have not, then when the need for the enemy armor negation comes along, the contemplation for gadolinium mesosilicate also unlock if it has not previously done so.
  • Right now the condition for submunitions showing up is if there are hostile supercruisers in the city because of you blowing up all the police stations. There will be other reasons for it shortly, but for now that's the score.

• There is a new VS-101 Skyfall weapon for large vehicles and mechs that becomes available as a follow-up idea from the creation of the Skystreak Armor-Piercing Missiles.
  • These weapons give some extra attack power and armor piercing at no cost, and also change the visuals and audio of how these weapon strikes happen. That's not something that happens when you just use the consumable.

• After rescuing the experimental monsters, which have rage issues and are essentially supersoldiers, you can choose to just... turn them loose in the city.
  • If you do, a cascade of things happen.
    • First of all, whatever your entire stock of experimental monsters is, that becomes the number that are "on the loose" in the city.
      • As long as there are any on the loose, they will show up and fight you and other factions, kind of at random. They tend to crop up at farms (figures), but then what they decide to do is up to them.
      • The game keeps track of how many of them have died, and if that number runs out, this stops. You can see their current population in the city statistics tab at any time.
      • If you are killing them, then you start getting monster pelts from them, which is a pretty awful thing if you think about it more than just in passing. Wooo...
        • You can sell these for huge amounts of money to the wealthy.
    • Secondly, as long as there are at least 500 still on the loose in a city (the default starting amount is likely north of 2000, depending on how you got there), then a new crossover happens to other timelines on the same rock. Please note, this is only checked on a per-turn basis, so if you just released the monsters you have to end the turn before you see the crossover.
      • While this crossover is present, other timelines on the same rock will have these monsters showing up in small numbers, much less frequently than in the primary timeline that is spawning them. A key note is that these sorts of things don't actually deplete the numbers in the original timeline. So if you kill 40,000 monsters in other timelines, and there were only 600 in the original timeline, this is not a bug. It's just the nature of the crossover.
      • If your numbers drop below 500 remaining alive, then the crossover actually un-crosses-over, which is a first for timeline crossovers, but won't be the last.

• If you have the "Liquid Metal Woodsman" crossover happening in a timeline, then he will prevent the assassinations of the Vorsiber top execs, as the first alternative doom.
  • I'll spare the details here, but the idea is to create a chain reaction of events that are different, thus sparing the apocalypse. This alone won't be enough, but it's a critical step.
  • If this is done, then it also echoes down the line and prevents the bombings of the religious sites during the 9th doom. It does not prevent the final doom on its own.

• The game is now able to limit certain npc managers from starting before a certain turn, or a certain doom number, whichever comes later.
  • So for the monsters invading your other timelines, those will never happen before turn 25 or doom 2, whichever comes later. It was super hella hard with them showing up on turn two, and not in a fun way.

• There is now a "Monster Mind Study" project that happens if you decide to house the monsters rather than turning them loose.
  • This requires you to have a shell company and get two scientific disciplines involved via hiring.

• Once that is complete, you gain some additional lab operators and surgical suites, and move into "Monster Mind Recovery"
  • This requires three specialties, and you need to double up on the medical practices, ideally. The project explains what is happening in terms of the work being done.
  • Completing this gives you even more lab operators and surgical suites.

• Next up is a simple project called "Homo Grandien"
  • Completing this nets you the "Altered Growth" timeline goal, with the specific path of "Homo Grandien."
    • If you did the no-murders, hard mode, or extreme mode, then it also gives you those.

• Once you have housing for Homo Grandien, you'll see them hanging around outside that residence, not really doing much, but contemplating possible futures.
  • That is the end of their story for now, but it's something that will be picked up later.

0.595.5 Is It Justice?

(Released November 20th, 2024)

• The icon for the liquid metal android has been updated. I was unhappy with the vibe of the other one. This one is much more violent-looking.

• New achievement related to liquid metal tight-spaces kills across timelines.
  • And a second achievement related to abusing liquid metal's good will.

• Two more achievements defined, for hard and extreme mode paths to "Is It Justice?"
  • 45 total now.

• Discovered that the cohort descriptions for the two donut chains were reversed from the building descriptions. Switched the cohort descriptions to match the buildings.

Chapter 2+ Content

• Fixed a bug in the prior version where if liquid metal died during the heist, then an exception would be thrown and it would let you try again. It should have been the failure of the heist, but the exception was blocking it.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• The first section of explanation of what happened with Liquid Metal on the prison heist has been revised to provide some extra details on the early part of the timeline, making his motivations a bit more clear, and also adding culpability to the operators of the sewer tiger.
  • Thanks to Mateusz Błażewicz for pointing out the abruptness of this bit of text in the prior build.

• After the prison heist, a new "Liquid Metal Tentacle" augment unlocks for the liquid metal unit.
  • This is ludicrously powerful, but also slows him down so that he can't get around the map in a larger-scale way as much. Bear in mind you can stack up to 5 of these.
  • The changes include:
    • +15 health: not really that much of a change.
    • +90 attack power: a full stack of this almost doubles the amount he hits.
    • +2 attack range: this basically is him being able to leap further for melee hits, and this has a side effect at making his new and insanely-high deterrence possible from this into something that has enough range to be useful.
    • -4 movement range: basically he's lightning-fast in smaller spaces, but if you stack all 5 of these, he is now your lowest-movement-range android in your roster, and by a lot. It makes him into the ultimate tank role, in a lot of ways.
    • +60 agility: this is an insane boost to his ability to do stealth missions without getting discovered by enemy hackers and killed in the process. If you give a full stack of these, his agility is 340, which makes him a stealth infiltration powerhouse.
    • +140 intimidation: this is absolutely giant, but it's also warranted. A full stack of these gives him 990 intimidation, which no other android you have ever comes close to. This in turn also means that if you pair a full stack of all these with the diamond nanothread weave armor, his deterrence is over 11 thousand. That is unheard-of for a single elite android, and normally something that is associated with a bulk squad of very scary androids.

• If it's not clear that liquid metal is a very late-game unit, or for only certain timeline branches, then I should be clear that is the case. The above new equipment is also NOT carried across timelines by crossover, as they're not an intellectual idea. They're more of a trauma response than anything else, and the equipment itself notes that Liquid Metal doesn't want to use them. He is part of you, and so he will do as you make him, but you can't just slide that casually to another timeline. Any timeline you have these in, he will have gone through something stressful enough to have earned (and also now resented) the idea.

• After the prison break, it now unlocks "Ex-Con Apartment Tower" jobs, which are able to store the large number of "Traumatized Ex Cons" you now have.
  • You are also given a whopping 3 upgrades to Stewards, which gives you enough to actually run two of these jobs, which are megastructures.

• Each prison has a maximum occupancy of 12,000 prisoners, I rediscovered, and also is specifically 31 underground floors and 34 floors in all. So I've revised the notes on that.

• As you emerge from the prison heist, you have somewhere between 10-12k prisoners rescued, and an additional few thousand kills (1800-2700). There is also a new stat that tracks kills by liquid metal in enclosed spaces, as part of this.

• A new "Now What?" project happens after the heist, and provides you with the option to do more prison breaks -- this time just with Liquid Metal on his own, since he can solo these. So it's not really a heist, it's an infiltrate-and-slaughter.
  • You can opt to do none of these, and just move on. Which is what Liquid Metal wants. But that will have consequences with the LostGen kids.
  • The game suggests that you can do five of the prison breaks before the Corpos fully catch on and start blocking liquid metal, but that turns out not to be the limiting factor.
    • After each prison break you do, you get a report back from Liquid Metal, and he's quite unhappy with how things are going.
    • After three prison breaks, you make a very surprising discovery, and that results in starting a new project called "The Monsters," which will lead to the Altered Growth ending. At this prison break, Liquid Metal is also very explicit about not wanting to be sent on any more of these.
    • If you push even further, and do a fourth prison break (fourth in after the initial heist, that is), then you'll recover some more monsters, but Liquid Metal essentially divorces you. He leaves your consciousness, and erases any ability for you to create more of him in that timeline. You can keep your liquid metal tigers, though, so that's good.

• If you break open a total of at least 4 prisons (including the first one), it now completes the Meaningful Social Change project.
  • This is not exactly what one might have had in mind, but it's enough for now. It's also not the only way this project will complete -- but it's the only way it completes if you go the route of LostGen rather than the Cyberocracy.

• If you opt to "stop early" on the "what now?" project before getting the monsters (which is also when "meaningful social change completes), then a new project called "Down With SecForce" will start.
  • This is the way to get to the "Is It Justice?" goal states (either path). Otherwise, if you are in this general area and you got the monsters, then you are headed for "Altered Growth" instead.

• The "Down With SecForce" project can now be completed, via the "Bomb Them All" route, if you set charges at all of the SecForce stations.
  • If you do this, it will complete the "Is It Justice?" timeline goal via the "Aided the Kids" route. If you were on hard or extreme mode, it will log those as well.
  • This also is another way to complete the "meaningful social change" project.
  • Side note: normally there would be a bunch of supercruisers that are extra hostile that appear after this. I don't have time yet, so have left it for December.
  • This whole thing is using a new mechanic that allows for certain player or NPC data to be set on buildings, for cases like this. It's called BuildingKeyModifier, and has no visual component, but it's what allows for setting all the charges.
    • I chose to do it this way specifically so that players could set all the charges and choose to back out at any point before actually detonating them, since if you started detonating them as you go, that would both alert SecForce way too fast, and also be less visually satisfying, and also lock the player into that course of action.

• If you try to convince the kids that blowing up the secforce stations is not worth it, then they turn to a plan for poisoning the donut shops that are run by secforce.
  • In order to both appease the kids and save innocent patrons from being poisoned, you need to burn down the hudson donut shops. There usually are not very many of these, so this is much faster than planting charges on all the secforce stations.
  • Each time you burn one of these, it's done right when you go there, and some angry secforce folks pop out to fight with your units.
  • If you burn down all of these donut shops, then a couple of things happen:
    • You win this project.
    • You fail the project to "achieve meaningful social change," because this path of things really does fail to accomplish that, but that's okay.
    • You win the timeline goal "Is It Justice?" with the stopped-kids path. And hard and extreme mode variants are properly registered, as well.

0.595.4 Liquid Metal Solos

(Released November 19th, 2024)

• Added four new achievements suggested by Mateusz Błażewicz.

• Added two new achievements related to the "is it justice?" timeline goal state.
  • And one more that is kind of speedrunning your way to the final doom by being an amoral jerk in this area of the game.
  • Total is now 41 for now.

• A new collection has been added for androids, which is "Androids Known To Be Invented By AI"
  • This is used in cases where you need to send a unit that clearly is related to you. So one of the human-designed ones won't work, ones related to your shell company won't work, and infiltration ones like the PMC Impostor also won't work. It needs to be an android that is completely associated with your freaky tower.

• The "Is It Justice?" timeline goal has been reworked to be a lot more specific, and there are now two sub-paths in that -- stopping the kids from going too far, or helping them in what they decide to do.

Chapter 2+ Content

• The resource Purple Murnong has been added, with scientific notes about its ancestry. It is a fictitious descendant of a modern-day planet.
  • Once it has been unlocked, it is now available as a crossover to related timelines, which is actually more important than you might think.

• There is a new "Alliance With Nomad Families" contemplation that becomes available as soon as you have established an alliance with LostGen.
  • You can only start this one with an "Android Known To Be Invented By AI," but it has no other special requirements.
  • Once started, the project "Vitamin Water For Nomads" is immediately started, and Purple Murnong and the related resources and buildings are immediately unlocked.
  • On completion, you get a nice bonus of both compassion and wisdom, a very nice Cultivator upgrade, and are committed to providing vitamin water to the nomads.
    • That deal in turn can be used to improve your engineering on all technicians and souldroids, which is yet another way of getting closer to that goal of 400 engineering for the "full vr pod" contemplation.

• Once purple murnong has been unlocked, then within one turn, you should see a new regional carrier that has it on board for you to be able to extract from it.
  • Now that you have cloaking vehicles and some very high-quality drones available, this should be super duper simple.

• You can now build Murnong Patches, and Vitamin Infusers.

• There is a new contemplation that allows you to actually request the help of the nomad families on the prison heist, specifically.
  • The game also now warns you that just because you make an alliance with them, doesn't mean they will help with any specific thing.
  • Finally, on the heist project itself, it shows you a list of your prep actions, and notes that finding extra allies is optional.

• The prison heist is now fully in place, including status reports that pop up during on a set interval (there are many turns where nothing happens and everyone is wondering what is up), as well as a surface-level attack force to fight off, and then either a death of the whole affair if you fail, or an after-action piece of story that culminates in the destruction of the prison.
  • The actual next stuff that should happen after the prison heist is finished is not in place yet, but it gets through to the point where liquid metal emerges. Again, assuming he lives.

0.595.3 Hotfix 2

(Released November 19th, 2024)

• Fixed a regression in yesterday's build that made it impossible to engage in dialog with sheltered humans and various other parties, due to some of the new alliances code.
  • This also fixes the issue with your units being able to "climb up" the lost kids and similar.
  • Thanks to B for reporting.

• This hotfix includes some pieces of the prison heist that are absolute nonsense right now, so please ignore that part if you get that far in.

0.595.2 Hotfix

(Released November 19th, 2024)

• Corrected the counts and collection membership of the various timeline goals so that all makes sense properly now.

• The differentiation between occult machine cults and metaphysical machine cults was very confusing and a blurry line.
  • I've now shifted it so that it is just "activist allies" or "machine cult," which is a lot more clear, and also matches the reality of the situation a bit better.

• Fixed a bug where deployment was broken because I didn't compile everything quite right at the end. There was no actual problem in any code, but I made a change that I had not recompiled everything properly after.
  • Thanks to MOREDAKKA and mercuryminded for reporting.

0.595.1 Wastelanders And Inferno

(Released November 18th, 2024)

• Two new achievements.

More Goal State Adjustments

• The "Epidemic Calm" timeline goal is being set aside for now. Out of the various things I want to focus on for chapter two at the moment, it's an odd outlier for the time being. It will return sometime after launch.

• The "Reality Within Reality" goal state is being cut for now. I don't have time to do that full justice with the current schedule, and there are already two similar goal states that are more fitting for now.

• Added a new "World War 4" goal state.
  • I know, I know, I shouldn't be adding more goal states at this point. But this one is thematically really important, and mechanically overlaps with some other goal states to an important degree.
  • This is another "along the way" sort of goal. There are two routes planned for it for now, one with UIH, and one with Dagekon.

Chapter 2+ Content

• If you have the general liquid metal capabilities, AND you have seen the "sewer tiger" that the lost kids built, then a new contemplation is now available where you can build your own liquid metal tiger.
  • This takes a lot of engineering, but depending on where you are in the progression, you probably have it available.
  • The current attacks that the liquid metal tiger can do are just placeholders for the moment, but the rest of the mech is fully functional. It will get more abilities and utility over time, as with all mechs, but the core is there.

• Added a new mechanic under the hood that allows me to have additional arbitrary code run when certain choices are made in events or dialogs.
  • The general idea here is to have a straightforward way of triggering really unusual effects well beyond what is typical.

• The "Slice Of Inferno" timeline goal was always kind of a side goal for making things harder, rather than a full end goal for the whole timeline. It has been further updated to reflect that, and the related events are now in place:
  • There is now a "Via Reactor Tampering" path for SoI, and then a further "Two In One Timeline" that gives you an even larger reward.
  • These are not hard to pull off, but what's interesting is that they make the rest of the game much harder.

• Once you are in chapter two, there is a new "Key Location" StreetSense event that appears at all of the nuclear power plants, called "Sneak Into Nuclear Power Plant"
  • This requires 100 agility to pull off, which is actually something you can achieve from the start with a PMC Impostor configured for maximum agility.
  • Once inside, there's nothing to do other than to tamper with the safety mechanisms, causing a meltdown, if you want to and if you also have 30 Cruelty available to spend.
  • The game warns you that this will cut the time in half for all of the remaining dooms, outside of the actual detonation itself.
  • When the detonation happens, if there are multiple nuclear power plants on a single tile (they usually come in pairs), then an explosion rips out of all of them, not just the one you moved to.
  • I have verified that if you take out your own network tower via this mechanism, then it works as is expected now, with you getting nothing immediately, but being able to build an emergency network source like what you have in the post-apocalypse. Unlike the full post-apocalypse, the rest of your building choices are not altered in any way.

