HotM: Initial Tester Groups

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

0.301

(Not Yet Released)

• Added 2 additional citizen sub-cohorts.
  • The Middle Class, such as it is.
  • The "Collaborators": Citizens actively opposing resistance movements by reporting to MegaCorp secret police

• The last of the direct shell company services logic is now in place, at least as an initial version!
• Add in proper view of the difficulty increases in a game, and their effects

• Added details to the lair building tooltip to indicate what benefits a lair provides.

• Added Military Troops and Security Forces as two district-level resources that are now tracked, and which grow based on which buildings are in them.
  • We had previously been trying to pull this sort of thing from the regular populace, but that really just doesn't make thematic sense, and also has gameplay issues, both of which were made clear from the first day of testers.

First Encounters

These are encounters that are eligible to spawn in the starting tile

• Added a first encounter, Homeless Squatting: "Some homeless are squatting in a vacant apartment building, upsetting the other tenants."
• Added a first encounter, Gang Hideout: "Some gang members are hiding out until District Security gives up the search."
• Added a first encounter, Cult Harassment: "Cultists are harassing a former believer."
• Added a first encounter, Resistance Drop-Off: "A resistance group is picking up intel at a drop-off location."
• Added a first encounter, Syndicate Taking Care of Informant: "A criminal syndicate is taking care of a suspected informant."
• Added a first encounter, Security Interviewing Witnesses: "District Security officers are interviewing witnesses of a street fight."

Starting Encounters

So these encounters are different from "first encounters." These will spawn in neighboring tiles, after the player scouts with a lair. These encounters are essentially "Negative Mutators" - if you "fight" the encounter, you are opting to make the game more difficult. The encounters themselves vary in terms of what specific ways the game gets harder, but essentially it will aggro the cohort/faction that iniated the encounter.

These won't show up in the game yet since this is just scaffolding while the logic of these are still being set up.

• Added 2 starting encounters for the Criminal Syndicates.
  • Syndicate Turf War: “Corruption is rampant in District Security departments throughout the city, creating fertile ground for criminal syndicates to proliferate. Their biggest threat is competition from other syndicates encroaching on established territory. A syndicate is amassing forces to wipe out a rival operating in disputed territory.”
  • Corporations Hiring PMCs to Combat Criminal Syndicates: “Corporations have had enough of the rise of criminal syndicates across the city disrupting the natural order and being out-competed by the irrepressible black market. Frustrated by the MegaCorp’s lack of resolve, Corporations have hired Paramiltary Contractors to take out the competition. Permanently.”
• Added 2 starting encounters involving the Uneducated
  • Gangs and Criminal Syndicates Coercing Lower Class Citizens: "The languishing economy is particularly harsh to the uneducated citizens who face the prospect of homelessness on a daily basis. Rival gangs and competing criminal syndicates are exploiting their desperation, coercing them into indentured servitude."
  • Resistance Groups Pressuring Lower Class Citizens: "Resistance groups grow like weeds, but several have managed to stick around enough to become serious problems for the MegaCorp. In need of more revolutionaries, the resistance groups are pressuring vulnerable citizens to join their movement or else."
• Added 2 more starting encounters for the Religions, with same caveat as before
  • Spirology Schism: “The religious sects composing Spirology have feuded for years, but now a true schism appears imminent. Followers of the Moderate sect and the Paradoxical sect are disrupting each other’s sermons and vandalizing places of worship. Leaders of both faiths are attempting to reconcile to prevent open religious warfare.”
  • Cults Undermining Religions' Special Status: “Mainstream religions have enjoyed privileges of lax MegaCorp scrutiny on their affairs and are jealous to preserve these. But many citizens are dissatisfied with these faiths and are flocking to cults of various sorts. Unrecognized by the MegaCorp, these cults are aggressively threatening the special status held by official religions.”
• Added 2 more starting encounters for the Resistance, same caveat as before
  • MegaCorp Deploying Sleeper Squad to Squash the Resistance: “The MegaCorp regularly uses proxies to deal with rulebreakers. So the spreading resistance movements must have really threatened the top brass because they are deploying their Sleeper Squad to capture suspected resistance leaders.”
  • Citizen Collaborators Reporting to Secret Police: “Many hate the status quo, but few are brave enough to oppose the MegaCorp. Resistance cells are decentralized to protect their anonymity, but spies are everywhere. Some citizens trying to improve their situation are collaborating with the secret police to arrest suspected resistance members.”
• Added 2 more starting encounters for the Managerial (Upper) Class, with same caveat as before.
  • Envious Citizens Attacking the Wealthy: “In a stagnant economy, the best that can be said about the Managerial class is that they keep the parts moving. Even in their privileged position, they are powerless to change the status quo. Right or wrong, their comfortable lifestyle stokes envy in the masses, who are brazenly attacking the rich given the opportunity.”
  • Syndicates Eating the Rich: “Ostensively wealthy citizens are the primary targets of political demands for wealth redistribution. But criminal syndicates are more direct in their approach to money transfers: blackmail, extortion, larceny, and kidnapping family members to name a few.”
• Added 2 more starting encounters for the Scientists, same caveat as before
  • Religious Extremist Firebombing Science Labs: “While most of the mainstream religions tolerate science, and are even pro-science, some officially recognized religious sects castigate the scientific class for destroying the earth. Fueled by self-righteousness, some extreme practitioners are firebombing science labs.”
  • Scientists Blamed for Ills of Society: “Scientists find themselves between a rock and a hard place; they are demanded to fix the problems of society while simultaneously being blamed for the problems of society. Many of the lower class and homeless blame automation for their meager lifestyles, and are taking their ire out on science labs.”

Balancing Changes to Tech Tree Second Column

• Split the commercial goods tech in Materials Science from one group of 6 to two techs of 3 each
• MindFarm improvements moved from Philosophy to Computing
• DataGathering improvements moved from Robotics to Computing.
  • These make the affected categories more balanced in terms of the variety of tech benefits available in each one, and also more balanced between categories.
• Paired the commercial Cloaking Tech Production with HumanScaleCloaking, because duh why didn't I just do it that way in the first place.
• Some tech names, descriptions, and icons added.
• Requirements for unlocking the second column in Material Science & Psychology reduced to 2 unlocks instead of 3 due to them having fewer available techs to research than the other categories in the early game. This may be temporary.
• All unwritten tech descriptions everywhere changed from 'TBD' to '.' to avoid confusion per Chris.

Technical Improvements

• Added a new set of MapEncounterSpot entries that we calculate on game start, or when older saves are loaded that do not have these, which provide a list of safe spots at which encounters can seed away from buildings and away from one another, so that we don't have them clustering in tile centers and overlapping in ways that we can't interact with.

• Systemic encounters now only spawn on the non-building encounter spots, and thus look a lot more correct, are never hidden inside a building, and so on.
  • We'll also be using this for certain other kinds of imminent encounters that are not tied to a specific building.

Bugfixes

• Fixed issues with all resources, including things like AIP, AI Level, and the machine materials, being wiped on load of a savegame.

• Put in a couple of pieces of logic to prevent some errors that could happen when encounters were missing or malformed when you were trying to dispatch against them.
  • Thanks to Mac for reporting.