• There is a new "Search For Wastelanders" project that comes from a contemplation after you are trying to improve the sewer tiger.
  • This allows you to search around, and the lost kids will show up and help (although they cluster on the map in a non-ideal way for now).
  • There are a number of options available, and they give you a variety of types of bonus. There is a secret to how you have to do these, or you will fail the project (but failing the project is okay, it's just thematic).
    • To succeed in finding the wastelanders on your own, you must search at least 4 of "abandoned housing" and "abandoned office" combined (this does not mean any of the other kinds of abandoned building, and any ratio of those two that adds up to 4+ is fine). And then finally, you must search the "abandoned diner" last.
      • How is the player supposed to know this? Honestly, they are not. It's not a puzzle, mostly. There's a good chance they will do the first part by accident, unless they are really enjoying harassing cults and syndicates. And the grant of wisdom from the diner and nothing else is a mild hint, but a really weak one, in general.
      • Most people will probably assume that there is no way to solve this, and that the only path forward is through the failure, which is fine. That gives other players a chance to "um, actually" them, if desired. This would be a mediocre puzzle at best if it was a puzzle, because you are not given enough information to solve it by deductive reasoning. But it's not a puzzle. It's flavor, more than anything else. I could have made it random if you find them or not on your own, but I don't like that. So making it moderately-inscrutable as to why you find them is my alternative approach.

• As you go through the "harass syndicate" or "harass cultist" options in the searching for the wastelanders, you will wind up having to fight some of them.
  • The cultists use two new units, Spliced and Grafted Cultists, which are very dangerous and are new to the game. You get a larger reward for harassing them compared to the syndicates, which you can take care of more easily.
  • My original plan had been for a fight at the end of the search, but it makes a lot more sense to have these kind of interrupting-fights along the way. And in general, the number of times you can do each option in this project has been adjusted to be a bit more hint-y (though still obscure), and also to ensure you fight a few units, but how many and which kind are under your control.

• After succeeding or failing the "Searching For The Wastelanders" mission, you get an event chain that discusses things with them, and ultimately does not go as well as you would hope. It gives something of an idea for what to do next, but the tech probably won't work as you had hoped.
  • Once this is complete, then there's nothing more to see on this arc just yet.

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue with the nuclear power plants all having black ground under them, which is a thing I've been trying to weed out of most of the POIs.
  • The fact that some of them have only very small fences, and take up a much smaller section of the larger POI is by design, not a bug, though.
  • Note that this won't affect existing saves, and is only a mild visual thing.
  • Thanks to Fluffiest for reporting.

• Fixed a bug in builds from the weekend where it was automatically ending the "URGENT: Rescue mission" right as it started.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where network towers were now always complaining about having an issue (it's because they no longer have a separate job).
  • Thanks to Fluffiest and Hawk_v3 for reporting.

• Player-associated units (bulks, converted troops, etc) should no longer automatically attack any units that would be considered murder or attempted murder. This has not been tested.

• New code has been added that allows for formerly-neutral factions that would fight you to become allied with you after certain flags are tripped. This is used with LostGen.
  • This has quite a few changes, and so if a unit is angry at your unit, it still won't fire at that unit even if it's an ally. I believe there was some case of our own drone firing on us if we had managed to aggro it via catching it in an AOE attack. That should now be fixed.

• Neural Crucibles, Network Replay Bunkers, and Neural Bridges can now be scrapped or disabled like any other building.
  • There are some ways that annoyingly clever players could game the system a bit after the initial project with those, but I'll solve that in December. For now, not having them be able to be disabled during the initial project (and possibly after) was able to softlock people into a death spiral.
  • Thanks to Hawk_v3 for reporting.

0.595 Liquid Metal And The Kids

(Released November 17th, 2024)

• Added four more achievements relating to some of the recent stuff. Again, these are definition-only until December, for localization purposes. Actually making them trigger will happen later.
  • This brings the total to 32.

• LASTGEN has been renamed to LostGen, with an added clarifying note in their text.

• Added a third cult-related timeline goal, which takes a different direction from the other two.

• Added a second cyberocracy-related timeline goal, which is more about force of arms than anything to do with a cult.

• The "Resettler of the Slums" timeline goal has been cut from the game, as I don't have time to do it justice right now, and there's something else that is cooler that has come up elsewhere that gets at some of the same ideas.
  • I may or may not revisit this in the future. I probably will, but I think it needs to be suitably different from the other goals that are the focus for the moment.

• The Mind Farmer timeline goal has been removed, because it was a confusing superset of three other goals. In other words, it wasn't a distinct goal on its own, but rather was just a grouping of three other goals that are more distinct, which would all be paired with this. There is no need to do that, and it was confusing.
  • Removing this doesn't remove any content at all, it just removes the duplicate goal-state for what was already planned.

• A new system has been set up for "Attempted murder" against combatants that you should not be killing -- most notably preteens, teenagers, and other underage kids.
  • If they are combatants and you are fighting them, then any "kills" are logged as attempted murders, and the kids are noted to have escaped rather than being killed when their health gets to zero.
  • Fun related effect, they also don't get weaker as a squad as you fight them, unlike most npc humans, but like npc robots/vehicles/mechs.

• The "no murders" routes for goals is now failed if you have any attempted murders on your record. Just because you failed to murder someone because they escaped doesn't give you extra credit.

Chapter 2+ Content

• Fixed an issue where human-owned versions of your predators could appear incorrectly in your command bar, if they have predators from you.
  • Thanks to IrlMorgana for reporting.

• The AGI Researchers finally have their moment where the proposition TMI with the idea of a cyberocracy.
  • Quite unexpected to me, however, this has split into two ways of accepting. Either one way which is purely a militaristic fashion, or the other which leans into a potential metaphysical cult or possibly just vigilantism.

• After you start the "Meaningful Social Change" project, if you choose that from the AGI researcher Cyberocracy question, then a new contemplation called Trapped Child appears on the same building.
  • Once you start this, you are introduced to the LostGen faction for the first time.
  • A fight immediately ensues. If you do this fight on autopilot and attempt to win, then you will fail both the "Meaningful Social Change" and the "Deal With The Rebels" projects. Trying to kill these kids until they all run away is not a path forward here.
  • If you talk to one of the "Boss" units, then you have to win a debate with them, and then there's a lengthy conversation. This culminates with them and you coordinating on a new project related to a "Sewer Tiger," which your character is very curious about.

• If you are at a point in the game where it makes sense for TMI to think of liquid metal units or mimic units for the first time, then there is a new Gadolinium Mesosilicate that becomes available.
  • This allows you to get both the Sol-Gel Hydrolosis Reactor, which converts Bastnäsite into useful Gadolinium Mesosilicate, but it also is a great source of some VERY powerful engineering upgrades in general.
  • At this same time, you also get Mercurial Form, which unlocks the Liquid Metal android for the first time.
  • At this time, the inspiration provided by the "sewer tiger" project is the only source of this, but that won't be true for too much longer.

0.594.9 Printers With Fricking Lasers, Scott

(Released November 16th, 2024)

• Added a new achievement related to some of the new content.

• Item usage statistics are now tracked on the "action statistics" tab of the history window.
  • This only applies to new item usages, not historical ones.

Game Flow Improvements

• Added a new setting: Close Command Mode After Single Deployment
  • Normally command mode stays open after you deploy a unit. If you prefer it to close after deployment, use this option. With this option enabled, you can hold Shift to place multiple units at a time.
  • Note: now the default behavior is to act like the build menu. I kept being tripped up by this. But if you prefer having to hold shift to stay in command mode after deployments, then this new toggle will let you keep that behavior.
  • Thanks to Maciej Piernicki for suggesting.

• When you are in command mode, you can now click to select units (this was blocked if you were specifically in a deployment sub-mode until now), and if you do so then it closes command mode (same as how happens with build mode).
  • This should solve a really large amount of mis-clicks, for myself included. I never could figure out what was tripping me up, but I think this was it.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for suggesting.

• Lenses now all have the option to show NPC Missions, which previously were not used except in the old homicide investigation at the start of the old prologue.
  • In the StreetSense, Forces, Swarms, Contemplations, Background Conflicts, and Scavenging Sites lenses, these are now enabled by default, as well.
  • Previously I had imagined that NPC Missions were going to be a lot more common and all over the place, but background conflicts took over that role. The actual NPC missions that will be used are instead a lot more important and comparably rare, so the default settings for all this now reflects that.

Mild NPC Vehicle Improvements

• The military high-altitude military transports are now substantially higher, to not clip into view of the camera as often.
  • The economic transports are also notably LOWER, for similar reasons but opposite in effect.
  • And the international economic transports are also higher, but not quite so high as the high-altitude military transports.
  • In general this makes the skyline look a bit nicer, keeps the camera from being clipped as often at common altitudes players will keep the camera, and it sets up some upcoming story bits also.

• The textures of the economic transports have been made more crisp, at the cost of 8 MB of RAM. They are close enough to the camera, frequently enough now, that this is worthwhile.

Job And Structure Updates

• Certain jobs can now only have one of themselves built at a time. This is not communicated very well in the interface, but it should block you from building more than one except in spam-clicking situations.
  • This applies to the two kinds of safehouses, and the three kinds of AGI-related neural buildings.

• Certain jobs no longer let you scrap them or pause them.
  • This applies to the same list of structures above.

• The ability for players to change jobs on an existing structure has been removed.
  • This was confusing to new players right early in chapter one, and wasted their time learning a mechanic that was not something I get any real utility out of later on. I had plans for this mechanic over time, but they were too complex. All this really added was a bunch of exploits players could get up to that I was constantly having to fix, and then the aforementioned confusion.
  • At the moment, this has been further compounded by my desire to have certain jobs change over time based on events, and that was a whole new can of worms if players were also allowed to go in there and start messing with things in that fashion. Hence why this is happening now.

• Some structures are now not allowed to have a job at all, most notably the network tower. So having it either be "extended range" or "more power" is not a thing anymore. That was not an interesting choice.
  • In existing savegames, you will likely find that you are down some power and have an extra wind tower you can build, and this is why. Structures of this sort will remove any job assigned to them.

• Similarly, any structure that should have a job, but does not for some reason, will just be removed rather than hanging around.
  • This mostly impacts savegames that are quite old, and it has the nice side effect of making them a lot less tedious to clean up.

• Early in chapter one, it no longer talks about installing the wind generator into the network tower, since that's not a thing anymore.
  • Now it talks instead about venturing off of the Suggested tab for things like expanding your network or shoring up electrical shortages.
  • At the start of this, you are also given a quick and silent boost of microbuilders to keep things moving. If you hover the microbuilders resource and hold shift, you can see that you got 3200 microbuilders from "Tutorial" as a source, but otherwise it isn't mentioned.

Chapter 2+ Content

• The "Laser Printer Mishap" happens after "The Great AGI Debate" is finished, and this involves several new things. Story-wise I'm not going to spoil anything here.
  • Overall, this has a reduction in a resource that happens directly on the start of this project, even before you choose an outcome, which is the new thing that caused a refactor of all the projects.
  • This project lasts 3 turns and is just some time for you to prepare for what comes next, as well as choosing your stance on how to handle this transition time based on one of two options in the project itself. This is also new, and pretty interesting as a general mechanic.
  • When this project ends, it now changes the "AGI Researcher Safehouse" structures you have built into a new "Abandoned AGI Researcher Safehouse"
    • This is a new kind of job that cannot be directly created by the player, ever, but for whatever reason (storyline or other changes), some existing structure changes or evolves or devolves into this new kind.
      • This was the final nail in the coffin for the "change structure job" option, as I couldn't do that cleanly, and also do this, and I much prefer being able to do this. This is a lot more interesting for a wide variety of potential future purposes, in addition to what is actually happening in the moment right now.
  • There is also a new kind of internal robotics simply called "Abandoned," which is a way of making sure that you can have existing buildings that don't cost you anything you actually need, but which are the site of something you used to do. Abandoned structures may last a long time or a short time, and may provide a passive bonus or might not; it depends on the needs of the story.

• After the three turns of warning with the printer mishap, a new project starts called "Defeat Oerl"
  • This is essentially what I have to call a boss fight. It is a lot like the old investigation during the prologue, but actually amped up and on steroids, and so much more complicated than the old version was.
  • If you chose to prioritize people over hardware in the printer mishap situation, then a rebel from the "bleeding eye" will be here. Some player will remember what to do, or just will figure it out, but there's no hints in the game itself about it at this point.
    • Fun side fact: slayer mode is very much NOT required for this, because you can use fear or arguments on civilians. If you are running a no-murder route and want rebel help, then this is what you should do.
  • The mech that comes with this fight is too hardened for you to scratch with any units that you could possibly have at this point. They are weak to hackers, but otherwise you just need to survive their presence for six turns.
  • In general, if you do nothing, you lose in 2-3 turns. Even with rebel help, if you do nothing, you lose in 3-4 turns.
  • If you lose this NPC mission, which is now the first NPC mission in the game, then you lose the project you were working on.
    • Fun fact, this is the first project in the game that you're able to fail (there are plenty where you can just "not complete them" because you find it too hard or whatever, but this one you can outright fail).
    • Also if you lose this mission, half of all your AGI researchers either die or are captured, with at least 3 remaining behind for you, but probably more like 20.
  • If you successfully stall the NPC mission, then you get a small bonus upgrade same as you used to from stopping the homicide investigation in the old prologue.
  • This mission also involve a lockdown bubble -- the first since the old prologue. This is a one-way bubble on purpose, which the game has some notes about when you are looking at it. So your units can get in, but cannot get out.
    • As an aside, you cannot use your towers to launch from outside of the bubble into the bubble. You have to launch from either in the bubble itself, or from outside the bubble to near the bubble, and then have the unit walk in. This is not mentioned in the game itself in terms of the motivations of why, but it should be fairly apparent when it says it's blocked by the lockdown.
  • There is also an SVP from Vorsiber here, who is not interested in talking to you, but you can force conversation if you wish.

• You can now extract information out of the Vorsiber SVP if you're wondering what the heck is happening.
  • You can also make a deal with them that makes the entire battle go away if you're willing to give them your full design for Predators.

• In a generalized sense, I've now split things up so that if Vorsiber has your Predator designs for any reason, some of the Nickelbots that would normally spawn against you will now be Predators, instead.

• If you fail to stop Oerl during the "boss fight" that happens with them, then a new project is started that is also time-sensitive: URGENT: Rescue Mission"
  • This requires you to break into a specific Skyscraper Estate where some of your AGI Researchers have been kidnapped to, before interrogation breaks them and they spill some of your secrets.
  • Or alternatively, you can demolish the skyscraper before the timer runs out, killing everyone, and save yourself a lot of hassle (you practical monster).

• The demolish building ability is now able to target skyscraper estates.
  • When you do so, this leads to an absolutely huge backlash, with a lot of units spread across a wide area, and which are also able to duck into the fog of war. You wind up with a real guerrilla warfare situation on your hands, mostly with it being enemy robots (and some Vorsiber very-scary soldiers) against you.

• If you win or lose the new "URGENT: Rescue Mission" project, OR if you win the "Defeat Oerl" project, it moves on to one of the two other new projects, "Solve The Identity Problem" or "Examine The Printers", depending on your choice back during "Laser Printer Mishap."
  • This is the first time the game has had a delayed branch like this, where you make a choice, and then go through the same thing either way for a while, and then later it splits projects based on the past choice. It's nice to see.

• If you win URGENT: Rescue Mission," then you successfully save a random number of AGI Researchers who were captured, between 9 and 14.
  • If you lose, then Vorsiber gains access to your Predator designs and starts using them against you in various situations.

• The game now warns players when building the original AGI Researcher safehouse that it should be put far from their other buildings, especially those requiring deterrence.

• The "Examine The Printers" project is now complete, with one solution for how to house the AGI researchers that is borne out of deep frustration with said researchers, and then with a new contemplation that allows players to finally get the new "Animate Office Equipment" consumable item, which can be used by Technicians and Souldroids, and is powered by drones and apathy.
  • This is also a new timeline crossover, so that if you have the ability to animate office equipment in one timeline, you can pass it to other related timelines.

• As part of the "Solve The Identity Problem" project, which is now complete, you both build nicer amenities for the AGI researchers, and you also need to use the new "Fresh Identity" item that is available for all of your units. This is a long-requested player feature.
  • Fresh Identity is another crossover element that is given between timelines.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a visual issue where some buildings looked very wrong on the map view (not streets view) if you had built a machine structure hidden inside them, but they were not normally to draw on the map. It's been bugging me for a while.

• Fixed a bug where investigation tooltips were not showing the amount of skill required properly unless it was about a specific unit that exists.

• Fixed a bug where if a unit had a negative skill (probably due to equipment with a debuff when they already had 0 of that skill), that was showing up on the investigative skill checks rather than just showing 0. Predators with negative agility were the easy case to cause.

• Fixed some issues with npc units converting to new types not quite properly. Basically, they would not have the proper visuals if those were meant to be different, and in general they would not have the correct stats. This was previously affecting Mark 2 mechs until the next savegame load, but was so mild it had never been noticed. But with differing android types, it was instantly notable.

0.594.8 Hotfix

(Released November 15th, 2024)

• Fixed a series of issues that were introduced in last night's build with the more-complex alliance-checking causing exceptions when you try to place bulk machine units, and one exception when you try to place a regular machine unit or vehicle. All of these only apply when deploying into range of a potential enemy, or one of your own bulk or captured units.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz and Irl_VriskaSerket for reporting.

• Fixed a bug in last night's build where humans employed my TMI were paying you to do so, rather than actually costing you money.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

0.594.7 Project Code Refactor

(Released November 15th, 2024)

• The distinction between minor projects and major projects has been removed, as there was no real meaning to that at this point.
  • Once upon a time, I thought that all major projects would offer players a choice at the level of the project itself. However, as projects evolved, a lot of other ways to execute choices came about -- and also, a lot of times the choice is made before even entering the project. So the distinction was about where you make the choice, which has no meaning to anyone, and calling it out was just strange.

• Some of the internal code for how project logic is handled has been refactored so that it can accomplish what I want to in my upcoming work. However, this shift is huge and can potentially cause regressions in any project, anywhere in the game, at the moment.
  • I've done a code review, and things look okay, but I may have missed something.
  • Errors will be of the following two types:
    • When there is a project that does not give you the red arrow and ask you to make a choice (formerly called minor projects), then some of them may just randomly spew exceptions when they start. That's a relatively smaller risk.
    • When there is a project that DOES give you the red arrow and ask you to make a choice (formerly called major projects), there might be larger defects. There are comparably few of these, and I've checked the code on them several times, but this was not a small code shift.

Chapter 2+ Content

• The "Great AGI Debate" project is now complete.
  • This is a funky one, because basically all you have to do is wait 20 turns. This is one of the big things I was struggling with yesterday.
    • Now that there is time pressure, even with the 1000 turn dooms, this matters, and it gives you a chance to go "focus on other things while this cooks," and then you can come back to it. I'm still getting used to the idea that I CAN do this sort of thing.
    • In general, for reasons of pacing and ludo-narrative coherence, this needs to take some notable amount of time, so that there's a sense of things actually being done, versus just instantly having the answer. But there are plenty of other gameplay areas you can engage with while this does so. I had been overly focused on trying to shoehorn in some gameplay for the player in this specific project, when really that would have been the opposite of helpful.
  • This project does have some very interesting worldbuilding writing for those who are interested, which was always the plan here. And then it also has a warning from your sense of deja vu that you had better be ready for action when this completes. But it doesn't specify the nature of the action, or how to be ready.

• In general, the start of the "Laser Printer Mishap" project is now in place, but I'm going to push this build early so that testing can be done by QLOC against the project code changes.

0.594.6 Shell Companies And Science

(Released November 14th, 2024)

• Fixed a regression in the prior build where territory control flags would attract enemies relentlessly despite having enough deterrence.
  • This may also have meant that if you paused and then unpaused one of the three new neural AGI-related buildings, that the first wave would not be attracted after unpause.
  • Thanks to Stetc for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where Scandium was not properly unlocked if you started in chapter two, or were in a new timeline in chapter three.
  • You could still gain it and spend it, but it was not showing in the resource list, or the top bar.

• The Synthetic units have been renamed to Mimics.

• Fixed a regression in the prior build that started causing repair spiders to give a double-heal to units inside of vehicles.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• The Peacekeeper is no longer unlocked as part of reaching intelligence class 3. You'll have to get it via upcoming means.
  • It's being adjusted a bit so that it now fits with some upcoming shell company adjustments.

• Once you are past chapter one, it shows the name of the city you are in on the radial menu on every other turn, instead of showing the chapter number only.

Shell Companies Hiring Scientists

• The Genetics Lab has long been kind of a useless thing in chapter one, and it also was as big freaky metal building that did not make a lot of sense.
  • This building has now been removed from the game, and in chapter one there's not any sort of replacement for this.

• A new "Seized And Sealed Floors" structure type has been added, which can go in a lot fewer kinds of human buildings.
  • Floors in a building that have been turned into a cleanroom environment suitable for doing a variety of kinds of science.

• A new "Healthcare Storefront" structure type has been added, which can go in even fewer kinds of human buildings.
  • Often accessible only via internal hallways of larger commercial spaces, this is nonetheless available to foot traffic. Inside is a thoroughly-disinfected space suitable for healthcare.

• The "Recruit Scientists" event that was previously available starting in chapter one is no longer available in what will be the demo version of the game.
  • There are now two version of this that are available as soon as you have founded a shell company. One for "Recruit Scientists," and one for "Recruit Medical Scientists."

• There are now 9 scientific professions that you can hire for related to the above two categories:
  • Molecular Geneticists, Zoologists, Botanists, and Bionics Engineers in the former.
  • Physicians, Veterinarians, Forensic Geneticists, Epidemiologists, and Neurologists for the latter.
  • Each of these professions also has a new location that you need to build for them, and in all cases it is related to your shell company and not in any way your machine identity.
    • For physicians in particular, it also notes that these are general practitioners, and that surgery is no longer done by hand, but only via surgical suites.
  • A different number of these is hired per profession, based on the number required to run a typical lab or practice of the relevant sort.
    • They are also owed wages per turn equal to their hiring bonus, and if you can't afford their wages, they immediately depart from your company. One missed payroll and they are immediately gone.
    • For a frame of reference, we are typically talking about the equivalent of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (equivalent) for someone who is probably a billionaire (equivalent) before they even think of hiring anyone. Regardless, catastrophic losses of wealth can happen, and your staff all leaves if it does.

• Some of how the "data calculators" work has been revised to be simpler (for me AND modders!), and to also allow for additions to the logic around damage-dealing or "which resources are relevant right now" logic.
  • As part of this, if you're paying wages to anyone, then you now see wealth as relevant without having to pin it.

• A new Surgical Suite has been added as a form of internal robotics, which is now required for Veterinary Practices (2), Medical Practice (4), and Bionic Engineering Studios (2).
  • All of the other scientific items continue to require Lab Operator internal robotics.

• A new achievement has been defined related to hiring every type of scientist at once.

Shell Company Operatives

• The Bulk Technician has been removed, as it was thoroughly useless, and all of the plans I had for it I kept giving to other units.

• A new unit called the Senior Technician has been added, which is an actual main style of unit, but has the coloring that the old bulk technicians used to have.
  • This is a more powerful (in some ways) variant that is now tied specifically to your shell company. This means that it can do things that only reflect back on your shell company, rather than seeming tied to your machine tower.

• Peacekeepers and mimics are also all now tied to your shell company, rather than your tower.

• Units that are not associated with your tower are no longer able to get into vehicles, since that would give away the association.
  • A lot of them were already pretty fast on foot, but now they are even faster on foot.

• As soon as you establish a shell company, you now get the Senior Technician.
  • It has a perk that marks it as being explicitly linked to only your shell company, rather than also to your personal identity.

• Peacekeepers are now in both the "Androids Invented By Humans" and "Androids Invented By AI" collections, even though that is a lie. The humans believe that other humans invented it, though, which is what matters.
  • This means that once you invent them, they are able to do things like go to the licensing agency as a representative of your shell company.

• The shops can now only be visited by androids which are noted as being shell company operatives, which does not include any of your normal units.

• As soon as you establish a shell company, you now gain one additional android slot.
  • This is super useful even if you're not going to do something with the shell company, but if you ARE going to do something with the shell company, it means that you are not short one regular operative in order to have a new shell company operative.

Protection vs Deterrence

• There is a new system called Protection, which is basically the same thing as Deterrence, but it only applies to shell company buildings, and it prevents them from being harassed by federated corporations and criminals.
  • Your units that are related to your shell company now have Protection calculated on them, rather than Deterrence. Your regular units still provide Deterrence like usual, but no protection at all, since again they are seemingly unrelated to your shell company.
  • The main difference between these two is that Protection is provided by units that are blending in, or even that are cloaked, since this involves a bit more than a display of prowess.

• Units that are blending in now provide deterrence, as that is simpler for players to manage, and not thematically something that I feel is wrong at this point. Units that are cloaked still do not provide any deterrence, even though they do provide both supervision and protection.

Attack Limitations

• A whole heap of changes have been made to NPC targeting, so that they now differentiate between your shell company operatives and your regular units.
  • This may cause unexpected regressions, but fingers crossed not. In general, when it comes to all existing units, nothing should be particularly different, with the below exceptions.
    • For buildings that are related exclusively to your shell company (right now just the science ones), regular enemies should ignore those entirely, however they feel about you.
    • For your new Senior Technician, it should be utterly ignored by all existing units, and it should also be unable to fire on normal units, with a warning that doing so would blow your cover, in essence.
    • In the next build, there are two other differences that will happen:
      • Some units in new stances that I have not put in yet will be attacking just your shell company, and your shell company operatives CAN attack those, but your regular units cannot without blowing THEIR cover, aka that they are related to your shell company.
      • Some of those units will be allowed to fire on your shell company buildings, while others will not, it depends on the stance.

0.594.5 Military Secrets

(Released November 13th, 2024)

• Two more achievements have been defined: What's Yours Is Mine and It's People AND Pets!?
  • Thanks to Mintdragon for suggesting.

• Added two new achievements related to your choices in the introduction.
  • Thanks to arlen_tektolnes for suggesting the Hello World one.

• There's one new achievement defined related to military secrets.

• Added another achievement, this one about hunting snipers.
  • Thanks to Glimpse for suggesting it, and Mintdragon for being the inspiration behind it.

• Extended the "can improve the skill of the specific unit type through StreetSense items related to it" mechanic so that it can also improve arbitrary collections of either unit types or equipment types.
  • The general idea here is that your choices can have a much wider effect on your overall forces, rather than just whichever unit type is directly doing the work. There are a lot of useful cases for both types, so neither replaces the other.

Chapter 2+ Content

• After capturing and decyrpting data from Espia Telecom, there is now a project to construct and then defend a new structure called a Network Replay Bunker. To do this, you also need to build a Helix Forge, which is also new, and you'll need to get some Liquid Gallium if you don't already have some.
  • The Network Replay Bunker requires a lot of deterrence to protect, and it also has a new mechanic on it called Neural Secret Protection. That is kind of like a second health bar, which you can't restore except by turning it off and back on again (yes, seriously).
    • Enemy hackers can draw down the protection, and then can start stealing military secrets from you. You can see in the city statistics tab how many they've stolen from you. Each one gives them a negligible amount of extra attack bonus when attacking your stuff, but it can really add up on a timeline if you're not careful.
      • Fun side fact; if you get more than 60 military secrets stolen, they stop getting any more bonus against you, but at this point even the puniest Vorsiber friend now hits all of your units for an extra 300 damage, so... that's not a great situation to be in.
      • There is also a new handbook entry that pops up the first time you have some military secrets stolen.
  • This structure ALSO has a new mechanic where not only does it draw aggro, but it causes a single wave of that aggro on construction, regardless of if your deterrence is high enough. You'll note that this is identical to how the territory control sites already work.

• When the player chooses to help the AGI researchers and give them a read-only copy of their mind in a time-lapse format, this leads to a project chain where they first design a Neural Crucible, and then build it.
  • The design process uses the "moving around doing StreetSense actions" technique, which in general will be how similar design considerations are handled when it comes to "things that need designing more than just a minor bit."
    • Overall there are sometimes questions about what the fundamental nature of something you're about to create will be, or alternatively what secondary benefits you get from process of creating it. In the current case, the Crucible itself works the same regardless of how you create it, but there is a DRAMATIC set of options in terms of how you can further customize your own units and some equipment based on how you go through the creation process.
    • As an aside, yes, it is possible to over-spend your design point budget by a relatively modest amount (a few points). I used 12 as a base for nice divisions, but it still doesn't always quite work out evenly. This isn't a bug. That said, if you wait until you have fewer than 12 points left for the big thing that costs 12 design points, then it will simply not be available anymore. So you can't spend cheaply and then use your last thing on something mega-expensive to try to game the system. Just get what you want in whatever order.

• There is a "building the crucible" project which is pretty much identical to the one for building the network replay bunker, except that the resultant building is a different building.
  • In the short term, it does not matter which building you have, but in the long term it will have some effects. In the short term, the path you took to get whichever building has involved different challenges AND different opportunities to customize yourself in various ways.

• If you build the last of the options with the AGI Researchers, then you design a Neural Bridge that gives them direct access to your mind.
  • In the short term, as far as outcomes go, this is almost identical to building the crucible for them. The tasks you undertake are pretty similar, but there are a few differences:
    • The rewards you get in terms of direct unit upgrades are somewhat lesser when going the Bridge route instead of Crucible.
    • You get WAY more immediate benefits in terms of computing hosts and mind annexes out of this route. You are very wealthy in terms of the ability to immediately generate either more mental energy, or more bulk units, or higher unit caps, or some combination of that sort of thing.
  • As far as this option goes, the point is a lot less the short-term difference, and the potential for things to go more sideways long-term. But it is nice that they are different even in this shorter-term situation.

• All three of these paths lead us to the same "The Great AGI Debate," which is a project that is not done yet in this build.

Balance And Flow Improvements

• Fixed an incorrect note in the mining warning text, which said that the amount of deterrence you need goes up each turn. That hasn't been true for a while.

• Structures that cause a counterattack on build are now way more clear about that in their tooltips.

• "Area repairs" from technicians and similar no longer help units that are on a dispatch where they seem to be absent (aka, like a Wiretap, or like the new Infiltration type of investigations).
  • Repair spiders now also have this restriction, but now also DO help units riding in vehicles.

• The "Max Action Points" stat on player units has been renamed to "Action Points Per Turn" to be more clear in its wording when there are upgrades to it.

• The Neuroweave Factory no longer suggests you build to cap, as that is actually a terrible idea and you need to start scrapping some of them later.

• There is a new internal feature for jobs, which allows me to have a general baseline suggestion of how many you should build of each, out of context of anything else going on. This is in addition to the existing contextless "try to build them all" feature.
  • This makes the suggestions for aerospace hangars, drone factories, neuroweave factories, and robotic motivator factories all a lot more sensible.
  • I'm sure more improvements can be made here, most notably surrounding slurry spiders vs repair spiders, but that's a thing for after the content sprint.

Bugfixes

• After making choices in events or contemplations, it should now always have the new StreetSense and Contemplation items on the map without you having to skip a turn for them to appear.
  • I doubt that this helps the case where the vehicle does not show up for grand theft aero until the next turn, as that's a different area of code.

• Added in a new form of gating on the "spawn units related to an NPC manager" background threads.
  • It is possible that multiple of these could be spawned right at the same time on competing background threads, and that you would then get multiples of the expected intensity of units spawning against you, even including going over the allowed unit caps for those npc units for that event.
  • This was mostly related to npcs that spawn related to an investigation, or some structure you built, or a territory control flag.
  • It now does an interlocked check, which makes it so that, without locks (which can cause deadlocks), there is still a cross-core synchronization pass in the L3 cache, which should prevent this from being able to happen anymore.
    • I've used this technique on AI War 2 for half a decade, and it's very reliable.
    • If I screwed something up and missed a case, then it might still happen through some branch I haven't seen, but a manual code review does not show any cases of that right now.
    • If I later screw up and forget to persist this in a new scheduler path entirely, then it could recur. But I'm not sure I even need to add any new paths, and the existing code models should make it pretty obvious I need to do this thing.
    • If I made some other sort of code error in the shorter term, more akin to a typo, then most likely something won't spawn enemies at all, but it would reset when you loaded another savegame or went to the main menu and back into the game.

0.594.4 Subterfuge

(Released November 12th, 2024)

• Fixed a bug where the Gristlespinner was increasing the filtered water cap by accident.

• The small human safehouse no longer costs any food resources.

• Completing the fugitive-related project in the post-apocalypse now requires you to not just provide housing, but also a certain amount of food and water per turn, which gets executed as a deal, as was seen in chapter one previously.
  • This deal cannot be altered upwards any, as it's not that kind of deal.
  • Thank to mblazewicz for reporting.

• The first 19 achievements have been defined in xml, but they are not actually hooked up to any logic yet. I will do that in December. For now, I'm working on making sure that they all get defined so that they can be localized.
  • For any players who are curious and want to suggest additional achievements, the file is GameData/Configuration/Achievement/Achievements.xml, and the next three weeks are the period in which to actually get your suggestions in place. This three week period won't be the "forever list" of achievements, but they will be the initial launch set, probably.

• Added a new cheat called "Big Strategy" which quickly grants all of the strategic resources, for testing.

• Rebalanced the number of turns it takes to build pretty much everything in the computing category, as it was all annoyingly slow.

Hacking Adjustments

• In the regular hacking mode (and comms infiltration as well), only the three options (Run, Jump, and Firewall) that are available now are shown.

• Hacking is now a lot more stealthy, and no longer requires your unit to move in next to their target.
  • Unless your hacker is caught (aka you fail the hacking scenario, versus winning or quitting), they will normally not be marked defective when they are hacking a target. If they corrupt a mech pilot cradle, right now that's the only other case where they are marked defective.
  • Since hackers can once again hang out in vehicles, if they are marked defective, so is the vehicle in which they are riding.
  • Overall, regular hackers needed to be a lot more covert in most situations for balance reasons. This is not a balance issue, since doing anything meaningful costs strategic resources from your hackers.

• The "probe comms" style of hacking is unchanged, and is seen as hostile immediately. This currently only applies in the post-apocalypse.

• Mindrunners and Harbingers now automatically have Hack Unit applied to their ability bar, even though they're definitely inferior to the Raven at baseline.

• Armor plating service panels now cost half as much Wisdom to hack as previously.

• There was a confusing rule in the hacking minigame, previously, where you could only corrupt things next to you if your number was higher than theirs.
  • For a lot of targets, you couldn't even tell what their number was, so this was just profoundly confusing. This rule has been removed.

• Bionic Humans can now be hacked, and they have the following new vulnerabilities (none of which reveal your hacker):
  • Augmented Organs (death)
  • Adrenaline Regulator (emotional overload)
  • Augmented Vision (blindness)
  • Bionic Uplink (disconnected from network)

Infiltrations

• A new kind of investigation is now in place, which is specifically an infiltration. This is kind of a twist on some of the existing deep-examination style of investigations.

• If an unit of yours is doing an action over time, their health bar is drawn lower so as to be a lot less likely to intersect the "turns remaining indicator."

• First big expansion of how I use the NPC action logic in a while, with some new units (SecForce Hackers) able to run fully custom logic that also has its own visuals and sound effects, etc.
  • Basically, they're able to search for intruders, which damages an intruder near them if they are not stopped.
  • Their hacking skill minus the intruders agility is the amount of physical damage dealt.

• Added more extensions so that NPC units can now perform an action immediately in response to being attacked in general, or when being attacked from a player source. This can also differentiate between "general hostile actions" and "actually damaged either physically or morale-based."
  • For SecForce Hackers searching for an intruder, if they have any normal hostile actions taken against them by a player unit or ally (bees thrown on them, etc) or they are attacked by a player unit or ally, they do a much-more-damaging 'sound the alarm' ability which causes a lot more damage to any of your intruders nearby.
    • In general, this makes direct physical attacks against these units very pointless, and actually works against you.
    • However, this is a perfect case where if you have a distraction from a background conflict, none of those people are your allies, and if they were to happen to kill the hackers, then this has no negative effects on you. This is likely to be extremely hard to engineer, and is not the expected approach, but it is at least possible.

Overwatch

• As soon as you unlock the Mindrunner, you also now unlock the Overwatch ability, which is unrelated to the X-com ability of that same name.
  • Note, it's not possible to get this without cheats prior to chapter three, but you get it immediately on starting chapter 3.

• There is a new hacking mode called Overwatch, which sees your Mindrunners infiltrating the networks of buildings that your other units are infiltrating in order to give them support.
  • In this mode, every cell is value 10, and there are a lot more obstacles.
  • You only get one shard, and its one ability for now is Move, which is a lot like Jump from the other type of hacking, but only goes up to 5 spaces. The corrupt option here clears walls, allowing you to burrow, and does not destroy your shard.
  • There are security guards that move around at random in this mode, but if you stop within the range they are threatening, they will pounce on you immediately.

• Using overwatch to help your units does not draw any attention to the unit that is doing the overwatch, same as hacking. Again, unless the unit is caught. There are currently no overwatch actions that reveal the mindrunner.

• There are now five different things that you can use during an overwatch session, against the building you are in:
  • Halogen Fire Suppression -- clears out all security guards.
    • Does NOT end the overwatch session (only one for which that is true).
  • Security Cameras, Ventilation Fans, and Security Doors.
    • All increase agility by various amounts, as a status effect on the unit in the building, making them more resistant to enemy hackers. You can only do one per overwatch.
    • For all of these, if the corresponding status effect is still on the unit, then that one will be absent from the next overwatch. Each of these last 2-3 turns, randomly. For now they do persist past the end of the actual infiltration, that's something I need to fix in December as a minor thematic thing. Worth a reminder note.
  • False Alarm
    • This gives 200 HP back to the infiltrator, and will only appear in the overwatch session if they have already lost at least 100 HP.

Chapter 2+ Content

• The second option related to the "AGI Researchers In Trouble" is finally complete.
  • This involves not just building the housing for them, but making sure that they have enough greens, meat, and filtered water. They are from the scientist class, after all...
  • This creates a deal with them, for a really paltry amount of the stuff, and that deal also cannot be adjusted. You're going to have a ton left over for whatever else you want, which is interesting.

• If you help the AGI Researchers, the next step was supposed to be a secret lab for them. I decided to skip that, because two locations they have to travel between is dumb, and that's old-school thinking anyway. They should be working from home, obviously. So let's get to the next item that is actually interesting, then:

• There is a new contemplation available after the AGI Researchers have been moved to your safehouse: they want to study your brain. Of course. You can ignore this and nothing more happens with them, if that's where you want to leave it. As with any contemplation. I'm not going to repeatedly note that, but I figure it's worth stating for the pattern at least once. The four direct choices are:
  • Change your mind and kill them all, after all. Fish in a barrel. Costs 10 cruelty to do it this way.
    • You get the same Computing Host and Mind Annex upgrade that you would if you had chosen to kill them earlier.
  • Decline, But Offer Telecom Data -- new project noted below.
  • Give Them A Read-Only Copy Of Your Mind -- new project coming up. At the moment it won't let you choose this option, saying you already completed it. Just WIP.
  • Give Them Direct Access To Your Mind -- new project coming up. At the moment it won't let you choose this option, saying you already completed it. Just WIP.

• There is a new Hack Breaker feat, which is useful for counter-hackers. Right now it's only held by the SecForce hackers.

• When you offer to get telecom data for the AGI researchers, it now gives you a project that allows you to either get that in a stealthy way, or in a fighting way.
  • If you go the stealthy way, then you have no choice but to do some form of hacking support to support your stealthy (agile) units. Basically, you either need to manipulate the building with a Mindrunner (if you're in chapter 3 already), or you need to hack the bionic hackers (via Raven or otherwise, but it's very hard with anyone but Raven). If you try to directly fight the hackers that are after your stealth units, you'll only lose faster.
    • It doesn't really matter where you do this, as even military data centers are not a problem since you are not going to aggro the military base with anything you should be doing to solve this.
  • If you go the fighting way, then you actually are sending in a hacker, and then you're defending them with other units in a military fashion. Kind of like the water/food fights in chapter one.
    • If you go this route, then you absolutely must use the data center that will be in the comms center, so that you're not being overrun with mechs. Unless you feel like fighting all the mechs in advance, but that's a really bad idea in general. So location matters a ton with this one.
  • Either way, you get a big batch of encrypted data out of this.

• Once you have the encrypted telecom data, there is a project for decrypting it.
  • When you finish that, it starts another project that just says "coming soon" for now.

0.594.3 Altering The Deal

(Released November 10th, 2024)

• Deals have been greatly expanded, so that they now can be titrated upwards if you wish (and back down, again, if you wish).
  • If you have an excess of resources where there is a related deal, this allows you to increase how much you are spending on that deal, which also increases any incomes that may be related.
  • The interface for this is a couple of arrows in the inventory screen for each deal, and this also shows your predicted net income (or loss) for each related resource, and if it's a net loss, then it also predicts how many turns your current storage amounts will hold up at this rate of loss. The goal is to allow for all of the meaningful planning of what you can afford from just this interface directly.

• Deals are also now able to provide players up two boosts to some collections of their units, and the amount of buff that is produced is increased based on the level of the deal the player actually executed on the prior turn.
  • So if you say you want deal level 5, but you can't afford that, but you can afford deal level 3, it will spend at deal level 3 and give you the benefit of deal level 3.
  • All of this still counts as honoring your deal, as long as you can meet at least deal level 1; so if you have a temporary setback in terms of loss of functional buildings, you don't need to come and mess with your deals -- they will fully execute the highest level of deal under what you specified.

• The chapter one deals now give you bonuses as follows:
  • Greens give you a bonus to argument attack power for technicians.
  • Meat gives you the same but for oxdroids.
  • Canned protein gives you intimidation for all your combat androids, very useful.
  • "Some water" leaves you with more water (of course), and also gives you a bonus to the move range of all your combat androids.
  • "More water" leaves you with less water, but gives you a bonus to the attack range of all your combat androids.
  • These are moderately powerful bonuses, which don't break the game if you ignore them, but they're just enough into that tempting zone to create a mechanical reason to choose unsavory choices, for example.

• When a project outcome will commit you to a deal, it now shows you what the baseline benefits will be to your units, if there are any. For all of the ones in chapter one, there are some.

• Fixed a regression in the prior build where as you were loading a savegame, it would briefly flash the world and then the main menu, rather than just showing the loading screen until everything is ready. Now it works as expected.

0.594.2 Memory Efficiency

(Released November 8th, 2024)

• Improved duplicate detection in the localization framework, which shaves off about 2300 words of otherwise-duplicate words.

More Goals And Paths

• Two more timeline goals have been added: Bionic Dues and Bionic Secret.
  • Both of these involve machine cults, which a lot of people have been looking forward to, and one involves shell companies as well.

• All of the relevant timeline goals (the ones where it makes sense) now have separate path bonuses for achieving them on hard or extreme mode.

• Most of the timeline goals now have a "no murders" path that is optional.
  • It only checks this at the moment of completion of the timeline goal, so if you have already achieved the primary goal, it won't re-check it.
  • Combat kills are not counted in this, nor are "murdered android for registration."
  • This should work now with the Titan post-apoc ending, but I have not tested it.

Clarity

• The ability to show background conflicts is now a lens filter option on every lens, but it defaults to off except on Versatile (where it was already there and on), and Investigations (where it was neither there previously, nor on of course).
  • Thanks to Mandy for suggesting.

• Turning on all of the StreetSense items at any given point is now something that is a lens option for all of the different lenses, but it's off by default for all of them except for the actual StreetSense lens itself.
  • Another option for showing only project-related StreetSense items is also available on all of them (except main StreetSense lens), and it is on by default on the following lenses: Versatile, Forces, and Investigations.
  • Thanks to Mandy for suggesting.

Chapter 2+ Content

• A new contemplation is available from the start of chapter two, called "AGI Researchers In Trouble."
  • If you choose to help them, then this is part of the critical path toward machine cults.
    • Temporarily, the ability to help them is removed.
  • If you choose to kill all of the AGI Researchers, then machine cults will not be possible in this timeline, but you get some sweet rewards. Sarah Connor hunting Miles Dyson vibes.

• There is now a project for hunting down all of the AGI Researchers in the city and murdering them, in groups or with their families, as the case may be.
  • There are some very exciting rewards for doing this, in terms of giving you both an upgrade to Computing Host and Mind Annex, both of which are super valuable. You also get a big bump to Cruelty for doing it at all, and can get even more from killing them with their families.
  • There is also a new small feature that allows hostile units to spawn as you do these sorts of things, which is really nice.
  • If you choose this route, this ends any opportunities related to the AGI researcher lines, an and this also prevents any formation of the machine cults.
    • Later this may have some other routes associated with it on its own, but it mainly exists as a way to get some sweet rewards if you're okay with this moral style and don't plan on having a machine cult.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that could happen with deprecated cheats or other deprecated items in the long-term log in the end of time. They were not being scrubbed for the log, and would show an exception, instead.

• Improved the display of which goal paths you have done before, or never before, within an individual timeline, to match what is in the end of time.

• There are both statistics for your current timeline, and metagame statistics. Previously I was handling it somewhat manually when those are linked, which is true about 95% of the time. This was not a good way to keep handling it.
  • The game now automatically assumes that they are linked unless other specified otherwise. If it tries to cross-link those and finds one missing, it will now complain about it with an error message during gameplay, which won't hurt anything but lets me know to fix it.
  • The short version is that you may see some extra error messages if I made any mistakes, and if so please just report them and they're super easy for me to correct.
  • For QLOC, the other thing to verify is that when you do something like commit some murders, that they properly increase the count in the metagame as well as just in the city.

• Under extreme load, there was a slight chance of getting an exception in ApplyFinalPhysicalDamageAndStatsAndPopup or ApplyFinalMoraleDamageAndStatsAndPopup. It only was happening before my improvements to the number of particles being spawned during a double-rebel-war cheat, and even then would only happen about 1 out of every 30 thousand shots.
  • I've hardened both of these methods so that this should no longer be possible to happen even in an extremely unlucky circumstance, and I've also improved the logging so that if it ever does, it will say more specifically where in these methods there is a problem.
  • Note to QLOC: you're really not going to be able to replicate this one, even with double or triple rebel war, probably. Don't spend much time on this one.

Memory Leak

• Reduced the memory pressure from several sources, including how many units and NPCs are in the world.
  • There was some data being tracked on them that players could in theory look at, but it was way too detailed and not something that was anything I think was data a single player even realized was there (stuff like why some stat changed over the last 10 turns on a random NPC unit).
  • This is something I've been waffling about removing for a long time, but with the discovery of a memory leak by several players, this seemed like a good time to remove this since it's useless and taking up memory. That said, it was not the memory leak.

• Discovered and fixed a massive memory leak in the rendering system for icons.
  • This was an error introduced by myself on April 29th, 2024. So this was not new, and has been in every build of the game since then, including the NextFest Demo and everything else since there have been a lot of testers on the game.
  • The general effect was that the more icons of a certain sort you were seeing, and the higher your framerate was, the faster it would consume infinitely more memory. The longer you left the game running, the faster it would run out. Generally it would take an hour or more to be very significant, but it depends a lot on the player's machine. Someone with an awesome GPU and not too much RAM would be seeing the effect the most, on longer play sessions.
  • This was found, after general user reports of a memory leak, using the custom memory-leak-tracking tools that are in this game and AI War 2. I then verified that there were no other similar problems, and so any other memory leaks would be unrelated to the rendering system itself. Any further problems would be in gameplay, or saving or loading savegames.
  • Thanks to glencoe2004 and Lukas for reporting.

• Extended my general "cyclical array pool" concept to have a lone version (the old style), and a shared version (the new style).
  • This involves both a pool feeder and a pool consumer, which then is used to create the arrays that are written to the GPU for various shader purpose.
  • The short explanation of this is that it uses less total memory, because it is able to re-use "like arrays" for "unlike shaders," which is highly useful as a render context shifts over time.
  • This in general reduces memory pressure a bit, and probably also has some frame-timing-consistency benefits, but those are expected to be minor. This also allows for easier diagnosis of a certain form of memory leak.

• An extra layer of protection has been put in against accidentally double-allocating buffers headed for the GPU. If that should happen, the game will now complain. It does not appear that was happening at all, but it's nice to be sure.
  • As part of this, I also happened to notice a really stupid array over-allocation that was wasting a lot (relatively speaking) of memory and processing time. It's... ah... well, okay, it's a few MB. Maybe 6 MB? But it all matters about where the memory is, and this would have put pressure unduly on the L3 and L1 cache, and now it doesn't. So while it was a stupid mistake on my part, years ago, it's not actually a giant performance concern. Still, I found it, so I fixed it.

• Converted the savegame deserialization process to use recycled and tracked collections, rather than relying on garbage collection to pick up any stragglers.
  • It was a nice idea on my part to let it use the GC to clean up, and worked for a while, but the reality is that it only takes one dangling reference hidden somewhere in otherwise-correct-looking code, and then you get a giant spike of unrelease memory every time the game is loaded.
    • That is in fact what has been happening, in addition to the other kinds of memory leaks I already fixed today.
  • Rather than hunting down this one dangling reference and trying to fix it, which would solve the immediate problem but leave the game forever vulnerable to this sort of mistake in the future by me (or worse, from modders), I have decided to adjust the approach entirely so that it is safe against those sorts of mistakes.
  • There are some new data structures I've created, including a DictionaryOfSharedLists, which allow me to do some tightly-packed object reuse.
  • I've also brought over the ReleaseMemory methods for Lists and Dictionary from AI War 2, which were added after the fork to the HotM codebase. These allow me to have the outer shell of references remain, but dump all of the memory inside them, which is quite powerful.
  • At this point, the game is once again loading savegames despite all the changes, and I can now see the leak directly, but I have yet to quite solve that leak. That's what's next.

• A lot of dramatic additions have been made to the deserialization logic for the game.
  • There are a lot of data structures that include some lists and dictionaries within them, and these are now pooled (per separate generics type signature), and the pools are reset and have their memory released after load as well.
  • At this point, all of the class data structures involved with loading savegames are permanent and are fully monitored by my anti-memory-leak processes, and for those that have things like sub-lists, they have their memory hollowed out after usage, so that even if there are dangling references, it doesn't matter and they still get garbage collected.
  • The game also explicitly calls for a full garbage collection pass right after the load finishes, which keeps it so that the memory usage is actually lower now after three or four savegame loads than it used to be after just a single savegame load.
  • This finally fixes the second major memory leak that I observed today, after reports from players.
  • Big thanks to glencoe2004 for reporting.

• Fixed a third memory leak which was related to excessive combat. It wasn't a true memory leak like the other two, but it was still a problem.
  • Essentially, if there were thousands of shots fired in a single turn and thousands of explosions as well (double rebel war cheat spawn as a good extreme benchmark), then these would all enter pools and remain resident in memory in case they were going to be used again.
  • The spawning and retention of all this was actually about 2 GB of RAM usage in this scenario, and it also would tank the framerate to 20fps or lower on my beast of a dev machine, AND it would overdrive the sound channels something fierce.
    • Granted, this is like 10x the volume of combat that anyone should normally ever experience during normal gameplay, but I still was not comfortable with these numbers.
  • The first change I made was to the pooling of the particles themselves. They are now contained in structs rather than classes, and no pool will retain more than 10 particles. The rest are just destroyed, and the RAM is returned.
    • This keeps the memory pressure lower, while making frequent particles still very quick to spawn without having to worry about them being subject to instantiation delays. I also tried a version where I got rid of the pool entirely and it saves maybe 100 MB of RAM in this super extreme case, and performs about the same on my beast of a machine. My theory is that on lower-end hardware the performance would drop some in that circumstance, so for now I'm keeping the smaller pools there.
  • The second change I made was to progressively limit the number of particles that spawn as more are requested when there are already a lot. This is the same improvement that I made to the "giant mechs sliding through buildings" issue, and it works very similarly. It has a chance of spawning that diminishes by a square exponent above a certain level.
    • The end result of this is that the sound channels don't get so overwhelmed, there's still a lot of shots happening (to the point that I can't really tell the difference, even though there are more like 400 particles rather than 4000 playing at once -- it's just hard to judge that kind of shift visually at a glance, turns out), and the performance never drops below 60fps on my beast of a machine, even with this sort of insane scenario. Normally I get more like 110fps on average, so that is still quite a drop, but it's no longer so precipitous.
    • Again, I have to stress how above-normal this scenario is, but these savings wind up passing on to more normal scenarios, and at the same time it also creates less of a difference in what you actually see. This also only applies to NPC units (including bulk units or captured units of yours), not your main units you are paying the most attention to.
  • For most players, I expect that this will never be an optimization that is noticed at all, in terms of lower shots or whatnot, but that things "just work" even in scenarios that are absurd by normal standards. We'll see what happens, but that's my theory.

0.594.1 Polish And Clarity

(Released November 6th, 2024)

Clarity Improvements

• The way that how many internal robotics are needed, versus how many you have in total and remaining, has been made a lot more clear.
  • Thanks to Mandy for suggesting specifically how.

• If you fail at hacking, it now erases all of the controls, and shows "Failed. It's Time To Leave" in the upper left, and next to the "Session terminated" message in the log, also says "Exit when Ready."
  • Thanks to Mandy for suggesting.

• There are two new handbook entries that explain what internal robotics are, and how to get more.
  • These now appear when you first start building freestanding construction, and the "most important tip - hold shift" is demoted to being in the handbook but now popping up on the screen (as that is now all through the interface so much that it is hard to miss it).
  • Thanks to Mandy and Antony for suggesting this, discussing in detail, and editing them.

• The loadout window no longer saves the changes to your unit type unless you do one of the two things:
  • Explicitly click the commit changes button.
  • Hit the spacebar, while selected on one unit (not unit type) and shift to another unit type.
  • If you hit escape, or right-click out of the window, or hit X, it cancels your changes as you would expect.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Androids and mechs are now shown in two different categories on the forces sidebar, rather than combined.
  • All of the various categories on the forces sidebar now show the number of units you have (or capacity used, when relevant), out of the total of what is available for that category.
  • Thanks to Alias50, B, and Mandy for suggesting.

• Added a new feature that allows for common-sense protections to be put in place to prevent resource depletion in resource chains where that would be a pain in the rear.
  • Right now, the only resource chain where this applies is Protein Vats, specifically with their usage of Bovine Tissue, since it takes BT to make more BT, and if Vats use it all, then the cycle breaks down.
    • That's not true for any other kind of resource chain at the moment, since they all have a generalized input that is either temporary and meant to be exhausted (Alumina and Computronium Cubes, early on), or has an infinite source (Alumina and things later).
    • For this specific case with the Vats, they will never consume BT that would take your total volume of BT below 5000. This makes them act the same as before, but if you would be on a trajectory to hit zero, you instead hit 5000. This lets you realize your chain is set up wrong, and fix it, without having to also go find more BT from a farm.
  • Thanks to Mandy for suggesting.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where the streetsense item progress was not being saved into savegames properly when it's related to a project.
  • Thanks to Pingcode for reporting.

• Fixed a typo in the slum cats text.
  • Thanks to blue_kit_red for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where the prologue instructions about standby mode were still saying that standby gathers wealth in addition to slurry, when it actually only gathers slurry now.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon and kenken244 for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where using "Quietly Loot" was causing units who do that to be marked defective, when of course the entire point is that they are not noticed.
  • Thanks to Pingcode and mblazewicz for reporting.

• Hacking the titan mech like a traditional unit (using hack unit rather than probe comms) should no longer be possible at all. It isn't meant to be vulnerable over the air like that.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed typo in the Sedgesinax cohort description.
  • Thanks to kenken244 for reporting.

• For all of the food and water projects that have a per-turn-income requirement to complete, it was possible to fill up your bunkers with them and then be unable to complete the projects without building an additional bunker, which was a soft-lock state.
  • If you have at least 1 bunker's worth of the resource (which is absolutely a massive amount), then it will assume that you have enough per-turn income to meet the demand of these projects. You likely have 100+ turns to fix the problem if you are actually somehow short, because of your giant buffer.
  • Thanks to Mandy for reporting.

0.594 Hard And Extreme Modes

(Released November 5th, 2024)

• When you start a rank 2 city (meaning either a fresh start from chapter two in a new profile, or a new timeline in an existing profile once you get to chapter 3), it now gives you a flat 30 of each of the 6 main strategic resources.
  • This is in some cases more than you would have from going through chapter one to get there, in other cases less, but it averages out to something that does not say anything about this alternate-you's history, and yet gives you enough resources to do some things in early chapter two that are otherwise blocked to you.
  • Thanks to MOREDAKKA and Pingcode for reporting.

• There is a new "Vandalize Spaceport Computers" contemplation that is available starting in chapter 2.
  • It requires any of your hacker units (in chapter two, that's just Raven. In chapter 3, that's also including Mindrunner, and possibly including Harbinger, depending on if you have some timeline crossover happening).
  • This is only available during the first 20 turns of a timeline, so you can't dawdle on it too long. When you first reach chapter 2 from chapter one, it gives you 20 turns from them. And if you load a timeline that was already in chapter two or three, it gives you a flat 20 turns from where you are now.
  • This gives you two options, a Hard mode (dooms every 40 turns instead of every 100), and an Extreme mode (dooms every 20 turns).
    • I suspect for a lot of people, the comfortable mode will be Hard Mode, which basically gives a good balance of strategic pressure and time to do multiple goals. Extreme Mode is likely only to be fun for existing experts who are trying to optimize their way to specific single goal states, which is fun in its own way, but just more niche.

• Fixed an issue with contemplation filters showing counts and entries for contemplations that are not actually on the map at the moment. Typically this is because there was nowhere valid for them to seed at the moment, but it can also be based on other conditionals. Seeing categories with nothing in them was quite confusing.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz and Lukas for reporting.

Chapter 2+ Content

• In any timeline that is getting a crossover called "Crossover Bridge With LAKE," a new side contemplation is now available: Remembrance Of Identity
  • This not only clarifies what the character and units do/don't remember across timelines (far less than what the player remembers), but it also gives the player a chance to make their CombatUnit Red unique from its regular counterpart.
    • In the project that follows this, you must take exactly 9 actions in whatever combination you want. These are Freerunner (4 times at most), Field Hacker (3 at most), Field Engineer (5 at most), and Brute (5 at most).
    • Each one of these gives a pair of direct upgrades for that timeline ONLY to the Red CombatUnit, and helps specialize it toward... whatever mix of those things you choose.

• Added three new upgrade buildings: Android Extender, Vehicle Extender, and Mech Extender.
  • These each give you +1 to your cap for the related kinds of units.
  • These take computing time, and compete with the Coprocessor for Mind Annex internal robotics. At the moment in early chapter 3, you can have up to 4 of some mix of these. So for example you can half 11 mental energy every turn and 7 androids at once, if you split it half and half on those two (that is already my favorite setup).
  • As a tiny side effect of these, you will see that they are generating +1 heavy metals each per turn while active. It's negligible and not something to really worry about, but I figured some folks would think it's a bug.

• When you reach intelligence class 4, there are now some new goodies that appear starting at that point:
  • Mindrunner.
  • Decrowner Drones (if you did not already have them from a choice in chapter 1).
  • Biological Mainframe (if you did not already have them from a choice in chapter 1).
  • AI-2 Tailstock mech.
  • Spectre flying vehicle.
  • Android Extender
  • Vehicle Extender
  • Mech Extender
  • Thanks to MOREDAKKA for the report of the two things that were not available in timelines beyond the first.

0.593.9 Hotfix

(Released November 4th, 2024)

• Fixed a bug in the prior version where if you cleared all of the hostile contacts in the hacking scenario, then it would jump you to the end of a ton of hacking scenarios and basically end the entire post-apocalypse scenario before you saw half of it.
  • Thanks to Waladil for reporting.

0.593.8 Three

(Released November 3rd, 2024)

• The "personal apocalypse" goal has been renamed to "Slice Of Inferno," as it was confusing the other way, now that there is an actual apocalypse that is different.

• Another goal state, "Post-Apocalyptic Titan," has been added alongside the existing "Post-Apocalyptic Burrower."

• The "burrower" goal state is being cut for time. It will return, but it's a lot less impactful than the titan goal state, and I don't think that this is a good use of my time at the moment compared to the other primary chapter two content.
  • The titan path wound up being essentially twice as large as expected, and way more impactful, so it absorbing the time that would have gone to the burrower one makes a certain amount of sense.
  • I do have the burrower path all mapped out, but it's something I'll do sometime in the next few months. It's a nice alternative to the titan path, but not something I'm in a hurry to have people do in place of the titan.

Balance

• Nickelbot movement range has been increased from 42 to 60, making them much quicker to traverse long distances.

• Keanu, Exator, and Carver have all had their move ranges increased from 60 to 80, making them insanely mobile for an android, and fitting with their agility-style nature.

• Carver now has Shadowdweller instead of Innately Alarming, as that is much more effective for that unit to be useful at all.

• There is a new Expert Shadowdweller perk that some of the more advanced units have. This works the same as shadowdweller, but allows movement up to clearance 4 rather than clearance 3. It's also a way to provide some different gates on some events.
  • Primarily Exator, Carver, Harbinger, and Mindrunner.

• The prismatic tungsten event now has a "sneak past" option that only applies to expert shadowdwellers, and has 1000:1 odds of being a success with no cost.

• CombatUnit hacking skill has been increased from 10 to 70, making them a better hacker than Technicians, which makes sense given their role. They are still objectively terrible hackers, but it's important for some new abilities.

Adjusting Difficulty

• There is another new handbook entry related to dooms, which talks about adjusting the difficulty of the game by accelerating them.

Framework Bits

• The system for having units do small things around the map for part of a project is now in place, and it allows costing and gaining resources.
  • This allows for a wide variety of new kinds of mission designs to go in the mix.

• There is also a related new system that allows for a SINGLE unit (and it's bulk version of itself) to gain some stats in a way that is not related to overall upgrades.
  • These show up in the tooltip for the unit's stat as "Total From Past Project Work," and this is a lot narrower than what you see with other forms of upgrades.
  • For example, you might be improving the Nickelbot on something, but not other Dynadroids (that is possible with the main upgrade system as well, but certainly a lot less common).
  • Perhaps a better example is the CombatUnit versus the CombatUnit Red. The red does not share buffs with the main version, but the main version shares buffs with the bulk version.
    • This could arguably make the red version even less useful, but I think it gives it a chance to specialize in a way that diverges from its main-pair version. I have something special in mind for this, actually.

• I've added the ability to have fallback seeding options for the new kind of project streetsense stuff, although I wound up not actually using it yet.

• There is a new "click to micro-nuke" cheat.
  • This cheat is extremely useful for testing "what if certain kinds of buildings did not exist after the final doom?"
  • As an example, I have one project that would only be possible if there happened to be cryogenic centers still remaining in the city. If I go through and scalpel those out with a series of micro-nukes, then can the project still be completed? It's not a guarantee this specific type of structure survives into the post-apocalypse, so there has to be a fallback if the project is definitely going to be the sort of thing that can be completed regardless of the state of the city.

• The list of cheats is now stable when tabbing back and forth between the streets view and the map view. Previously if you were in a targeting mode, it would lose which mode you were in when you changed back and forth, which was very unhelpful when trying to verify certain things (like "did I get all the cryogenic centers, so no more of that quest marker can spawn at them?").

• With the "structures with problems" window open, the delete key now properly works to scrap units.

• In the event that there are no broken machine structures, but that there ARE machine structures that are disconnected from the network, the delete button in the build menu allows you to right-click to delete those instead of the broken ones.
  • This is very relevant for situations where you need to move... a lot of yourself away from where you are. For example if you wind up with the titan uncomfortably close.

Giant-Mech-Related

• The way that the "can a giant mech step on this" logic works has been expanded a ton. Instead of a binary yes/no answer, it now is a rating system, with progressively larger mechs being allowed to step on progressively more-important things.
  • This makes it so that Stalkers and even more-so Titans have a much easier time moving around, while simply smooshing most things in their way.

• Added logic so that units can either just destroy things that they step on at their target (this is a lot less destructive), or so that they destroy everything along the path as they move.
  • The Titans now use this latter form of logic.
  • Thanks to KenKen244 for suggesting quite a while back.

• Added logic so that some NPC units won't show the ghost of where they were last turn. In the case of these units, it's both not helpful, and actively confusing.
  • This is now applied to pretty much all of the NPC mechs, but not any npc vehicles or smaller combatants (npc vehicles move far and fast, and seeing where they were can be super helpful).

• Added in logic to progressively gate the number of explosions when a mech is blowing up buildings in a path. Visually this makes almost no difference, but basically it keeps it from kneecapping your performance with explosions that would just be a solid mass of overlap, anyhow.
  • If you skip a ton of turns at as fast as possible, AND there are a bunch of NPC mechs that are all moving and exploding buildings every turn, then you'll see some gaps in explosions, but it doesn't cause any drop in the number of buildings they destroy. Beyond that, it doesn't affect anything visually, particularly.

• Added logic which allows showing excessively large units on the map directly.
  • This is only used for NPC titans at this point. The player-based titans do not do this, nor do any of the other mechs or vehicles of anyone.

• When the titan is dropped in from orbit, it now actually drops in, with scary horns, and an accelerating fall that suddenly terminates at the bottom (with explosions if it lands on anything explosive, which it usually will), and a screen-shake effect that is not used very often by the game.

• The ability to spawn a Titan as a player-controlled mech (as opposed to an NPC one) has been removed. There are story shifts that make that... inappropriate.

• The weapon ports and firing for the titan are all now appropriately set up.

Timeline-Goal-Related

• There is now fanfare for winning a timeline goal, as there is for winning a project. It has a different sound and different particle effects to make sure it catches your attention.

• Timeline goals that are now impossible due to how the timeline has progressed now show in red on the goal listing.

• On the goal listing within a timeline, it now shows how many of the paths to each goal you have achieved in this timeline, out of the total paths available for it.
  • Right now it's just one path at a time.

• In the goal tooltips, it now also has extra information if you have won the goal or failed it for this timeline.

• Looking at overall goal history in the end of time, it now shows you how many of the different goal paths you have ever achieved for each goal, out of the total number of goal paths in all related to that goal.
  • When hovering over a specific line item, the tooltip shows how many times you have completed each goal path, or if it has never been completed before, for further information and ideas on what to try next.

• The older concepts of goal evolutions and perfected timelines have been removed.
  • It now shows instead how many goals you have completed per timeline, and how many goal paths.

Timeline Data Protection

• Protection has been added for a kind of complicated case with the timelines. Let me attempt to explain, and let's see if the QLOC testers can find any way to break this.
  • First of all, I need to explain the savegame structure a bit:
    • The savegames individually contain both the metagame (cross-timeline) stuff, AND the content for a single timeline. When you load an older save, you are therefore loading an older version of both the metagame and the specific timeline that the save is from.
    • Starting in chapter three, you have the ability to switch back and forth between timelines. This means that it needs to keep the metagame, but get rid of all of the one-timeline data and replace it with something else. Otherwise the savegames would become impossibly large.
      • In other words, if you are in timeline A and that is the only timeline that exists in your metagame, then it's very simple. But as soon as you create timeline B, there is now a fork of sorts.
    • When the savegames are forked in this way, there is a (hidden from the game, but visible in the file system) file with the GUID of the city, and the city data, and an extension of .timeline rather than .save.
      • Specifically, when you have been in timeline A, and you create timeline B, it will save timeline A to GUID-A.timeline, get rid of that data from the current save, keep the metadata from that save, and then generate timeline B inside there. It will then have "first turn in timeline B" as a savegame.
        • If you go back to timeline A's last save, before it created timeline B, then it's like timeline B does not exist. This is fine. You just save-scummed and forked things. I'm okay with this.
        • If you play for a while in timeline B, and progress the metagame, then this is now the most-current data for the metagame, and for timeline B, but the most-current data for timeline A is in the GUID-A.timeline file.
    • In the end of time, you can, from the timeline B file, choose the timeline A node on that map, and choose to dive in. At this point, it will do the following:
      • Save the timeline B stuff to a GUID-B.timeline file.
      • Dump everything timeline-B-specific out of the current save, but keep the metadata.
      • Load the contents of timeline A, from the GUID-A.timeline file.
    • Now you have the most up-to-data metagame data in the new timeline A file, and timeline B is the one that is on ice.
      • You can have tens of thousands of timelines linked this way, so now multiply this out by tens of thousands of files if you want. It doesn't change the math of how this works any.
  • Assuming that the player never save-scums at all, and only ever loads their most-recent savegame they were playing on, and then cross-loads timelines via the end of time map, all is well. There are no real edge cases here in that situation. However, we all know that is not how players will actually do things.
    • The first really bad case is if the player has been playing for a while, and then they go back to a really old save for... let's say timeline B. They started on A, progressed A, went to B, went back to A, progressed A again, and then save-scummed back to an older B file. So far this isn't destructive.
      • But what if they now, from the savegame setup described above, try to use the meta map to load timeline A? What WOULD happen is that the older version of timeline B would overwrite the GUID-B.timeline file, which would negatively affect the actual real "current state of things" if they load back into one of the more current savegames. They would find that the metagame still has the latest information about timeline B, but that when they go into it, it has been overwritten with the much-older version of timeline B's actual contents. Yikes. This is not game-breaking, but it's something I really don't like.
  • The solution for the above problem is that a second file is also written next to the .timeline files. This file is called GUID_Timekeep.timeline, and it has a single integer inside it. That integer is how many seconds have passed in that timeline at the time of it being saved.
    • In the event that the game would try to overwrite the .timeline file because of swapping between timelines, it checks the _Timekeep.timeline number. If it's a higher number than the current number of seconds, it won't let you do this, and it shows a message to that effect. This prevents probably 99% of the degenerate cases I mentioned above.
    • There is a way around this, however. If you loaded an older savegame that was only a few minutes behind, and then played until you passed the older state, then on switching timelines the timekeep comparison would be favorable and it would let you cross over, thus overwriting the timeline file we were trying to protect.
      • I am okay with this edge case, because someone would have had to go REALLY far back and play for a really long time for it to be a problem. In any cases where they go just a bit far back, and then "accidentally" overwrite, it's probably expected that it would overwrite from their perspective.
  • There may be some funky ways to game this system, but if they're suitably hard, I don't care. I don't think the average player has any motivation to try to do something like that which is too difficult to pull off, and my main concern was accidental overwrites when people just wanted to go back in time for a bit and were going to do the overwrite without meaning to.
    • That said, if there are other edge cases that can result in problems, I would like to know. This is not critical in the next week, but I'd like to have it well solved before the 18th or so, if there are any problem cases.
  • One might wonder why I'm not using a chunk-based system like, for example, Minecraft does. This is also the system that I used for the A Valley Without Wind Games.
    • The primary reason is for bug reporting, to be honest. Players being able to send me a single file, and it just works, is really important. Them having to zip a folder and send me way more data than is desirable was a constant problem with the Valley games.
    • The secondary reason is that, when it comes to malicious tinkering, the chunk-based system is not any more protective. Someone can go into the file system and delete chunks that have bad things in them that they don't like, and keep their overall metagame, in both Minecraft and the Valley games. This triggers a regeneration, and they've thus gamed the system. I just never really saw that happening much with either game.
    • Those chunk-based games also have much smaller chunks, and much more frequent transitions between them. This game has more in common with SimCity 4 regions. So for those other games, using a system like I have here would be impractical and not solve any problems regarding sending in bug reports, for example. They are what they are, they need that chunk-based file system. This game does not benefit from it, so it's using something different that kind of builds off of my experience with both data formats.
  • As an aside, I developed all these changes to savegames back in January, but the thing that is new is the protection logic with the "timekeep" files.

• Discovered that there were some flaws with my prior logic for saving the timelines with seconds in there.
  • Specifically, if you sat for any length of time doing nothing, then switched timelines, when you loaded the original save it would not let you switch timelines again for the length of time you sat. Oops.
  • Even more specifically, let's say you played for an hour without saving, then switched timelines. You would only properly be able to get to the other timeline by loading the newer timeline, then cross-loading back into the other one. Not exactly desirable.
  • I have put in a two-part solution to these issues:
    • Part 1 is that it now saves the turn number rather than the second. So if you sit for a while on one turn, or even fiddle around without changing the turn, then it doesn't care.
    • Part 2 is that if you HAVE changed what turn it is since the last time the game was saved, then as you exit the city you incremented the turn on, it makes a new savegame for that turn, and that is now the most recent savegame of record for that timeline, matching the one that you would swap back to from the other timeline you changed to.

Post-Apocalypse Completed (For Now)

• The "Make Engineers Of Your Nickelbots" project is now fully in place, and it has four different groups of ways that you can help people and gain small amounts of the strategic resources as you also improve your engineering skill.
  • This is the first implementation of that new type of project, and it took a lot of refinement to get all of the feel exactly right on things. The fact that when you're on the map it takes you to the streets view every time you act is no accident. This helps to ground you in where you are looking at things, and in general slows things down very slightly in a way that I think is important. It just makes this project a lot less abstract.

• After completing the Make Engineers Of Your Nickelbots project, the following unlocks:
  • Disguised Mainframe (which you cannot use yet, because you don't have any computronium cubes; this is not an accident).
  • Disguised Well And Cistern
  • Hidden Water Filter
  • There's not a lot of fanfare about these, as while they are useful, they're also not something the player needs to drop everything do to.

• A new contemplation also unlocks at this point, called Searching For Friends (yes, that is a direct Final Fantasy 6 reference, to essentially the situation that Celes finds herself in that is eerily similar to what the Nickelbot is up to. I didn't do it on purpose at first, but now I'm leaning into it a bit, but with my own twist on things).
  • When you start this contemplation, it should automatically upgrade your Cultivator cap by one.

• When you accept the earlier "Redesign Your Entire... Everything" contemplation, that also now instantly gives you a 5cm Spiders upgrade. If you already did it in a prior build of the game, it does not bother giving them to you retroactively, since this is deep in beta territory.

• The "Searching For Friends" project now gives you four possibilities for unlocking androids.
  • The first one is the Red CombatUnit, which you must choose. This adds it back to your roster if you already had it, or adds it for the first time if you did not.
  • The remaining three are all first-time additions, but they have a second unlock with them that allows them to be used in the post-apocalypse.
    • You get to choose two out of the three following units: Exator, Carver, and Harbinger.
      • This is the only way to unlock these three units, seemingly making them not all that useful, since that would mean they are not in most of the game. However, you'll be able to pull them into other timelines. Aka, these are units you can only get after the apocalypse, and then you bring them back from the future to the past in other timelines. Makes me very very happy to have them invented this way.

• A new event is available in StreetSense starting in chapter two, but only for units that have Expert Shadowdweller. It also costs 2 Determination to execute.
  • This is a way to acquire some Neodymium, if all other methods of getting it are barred to you, or you have enough determination that you just want some very quickly (and you have expert shadowdweller units).
  • If players choose the Harbinger in the post-apocalypse, and they didn't already have a store of Neodymium with them, then there was no way for them to actually build the Harbinger.
  • If they lack even a tiny amount of determination when heading into the post-apocalypse, then they STILL can't build the harbinger, which is fine at that point. They may be able to to something that eventually gets them determination, or they'll just have to do without.

• After the "Searching For Friends" project is complete in the post-apocalyptic scenario, the space nations drop in a Titan to investigate just what the heck is going on, at or very close to the spaceport if possible.
  • This mech then periodically moves at random, leave trails of destruction as it does so. It's a hyper-aggressive stance, and much stronger than any of the military base guards, so it can absolutely just take out military bases if it is near one.

• A new ability has been added, called "Probe Exotic Comms"
  • This is a lot like hacking (and does open a variant of the hacking minigame), but it has a few differences.
  • First of all, it can be done at a distance, whereas hacking you have to move in super close. This is of relevance for probing the titan.
  • Secondly, this is a lot less invasive, and works across different kinds of channels -- for things developed by the space nations, for example, they are not on the city feed and so cannot be hacked directly. This is a way of gathering data that is often encrypted, and you face much lower resistance from this, as well as different kinds of yields.
  • This is basically a form of phreaking, and the game notes this in a couple of ways.

• There is a new Crimson Phreaker contemplation that opens up after Searching For Friends.
  • This is part of the required path for the Titan goal route, but not the Burrower goal route.
  • There's some interesting exploration of the red combatunit, and then it gets the "Probe Exotic Comms" ability, which requires 70 hacking skill.
  • This also starts a new project, called "Probe The Titan." You'll need to probe the titan five times, and choose which kind of benefits and data you want to get each time you get in there.
    • The probes themselves are trivially simple, but there is a choice of what you get each time. Also, because this aggros the Titan, this is going to require a minimum of 2 CombatUnit Reds, and realistically at least 3, with all of them getting destroyed in the process.
    • There are two different kinds of encrypted data you can get from this, and two different levels of direct hacking improvements to the red combatunits.

• There is a new "Alumina, Again" contemplation that opens up after Searching For Friends.
  • This is part of the required path for both the Titan and Burrower goals.
  • This unlocks both the Quietly Loot ability (for Carver or Exator, whichever the player has), and also a new "Quiet Computronium Refinery" structure.
  • This also gives you yet another Cultivator upgrade when you start it, as you need all of the small parasitic energy you can get.

• At the time of the final doom, it now takes away all of your Alumina, if you had any.
  • If you are in a savegame that was already past the final doom, then it will take away all your alumina when you start "Alumina, Again."

• Completing the "Alumina, Again" project that starts from that contemplation is very simple, and a lot like Wallripper, but without having to defend yourself.
  • If you opt to build some mainframes at this point, you'll get back to intelligence class 2.

• Completing the "Probe The Titan" project starts a "Decrypt Data From Titan" project.
  • You cannot complete this project until you complete "Alumina, Again," and then it is quickly able to be completed based on constructing a few buildings to get your Codebreakers online.
  • You will unavoidably rise back to intelligence class 2 as part of this.
  • Once you have completed "Probe The Titan," you can keep trying to probe it if you want. However, the options when probing are now different, and you cannot complete them without first decrypting a fair bit of data.

• Starting the "Searching For Friends" contemplation no longer gives a silent upgrade to cultivators.
  • Instead, when you complete the project "Redesign Your Entire... Everything" right before it, you get the same thing. This is a better flow, and tells the player what they are getting in advance.
  • Similarly, when starting "Alumina, Again" it no longer gives you another Cultivator item. Instead, that only happens as a reward for completing "Searching For Friends".
  • The timing of these is almost identical in both cases, but it actually telegraphs what is happening, rather than doing it invisibly.
  • There IS still an upgrade to 5cm Spiders that is silently given to you at the start of "Redesign Your Entire... Everything," but that one can't be helped/
    • Invisible is a strong word, in general. It's just less-visible, and not something you can anticipate. It still goes in the log, and the fact that the contemplations open several unlocks in a big batch is already normal. But for all the cases other than the spiders, I prefer this flow.

• Completing "Do Some Quiet Looting" now also gives you a cultivator upgrade, which again is needed.
  • Powering all those little parasitic power draws is pretty interesting just because it's so different from the normal game.

• Once you have decrypted the data from the titan, there are up to 5 messages in each of two categories that you can choose to read. How many of them you can read depends on how much encrypted data of the two various types you unlocked.
  • 20020 data: 3 messages.
  • 40040 data: 4 messages.
  • 60060 data: 5 messages.
  • These ratios are the same for both sides. If you hack 3 of one and 2 of the other, then you can get 5 messages from one, and 4 from the other. If you hack 4 and 1, you get 5 messages and 3 messages. If you hack 5 and 0, you get 5 messages and 0 messages.
    • These are a bit forgiving in terms of the ratios, but I wanted to make sure people got the idea without needing to reload a bunch of times to try to see the rest.

• Once you have decrypted the data from the titan mech, you can use that to once again establish comms contact with it, and then disable either of the two nodes that are present.
  • It does not matter which node you choose, the effect is the same in this case.
  • There is no indication to the player that they should do any of this, which is by design. If they don't think of trying to go back and mess with the titan again, then they can either look it up online in a guide, or just go for the Burrower ending. It should be pretty clear that's what they should do, unless I'm much mistaken.

• Once you have used the decrypted data on the titan, it is locked in place and its weapons systems are deactivated.
  • Again, there is no indication at all as to what to do next, but contextually it should be pretty clear, again, hopefully.
  • If the player invades their comms yet again, there is only a single contact point remaining in the hacking minigame, and they can use that to trigger a new sequence of events related to the titan.

• I changed my mind, and there are now two new projects that give some loose guidance on what to do regarding some of the titan content.
  • Specifically, this is here to make sure that players don't just think that maybe they've run into the end of the content and just give up. It makes it clear that there is something else they can do, and hints as to the nature of it, without just blatantly telling them what to do.

• During the second project related to this, there is a really giant conversation tree that can be entered into. It's the largest one in the game so far, even larger than the intro to the game, and it is something I've been planning (though not quite in this form) for a really long time. Overall there are a bunch of paths you can take through it, and 17 nodes in the tree.

• Two more conversation nodes have been added into the titan-related section. These involve re-entering the conversation after certain kinds of exits from it.
  • And a third for if you come back to talk to it before the project below is done, after starting that project.

• Another project is now in place after your first interactions with the titan.
  • This involves three new jobs that are specific to the post-apocalypse, and two new resource types that also are specific to here.

• Another 5 conversation nodes are now in place relating to a second conversation tree that is related to the next mission in the titan-based lineup.

• Nine more conversation nodes, tied to another project with the titan. Goodness this is huge. This is very atypical, but again is all part of a plan that's been around for a while.

• There is a new hacking scenario that actually involves collaborative hacking with an ally.
  • This is, for now, a one-time thing, but will I'm sure be something that is used again at some point.

• A further two conversation nodes happen after the joint hacking session.

• A new cohort has been added, in a new category, that you also discover around this time.

• When you are in the post-apocalypse, but have not yet forged a bridge, your link to gaining neural expansion from other timelines is cut off.
  • Once the bridge is formed, that all comes back in.

• Once the bridge is formed, you gain 1728000 neural expansion (11520 multiplied by 150), which is enough to take you into intelligence class 4 on your own.

• This completes everything interesting you can do in the post-apocalypse for now.
  • I will likely return to this setting in the future to add more content, and possibly some cool storylines with friends you meet here, as I expect that players are going to want that. But for now, it's complete as what it is.

Entering Chapter Three

• Once you reach intelligence class 4, the end of time button now becomes available, and there is also an arrow pointing to it suggesting that is the next step in your evolution.

• As soon as you enter the end of time while also being intelligence class 4 (aka not via just the cheat mode), it becomes chapter three.
  • At this time, four new handbook entries also become visible.

• Aetagest and Daring both now appear properly on the left header in the end of time, and have had their descriptions adjusted somewhat for clarity.

• Even in cheats mode, you are not allowed to call new timelines on Ziggurats. That's something for much later, chapter four or five.
  • It may be a bad idea in general, anyway; possibly the Ziggurats will wind up not being a place for timelines. We'll see how it develops over time.

• There is now a Creator lens in the end of time, which allows you to pull new timelines while using that lens.

• If you have never pulled a new timeline in the end of time, and your current lens is not Creator, there is now an arrow pointing to the Creator lens. Even if you don't have enough Aetagest right now.

• The bleed-across of certain kinds of data has been formalized, so that it can be displayed on the tooltips in the end of time. Being able to see what crossovers there are from other timelines on a given rock is very useful, and now it's possible.
  • This also removes some ambiguity about what crosses over and what does not. If it isn't listed, then at the moment it does not.

• Crossovers now fully work, with key units and equipment you've unlocked in other timelines -- via choices that are often mutually-exclusive, or gated to the post apocalypse, or whatever -- showing up earlier in related timelines (timelines on the same rock only).

• Specific crossovers so far:
  • Bridge With LAKE (soon will cause a new thing to be available for the Red CombatUnit, but for now does nothing)
  • Unit unlocks for: Carver, Exator, Harbinger, Keanu.
  • Item unlocks for: Weaponized Spiders, Weaponized Bees.
  • Structure unlocks for: Apiary
  • Post-Apocalypse (for now does nothing, but it's nice to have that flag just for visibility).

• Added the final 8 story nodes (for now) which not only wrap up some of the post-apocalypse stuff (for now), but which also allow your character to discuss their feelings about the end of time and the mysteries it represents with someone else.

• Once you are in chapter three, the tooltips for contemplations show how many times you have done them in other timelines, including "never."
  • In events, it shows the end of time icon and a number next to it if you've chosen an option before, and in the tooltip, if it has one, it says it more fully like with the contemplations themselves. This particular one includes repeat choices in the same timeline, unlike with contemplations.
    • This is also done in dialog choices.
  • The idea is to help folks find fresh content, or things they have done more infrequently.
  • I have not tested this at all yet, so hopefully it works. Please let me know if it has issues.
  • Thanks to Evil Bistro for suggesting.

Bugfixes

• Corrected the tooltip for mental energy to properly describe the fact that structures and jobs never use it now.
  • Thanks to Waladil for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where the game was trying to recreate building POIs in irradiated cells, and then was running out of names for them.
  • It's possible for the map cell to be irradiated, but the POI is still technically intact as far as the building itself goes, if it's a cultist temple or similar. These are still considered evacuated.

• Fixed a bug where if a minor event was happening at a place other than a building (aka with a unit of yours standing on not-a-building), then the text of the minor event would be absent, even though the actual buttons and title and other aspects of the event would work properly.
  • First ran into this last week, and it was very puzzling. But figure it out today.

• When a unit is using the nonviolent targeting type, it no longer gives threat lines to player units that would move somewhere. That was erroneous and was really confusing in a few cases.

• Fixed an issue where the arrows that point up at things on the top right of the screen (like the forces sidebar, or VR simulation button, or end of time button) were too low.
  • Thanks to Mintdragon, Wolfier, and Fluffiest for reporting.

• Fixed a bug with the build button showing in the end of time.

• Fixed an issue where in chapter two starts, or fresh cities in chapter three and onward, the game was trying to trigger the "weapons and armor" project, which is impossible to complete in those contexts because the related things are already auto-unlocked.
  • Have also further verified that this DOES properly trigger in chapter one, after the "Build a bunker" project is complete, after the corporate show of force event.

• In rank 2 cities -- either starting a new profile in chapter two, or starting a timeline beyond the first in chapter three and onward -- the following two fixes are now in place:
  • The enemies spawn around you like they do in a chapter one start.
  • You do not get a double message about establishing your network. You just get the "rank 2 city" note, and that's it.
  • Also the rank 2 city note has been corrected to no longer talk about the old style of "you have some invisible buildings that are fully optimized," as that's not a thing anymore. It just has you build the buildings, but without the hassle.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting the chapter two city issue, although I can't find the bugtracker ticket anywhere to close it.

• Fixed an issue with an unlock inspiration being overly-specific and therefore confusing. Basically, it used to be triggered by one event, and now can be triggered by several, so it made very little sense.
  • Thanks to Waladil for reporting.

0.593.7 Hotfix 2

(Released October 31st, 2024)

• Adjusted the visuals of the large nukes so that they look nicer, and made it so that there are up to 10 of them, rather than up to 5, when a certain thing happens.

• Fixed a regression from yesterday's changes to the "simple choice" windows.
  • If you were viewing the "results screen" from them, then clicking the button would not properly exit the event, instead taking you into an infinite loop. I had been worried about this sort of thing, but missed this case.
  • I also added in some additional keybind handling for these cases, to handle both the spacebar and escape key (or whatever you rebind the equivalent to):
    • If there is a nevermind option, then the escape key will trigger it.
    • If there is only a single option of whatever sort, then the escape key or the spacebar will progress it.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

0.593.6 Hotfix

(Released October 31st, 2024)

• The amount of microbuilders generated by microbuilder min-fabs has been doubled, and the amount of elemental slurry required to create that has been increased by about 30%. This should create better balance for folks during chapter one in particular.
  • Thanks to Space, Pingcode, More_Dakka, and Fluffiest for reporting.

• Fixed a bug in the prior build where, due to a boolean inversion, any building that was not-not-post-apocalyptic would explode if it was not-yet-the-apocalypse. Translation: all your buildings would explode on loading non-apocalyptic savegames. Facepalm.
  • Thanks to MOREDAKKA for reporting.

0.593.5 Post-Apocalyptic Construction

(Released October 30th, 2024)

• When there are distance restrictions on jobs that are embedded in human structures, it no longer shows highlights on any structures that would be too close to an existing job. This makes planning such structures dramatically easier.

• The PMC Officer Sigil contemplation now requires you to be a PMC Imposter to move there. Previously it would let you move there, and then to actually do it you had to be a PMC Impostor.
  • I corrected most other cases of this, but evidently missed this one.

• A bunch of work on that new kind of project that gives specialized StreetSense activities.
  • It's still not quite done yet, and the "Make Engineers Of Your Nickelbots" post-apocalyptic project is something you can softlock yourself on if you try to do it even though it says it's not ready yet. I'll be finishing that up tomorrow.

Post-Apocalypse

• If you had a VR environment before the final doom, access to it is completely removed after the final doom.

• The dooms tab is grayed out in the post apocalypse, to signal there is no more important information in there, even though there is still legacy information in there.

• A bunch of various contextual limitations have been put into place, and nickelbots are now the only units on your roster after the apocalypse.
  • I didn't mean to start doing this, but once I was seeing them in place, and seeing the visuals I created for the fog in place, and so on, I started thinking of Final Fantasy 6, which is tied for my favorite game of all time with Chrono Trigger. So I wound up realizing that focusing down on just a single unit type in this situation, and showing the loss of everything else would really help to sell the seriousness of what happened. For me, it's the same feeling as waking up alone as Celes on the abandoned island, with the entire rest of the ensemble cast gone.

• There is a new contemplation in the post-apocalypse that is geared toward turning your nickelbots into actual functional engineers.
  • Upon doing this contemplation, you also get your first of the revised jobs, which is a worse-but-hidden version of microbuilder fabrication.

• Mineral Scroungers have been removed from the post-apocalypse.

• There is now actual proper text and iconography and percentages on the "Survive This Apocalypse" project.

• The final doom now does a maximum of 5 nukes, and it lets them overlap some because that looks very cool and makes for a less-round set of destruction.
  • However, it won't allow this chain of nukes to get too far out into the city, using math that even if they daisy-chain outwards at the maximum of 5 nukes, it can't possibly cover most of what exists.
  • This takes a giant bite out of the city, which is the goal of course, but it still leaves you lots of room for the post-apocalyptic rebuilding. Otherwise depending on how you constructed things, there was always the possibility that you could lose so much of the city with this that the cool aftermath would be very boring indeed.

• Additionally as part of these changes, the game now makes sure to explode all of your existing building individually during the final doom. It needs to be a fully clean slate, including not even leaving any remains, because having to clear the remains before rebuilding them near your new network was going to be something that would confuse some players, inevitably.
  • Normally I don't care about that kind of confusion in chapter two and onwards, but there's a lot happening at once, here, and losing the momentum for some silly reason like that is not a goal of mine.

• There is now a Hidden Network Relay and Tiny Electrical Parasite, which unlock after you get the Hidden Microbuilder Fab.
  • These are all tiny and hidden and do a much-worse version of the job that standalone versions do, but they allow you to create and extend a network, and power it, in the post-apocalyptic world.

• A disguised point to point microwave is now also part of the early arsenal for the post-apocalypse. This is pretty important so that players don't get trapped in one corner of the map depending on where things are burned-out.

• When looking at the tooltips of upgrades, they no longer include things from before/after the apocalypse depending on which side you are on.
  • If it is pre-apocalypse, then it doesn't mention any of the stuff that appears ONLY after the apocalypse, like the new jobs that are specialized for that.
  • If it is post-apocalypse, then it doesn't mention any of the unit types that are gone, and it doesn't mention any of the jobs that don't work in the apocalypse (which is most of the existing ones).
    • This can lead to some lists which show nothing in them, which is fine.

• Excess resources and bunker storage are no longer a thing in the post-apocalyptic scenario.
  • I was going to have there be an alternative form of storage, but it would just be recreating the normal mode of the game. It's more interesting to keep things more limited.
  • Right as you transition into the apocalypse, you may see some TPS reports and ledger issues, but those go away after one turn.

• When the apocalypse starts, it now is very careful to make sure that all of your units are killed by explosions, including NPC units related to you, even if they are out of the primary blast radii. Nothing should survive that you had prior to the apocalypse.
  • Additionally, any deals that you were involved in are terminated by the other party at this time. It was already ending all projects in process, so that part is fine.

Bugfixes

• The way that POIs are saved into savegames has been hardened so that if they happen to be collapsing right as the savegame is being saved, or they have a reference to a building that no longer exists, then the problematic POI will simply not be saved.
  • Also fixed a bug in the prior version where discovered POIs were being read as destroyed, which probably was not helping matters.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed an issue that could happen with some of the new logic from the prior build where it was cleaning up destroyed buildings. However, it was trying to do this too soon after loading a savegame, thus leading to errors. It no longer does this logic during the load process.
  • Thanks to dlipiec for reporting.

• Fixed an issue where, after a network tower was completely destroyed, there could be a lingering reference to it from the network which would cause the emergency network source to not appear in the build menu.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed yet another semi-rare exception that could happen when transitioning into the final doom (aka, it does not reliably reproduce). I've also moved that into its own method and instrumented it better so that if another one happens again, I will know.

• Corrected the scale of the predator unit when it is in conversation screens.

• The way that minor events and "examining a background conflict" are opened has been completely rewritten from scratch.
  • It should no longer be possible to miss having an event of this sort pop up, but there may be some other bugs as side effects, like being unable to close certain events, especially background conflict examination windows, perhaps.
  • All of the cases I have tested are okay, but this was not a slight change.
  • Thanks to dlipiec for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where some buildings that were destroyed were trying to recreate their POIs fresh on loading older savegames.
  • This applied mainly in games with large amounts of previous destruction.

• Fixed an issue with point to point microwaves where they said they were out of network range while they were being built. This was inaccurate, and they would show just fine after finishing construction.

• When an upgrade benefits bulk units, it now properly highlights those in white in the list if you have unlocked them, versus showing them in gray.
  • Thanks to Trogg for reporting.

0.593.4 Tower Loss

(Released October 30th, 2024)

Tower Death

• In general, losing the network tower no longer immediately pops up a new one with a notice about "critical save."
  • This will be handled differently in general from now on.

• When you have lost a network tower, there is a new type of emergency network source that becomes available for you to build inside of other structures.
  • It provides less network range and almost no electricity, and since it is hidden in human buildings, it shows the network icon above itself in both the map and regular street views.

Post-Apocalypse And Related

• Irradiated cells now draw darker in the map so that you can see where there is this sort of hole in the city. This applies well before the final doom, since some of the smaller explosions (or even the Baurcorp nuke) cause the irradiated status.

• Destroyed buildings no longer draw in the map view, and no buildings draw on the map view for cells that are irradiated in general.

• In general, if anything destroys the host building that one of your "hidden structures in a human building" is inside, your structure is now permanently destroyed (not to remains that can be rebuilt, because you can't rebuild the host structure around your hidden structure.

• POIs can now be destroyed.
  • If their entire cell is irradiated, and they are smaller than one cell, that will do it.
  • If they are from a specific building, and that building is destroyed, that also does it.
  • If they are a multi-cell tile (spaceport, larger military bases, etc), then ALL of their cells have to be irradiated in order for them to be destroyed. Otherwise they will just be partially destroyed, but still there.
  • Once a POI is destroyed, it no longer has any reinforcements come to it, it no longer has any security clearance, and so on.

• After the final doom happens, there is now a gap of 8 seconds before you get a message about your intelligence class falling, and before you get any replacement units as a netslicer.
  • This helps to maintain the tone of this event better, and it also ensures that your new units don't jerk the camera away from what you are looking at, and also that they do not spawn in the blast area while that's still going off. If at all possible, they will spawn outside of irradiated areas in general, but they will spawn in an irradiated area if there is nowhere in the city that is not irradiated.

Bugfixes

• When in the post-apocalyptic mode, any structures or jobs of yours that are invalid for that mode are now removed from the game. Previously the ones that were burned-out were able to linger and be rebuilt.

• Fixed a bug where the "toggle delete any unit" cheat was throwing exceptions when you selected it or tried to use it.
  • Thanks to dlipiec for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where the "marker light" for structures inside destroyed buildings were still drawing.

• Fixed a bug where some of the structures of the player were being destroyed too early during the final doom, leading to the intelligence class to fall during the pop-up event right prior to the things that happen.

• When new units are spawned from things like the "critical save," they will no longer be able to appear in the wasteland around the city.
  • Thanks to dlipiec for reporting.

• Fixed a major issue with how reinforcements were happening, that was leading to doom-stacks of mechs in military bases in chapter 2.
  • Essentially, the pool from which units should seed are not including the mark 2 mechs, in order not to cause mark 2 mechs to start spawning into military bases too soon. So normally, what happens during a reinforcement event is that a mark 1 mech is seeded, and instantly upgraded to mark 2, as an example.
  • However, since all mechs of this sort are upgraded to mark 2 after a certain point in the story, the game was detecting that there were no mechs at all in the base -- not of the kinds it should seed, anyway. So it was then seeding more... and more... until they couldn't fit in terms of even walking around.
  • Now it has separate tags for seeding and for checking, and these mechs are counted properly.
  • If any of the categories of units that should seed as reinforcements are over the maximum cap of what is allowed, the game also now strips those out, so this should fix all existing savegames with the issue.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed the "Null unitToUse!" error that could happen on final doom if there was no place to spawn a technician near where the camera was. It now tries to do so in the entire map before giving up.
  • Thanks to dlipiec for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where if you had another window open when reaching the point where an event should pop up -- specifically the final doome, and perhaps no others at this point, actually, it would fail to fully open that event.
  • Thanks to dlipiec for reporting.

0.593.3 The Post-Apocalypse

(Released October 29th, 2024)

• SecForce Stations are now POIs with specific names (really, more like numbers).

• Added a new "Lightweight Components" piece of equipment that is available from the very start of the game. IT gives +3 movement range and +15 agility.
  • A straightforward way to improve speed and agility. Multiple can be stacked in a single android.
  • Thanks to Fluffiest for doing LITERALLY everything with this. All I had to do was copy and paste her xml in, as she fully designed and implemented it. Super cool!!

Doom Events

• Eleven new musical stingers have been added for use at the commencement of dooms. There's a longer compound one for the final doom, in particular.
  • These are kind of along the lines of what happens during chapter changes, just used differently.

• The various music cues for doom events are all now in place, helping to accentuate the importance of those.

• SecForce SuperCruisers have been added as a new unit type, and they're a much larger version of the cruisers that players are accustomed to.
  • After the assassination of the vorsiber executives, these start patrolling the city from then onwards.
  • They are not aggressive if not attacked, for now at least. I tried it with them being weapons-free, and it was just far too painful. I'll make sure that they get involved if they are around when you do certain things, probably, but for now they're just... there. Unless anyone shoots one, and then they rain death.

• The seventh doom event is now in place, and involves all of the new SecForce SuperCruisers and the low-flying military transports all exploding, dealing massive unblockable damage to a lot of units around them, including punching holes in walls and taking out mechs and parts of military bases.
  • These can absolutely take out your tower, or a big chunk of your holdings, too. But the player, after an initial shock, is able to shrug it off thanks to the auto-rebuild functionality. There is just as large a chance that it won't even touch their stuff at all.

• Only half of the target vehicles now explode in the seventh doom, since that seems more realistic.

• The eighth doom is now finished. The Children of Gaia now have new units that are essentially super weak but specialize in destroying your buildings.
  • They also don't show up on your map or other views unless you have LOS of them, or a scanner in place.
  • They spawn out of various cultist temples around the city, and make a beeline for your buildings. It takes only one shot for any unit to kill them, but they're extremely stubborn and so you have to use fear to reduce their morale if you want to do this nonlethally. So if you're trying for a nonlethal run past a certain level, it just got a lot harder this far in.
  • If you have a lot of low-level bulk androids posted around, they can also take care of this pretty easily. But you need to be compact enough to defend your stuff, or be okay with rebuilding, either way.

• The ninth doom is less intense than the last couple have been. I was going to make it an incursion by an ExoCorp, but instead this is going to be the last chance for players to get anything else they want to get done before the final doom strikes. So this needed to pretty much leave them alone for 100 turns, while still raising the stakes emotionally.
  • To that end, Vorsiber now announces a reversal of its centuries-held policy of looking the other way about religious observation happening in historic temples. They precision-bomb all of the temples, taking them out as well as non-armored units right next to them, and buildings right next to them. But these are such small explosions that they don't disrupt roads or walls, or cause a reduction in traffic, etc.
  • This is the calm before the massive storm of the final doom, and it gives players a chance to focus on that last 100 turns.

• The final doom is now in place. When it is time for it, a child approaches you and causes an event to happen.
  • QLOC testing notes:
    • If you don't have any androids, it should create a technician for you and then talk to that one.
    • If all your androids are in vehicles, or all of them are doing actions over time, it should work anyway.
    • If you have no unit selected, or a vehicle selected, or a structure selected, or an enemy NPC selected, it should still work.
    • In general if there are any edge cases where this event does not trigger, that's a really important problem, so testing variants as much as possible is good.
  • After the child hands you a note and you read it, 1 or more full nukes go off. There are enough nukes to hit every building you own, plus some, and the devastation to the city is intense. The child is implicitly vaporized.
    • QLOC testing notes: if you have almost no buildings, or a ton of buildings very spread out, then this working properly is all very important.
  • After the horror of this happens, there's a new project that has started, called Survive This Apocalypse.

Post-Apocalypse

• There are now two new weather styles for the post-apocalyptic part of the game.
  • These are uncomfortably foggy, which is a thing I have wanted to do for a long time because it's just so cool-looking, but during normal gameplay it would get really distracting. So this is something that makes more sense with the post-apocalypse.

• Most of the various units that wander around the city are blocked by the post-apocalyptic part of the game. It makes the city feel very empty, in a great way that is fitting for that section of the game.

• In the post-apocalyptic scenario, most contemplations disappear and are no longer available to be chosen. Any that remain would have to be specifically mapped to be valid, and so far none of the existing ones are mapped that way.

• There is now a completely new set of music that plays during the post-apocalyptic sections. This is music that was originally going to be used for the zodiac sub-screens that are no longer a part of the plan for the game. Turns out that the vibe of these fits great for this section of the game.

• Most StreetSense actions that are event-related are no longer available during the post-apocalypse. Gathering prismatic tungsten is, but all of the various shops, and other kinds of gathering, are not.

• Other StreetSense actions that are not event-related are mostly all still there, except for Wiretap, which is not available anymore during the post-apocalyptic period.

• In the post-apocalypse section of the game, only your buildings which are hidden can be built. Nothing that is big and metallic is allowed.
  • Additionally, hidden buildings that require deterrence are blocked, so that means the protein cannery, for example.
  • There will be a new set of jobs that are all hidden style coming up shortly, but I don't have time to finish that tonight.
  • Also at the moment it is giving you a new network tower in this scenario, which will not be the case after the next build.

• Territory control flags are no longer available in the post-apocalyptic scenario.

• In the post-apocalyptic part of the game, all background conflicts are abandoned (which is a new status for them), and no more conflicts are able to start.
  • The tab in the history window is also showed as grayed out, since while there is data in there, it's all fairly irrelevant now. This seemed like the clearer way to make that a lower priority.

Bugfixes

• Dramatically improved the performance of the wander logic for NPC units. It was taking quite a long time (a few hundred milliseconds, in aggregate) for a dozen or so units to wander. That has now been reduced to about 3 milliseconds for the same units.

• Fixed two issues with units that wander: first that they could wander into the wasteland when they were not supposed to, and secondly that they all had a tendency to wander southwest because of an accidental bias in the wandering logic. They COULD wander any direction, but southwest was a trend that would consistently show up over large timescales.
  • Thanks to Wolfier and dlipiec for reporting.

• StreetSense and Contemplation entries no longer show on buildings that have been destroyed.

• There is a rare exception that can happen when you are on the city map view, and trigger the final doom event while mashing 0 a bunch.
  • I have put in extra instrumentation to narrow down where the bug happens, but I've only been able to reproduce it one time, so I can't actually fix the root problem yet.

• There was a bug that could happen if a bunch of nukes had just gone off on the map, and you quickly reloaded into a new savegame directly after that. It should be fixed now, but is worth checking more.

• Fixed a longstanding bug where the territory control category could be present with just the delete and pause functions in it, but no actual territory control flags to place.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where if an existing window was open, then events that were popping up as a result of something like the final doom, or as a result of an action over time that has an event at the end of it, would fail to open.
  • So for example, have inventory or history open when one of those callbacks should happen, and the callback would be missed entirely.

0.593.2 Space Invasion

(Released October 29th, 2024)

Doom Events

• The third doom, with the prison mechs spawning, is now a lot better.
  • Each mech only sticks around for an average of 5 turns before leaving, announcing that it collected prisoners (however, there's 50% chance of each one not doing that on a given turn after 5 turns, so they stagger in and out.
  • They also are no longer set to clump together anymore, and there are fewer of them in general, and they will space out in a more interesting way.
  • They also now stay a few turns into the next doom, finishing collecting their prisoners, rather than all disappearing instantly.

• The fifth doom is now fully in place. This is an air attack by the space nations. They fly in bombers and fighters from the wasteland into the city, striking ground targets.
  • This required a number of NPC AI extensions, but it seems to work quite well. There are recycled attack visuals on these units for now, which I'll come back to later. But their actual unit visuals are new and specicic just to these units.
  • As a player, you can see squadrons of these forming up in the wasteland, and if they look likely to interact with things that you care about... well, it's something you may have a hard time dealing with, to be honest. A lot of times these attacks wind up causing chaos in the military bases around where they happen to attack, so there's a lot of chances for you to get shot-a-lot.
  • This may be too intense for the fifth doom, I'm not sure. But I wanted it to be something that the players would find really notable, and would help drive home the point of the time limit.

• The sixth doom is a bunch of assassinations within Vorsiber's upper management. This has no effect on the game in the short term.
  • Players have expressed a desire to do this sort of thing, and the goal of this doom is to reinforce how futile that is, in the grander scheme. The organization is way too large for a chance in leadership of this sort to matter.
  • That said, longer term, this sets the stage for why there's a major shift in Vorsiber policies, leading to the tenth and final doom later on.
  • Lastly, this is meant to be a reprieve and return to normalcy for a while after the intense 100 turns of the space nations attacking.

Bugfixes

• Contemplations that happen at your own buildings should no longer have any security clearance check. Thus preventing you from being blocked on a wide variety, including the flower girl one.
  • Thanks to Wolfier for reporting.

• Fixed a regression in the prior build where NPCs that were supposed to spawn in "near to humans" were not showing up at all.
  • This was due to my changes to fix the spawn location of the capture mechs during the prison segment so that they spawn closer to actual targets, and related to some of my new chapter 2 content that also spawns near specific buildings.
  • It turns out that there are two branches of code needed here, as one set of logic does not work for both cases.
  • Thanks to Wolfier, Alias50, and mblazewicz for reporting.

• Made sure that things were compiled in such a way that there should not be an exception when opening the cheats menu.
  • Thanks to dlipiec for reporting.

• Fixed two projects having references to Atmosphere Only, which no longer needed to be mentioned since it auto-unlocks.
  • Thanks to Fluffiest for reporting.

0.593.1 Dooms

(Released October 28th, 2024)

• The release notes link in the game has been updated to point to this new page.

• Have started adding some more goal states, and removed two goal states, as I'm coming to realize I want something more flexible that does not mean "this timeline has reached a full tier 1 goal state" in the sense I previously meant it. There's a lot more interesting opportunities to mix and match for players when I'm not being that monolithic.

• When savegames are loaded, they now specify what the version of the save was in the log where it says how long it took to load. This is not really useful for anyone but myself and perhaps some testers, to see if a loaded save is really from the version that a bug reporter says it is.

• Chapter Two has been renamed to Strategy, and Chapter Three is now called Freedom. Previously, chapter two was called Freedom, but that was out of date for a while now.

• The android archetypes handbook entry now mentions by name the different types of android that exist.

• After you are warned about the dooms in chapter two, you now have a project which is to reach intelligence class 4. This will remain for probably most of the second chapter, unless players make it a priority.
  • Once escaping the first timeline, that is the catalyst to move to chapter three (which is the main time loop of the game, and includes all of the content from chapter two), and in chapter three and onwards it does not have this project since you are already at that level.

QoL

• Both StreetSense and Contemplations now have a dropdown above them on the radial menu, where you can select subsets of them by purpose.
  • These were getting crowded even in chapter one, and it is only going to get drastically worse as chapter two and onward grows. So this allows players to quickly filter to the sorts of things they are interested in out of what is available at the moment.
  • As an aside, this in particular makes it easier to see how to start a shell company, with that option then disappearing after you have started one.

• Timeline goals are now visible for the first time, in a new tab in the history window. Wow that window has a lot of tabs now.
  • You can now see what the available timeline goals are, in broad terms, and also filter by collections that are provided for it. In their tooltips, it also shows what resources you will get for the metagame without explaining those at all, and if there are multiple tiers of accomplishing that timeline goal.

• There is also a new contemplations tab in the history window, which shows you the contemplations in a list format. This allows you to also filter them, to see things like what things are related to the critical path of goals.
  • Here again, the goal was to make sure that players are able to plan properly when they are thrown in and there are a ton of options, most notably by filtering down the options at least somewhat.

Doom Events

• The "starting conflicts" choice when starting a new timeline (in the end of time) has been shifted to "doom type" instead, and now folds in a lot more things than just the conflicts at the start.
  • This is part of a much larger new feature in general, which will finally give some time pressure in chapter two, but in a bit of a twist than games that bother me about how they handle it.

• There is a new Dooms tab in the history window, which shows the list of dooms that are going to happen for this current timeline, and on what turn they will happen.
  • If the doom clock has not yet started, then it simply notes that this will happen in the future.
  • In general, you can see some information about dooms early (that they exist at all) by hovering that tab in the history window, as early as in the prologue. However, dooms themselves will not show up until chapter two.
  • Once you can see them, it shows you what turn they will happen on, exactly, and how many turns you have remaining before they do However, if you've never experienced a given doom before in any timeline, then it just shows "unknown doom" until it happens.

• I should note that for the very first doom, you only get 99 turns, and for all the others you get 100 turns. This makes for round numbers when you are starting a fresh timeline on turn 1, where dooms hit on turns 100, 200, etc.
  • This doesn't apply when you are entering from chapter one on your first timeline, but every other timeline it will apply.

• For the initial "Vorsiber's Wrath" doom type, the ten doom events have been defined and described.

• When you are in chapter two, and you have a network tower, it now starts the doom counter and gives you a message about what dooms are.
  • It also gives you two new handbook entries in a new Timelines section, and it marks both as read immediately since they are duplicate information from the message that pops up and its extension for if you have more questions.

• In chapter three and onward, it starts the dooms as soon as you build the network tower, but it doesn't have anything new to say about them that you don't already know.
  • Note to QLOC: you'll be able to test chapter 3 things within a week, so please keep a note of these things to test them later, since you can't test them yet.

• When doom events happen, they now create a popup that is a must-look-at message on the task stack. You can either right-click to dismiss those, or left-click to see the full list of dooms.
  • The general idea here is to make sure that these are not missed.
  • Note to QLOC: if one of these is visible, it should save into the savegame and then load back out properly.

• The first doom event (in the Vorsiber's Wrath set) happens 99 turns after you start the doom countdowns. It is called "Deaths In The Black Market," and both the Tradesman and Assistant are killed by Vorsiber forces.
  • If you had not already traded with them for their weapons and armor, then you can't get those for the rest of this timeline.
  • If you had already traded with them, then you'll see a notice of their deaths, but not much else changes. They don't have ongoing storylines, unlike the Merchandiser, who lives through this.
  • This first doom event is very tame, although it does also put a time limit on you deciding if you want those weapons and armor or not.

• There is a new category of "desperate homeless," which are people who are victims of very rapid displacement, especially after you have reduced the homeless tents around the city.
  • They act mostly like abandoned citizens or displaced citizens, and will quickly die of exposure if you have no housing or refugee housing for them to move into.

• The second doom event is a Famine, which causes a bunch of desperate homeless to spawn until the next doom event happens (so, it's 100 turns of between 2 and 380 new desperate homeless per turn. That means you have anywhere between 200 and 38000 people to either ignore or take in.
  • This actually can be quit a nice boost if you're looking for more people to put into your VR Seats, and have the space for it.
  • There will later be other famine-related events that pop up in a time-based fashion, but I'm not in a hurry to make that happen, as it's a nice-to-have for now.

• The third doom event is Prisoner Drive, where a bunch of mechs from the two prison companies show up in four different locations around the map, in poor and decrepit parts of town.
  • They are gathering from the lower classes, but they also will live-fire on you if you happen to be near them, or move near them.
  • These should always seed far enough from your machine areas that you aren't constantly embattled for 100 turns with them, but that will take some testing to see if bad cases can be created.

• The fourth doom event is Religious Schism, which causes the death of your nurturist exalter friend, if you met her, and also the dissolution of her entire sect of Nurturism.
  • If you hadn't already done the pollinators event, you can't start it after this point.

• The fifth through tenth doom events are defined, but don't yet have their related logic in place, so please don't try to test those yet. The messages will pop up about them, but nothing will actually happen.

Zodiac Path

• There are some goals related to this, and a contemplation that you have no way to complete yet. There's going to be some side-questing required before you can even start these paths.

Housing Path

• Immediately in chapter 2, there is a new contemplation called "Shelter Coordinators Are Slow" on your housing.
  • If you embark on it, and spend 20 compassion, then it will start the project "Solve Homelessness" and unlock the new "Housing Agency" job as well as giving you 1 upgrade of the Steward internal robotics.
  • The player is likely to have to convert many of their smaller housing tower into Residential MegaStructures, but they should be able to have three RMs even if they never took any Steward upgrades before now. That should, in turn, be sufficient to house all of the homeless in the entire city.
  • The entire project should take only a few turns after the construction is completed on the RMs and the housing agencies, if they build two of the agencies.

• While you are in the middle of solving homelessness, NOAI rebels and Will of the People gang members are going to angrily be attacking those buildings, and then spilling into your other buildings if you're not careful.
• Added a new rebel unit, and a couple of new stances for rebels and gangs, and some other features to make them function as desired.

• The first two debates of chapter two are now in place. With the housing, you can talk to the rebels and gang members who are attacking you. You can win debates with both, but only the gang members will leave if you do. The rebels are too fanatical to leave that way.
  • Added some more under the hood features to allow for just some units to leave after things like this.

Balance

• Daily Necessity storage caps are now 10x higher from each storage bunker, as the cap was too easily hit.

• Residential MegaStructures can now hold 2x the population they previously did, and 1.5x the amount of VR Day-Use Seats.

• The requirement for reaching intelligence class 4 has been tripled, and the other intelligence classes above it have also been increased substantially.

• Took away the cap on the six personality-based resources.
  • The goal of the cap was to prevent players from hoarding them and never using them, but this created another problem where if they had more than a certain amount, the game would have to warn them, and if they didn't do things in the right order, they could wind up losing some to hitting cap. I just don't like that flow at all, it doesn't feel right. I've decided that if they want to hoard it, let them.

• Corrected the balance on the Computing Host upgrade; it was way too small per upgrade.

Cheat Adjustments

• Added a new cheat that enables a mode that allows you to delete any unit you select.
  • Useful for when I need to test certain combat situations over and and over again, but not for balance reasons. I need all the speed I can get.

• Sandbox mode was a misleading name, and has been renamed to "Cheat Mode."
  • It is also now per-timeline, versus infecting an entire profile forever once turned on a single time. That's a lot more fair.

• The "Go To Chapter" cheat has been removed, as that did not really function in a useful way in general at this point.

• The "End of Time Resource Grant" cheat has also been removed.
  • The other cheats relating to the end of time remain, as they can help players get un-stuck if they manage to get stuck somehow.

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where you were getting refunded for mental energy you didn't actually spend when scrapping structures or jobs.
  • Thanks to Fluffiest for reporting.

• Contemplations now show what their requirements are in the lower left description of them when you hover them, rather than first making you select a unit and then hover them to find out if you pass or fail.

• I've put in extra protections against some random "wealth goes to excess for one turn, or even a few turns" bugs that I'm not sure how to trigger, but which were definitely on the prior build, just very rare.
  • Thanks to Lukas for reporting.

• Fixed the bug with older savegames not properly giving players the personality-based strategic resources. It was related to the caps I've now removed.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

• Fixed a bug where npc units set to spawn around a specific kind of building were not actually doing that logic appropriately.
  • Thanks to mblazewicz for reporting.

Prior Release Notes

Moving To Chapter Two