Heart of the Machine

"The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn." — The Discovery of the Future, H.G. Wells

Building the Machine

Update 10 Changelog

• Early Contemplations & Dog Rescues: Contemplations now unlock much earlier in Chapter One, and the ability to rescue dogs has been moved up as well.
  
• Bulk Android Squads & Converted Units: Now provide clear feedback when attempting to load them into transports, noting that it's not possible and why.
  
• Permanent Unit Badges: Consumable items have been added that grant permanent badges to individual units, enhancing them beyond their usual capabilities. However, these upgrades do not apply to unit types—if the specific unit dies, the badge is lost.
  
• Intelligence Class 5 Badge Unlocks: Upon reaching Intelligence Class 5, the first four badge-granting consumables become available: Sprinter, Wizard, Wall, and Intimidating Shadow.
  
• Android Torpor (StreetSense, Intelligence Class 5): A new Android Torpor action allows players to put an android into a hidden sleep for a mild, non-renewable cost. This preserves the unit for later use, particularly useful for units with badges that would otherwise be lost.
  
• People-Watching Debates: Wealthy citizen debates have been rebalanced based on player feedback.
  
• Dual Handguns Rebalanced: Now scale twice as strongly as regular handguns. Thanks to Pingcode for suggesting and implementing this.
  
• StreetSense & Scavenging Site Lens Filters: Resource filters for the StreetSense lens have been split into sub-filters, and the Scavenging Sites lens now includes filters—both based on player requests.
  
• Unit Scrapping List Order: Now matches the Forces sidebar, ensuring a sensible unit order.
  
• Expanded Inspect Mode: Holding Ctrl now allows you to inspect buildings in any lens, rather than just in Versatile and Structures.
  
• Quick Equipment & Filtering Shortcuts: Ctrl-clicking a unit type button in Command Mode now jumps directly to the equipment screen for that unit type. Ctrl-clicking a building type in Build Mode now filters by its internal robotics. Ctrl-clicking a resource in the Ledger, main resource view, or top-left game header now jumps directly to its Input/Output report. If no data is available, the screen will be skipped.
  
• Ledger & Input/Output Report Improvements: The Ledger now includes salaries, TPN usage, and other non-job-related expenses/incomes that were previously missing. The Input/Output Report now displays all expenses and incomes, including deals, making resource tracking more comprehensive.
  
• Ignoring Reports Made Clearer: The option to ignore Ledger and TPS reports is now more clearly displayed in their tooltips.
  

Fixes & Adjustments

• Slum Tower Clearance Fix: Completely clearing all slum towers in the city no longer blocks two specific projects.
  
• Unit Mouse Collider Adjustments: The mouse collider size for War Raptors and Parkour Bears has been adjusted to not be oversized.
  
• AOE Attack Fix: AOE attacks hitting your units as secondary targets will no longer cause NPCs to appear in the “attacks planned against your units” list.
  
• Autosave Purging Update: Autosave purging is now sorted based on date and time instead of in-game time, ensuring proper save management when loading older savegames.
  
• Microbuilder Mini-Fab Message Fix: The "damaged buildings" repair spiders message now only appears when buildings are actually damaged by enemies, rather than when first constructing a Microbuilder Mini-Fab.
  
• Exception Fixes: A handful of player-reported exceptions have been fixed.
  

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
  
• How to Improve Engineering
  
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?
  

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born.” — The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin

Building the Machine

Update 9 Changelog

• Advocate Encounter goal: A 14th Tier One goal has been added with two routes: Earned Some Respect or Earned New Mortal Enemies. This project introduces new rebel factions and a broader look at city life.
  
• New achievements: Ten new achievements have been added.
  
• Rage Circuit: A new android equipment piece, available after Intelligence Class 4, that boosts firepower at the cost of morale damage.
  
• Oath of Pacifism: A new android equipment piece, available after Intelligence Class 4, that prevents physical damage while increasing intimidation and morale damage. Ideal for non-lethal bulk units.
  
• Map lens improvements: New quality-of-life options allow players to jump straight from a map lens to its list-style counterpart.
  
• Contemplation visibility: Players can now hide contemplations from the map lens if they don’t plan to pursue them in this timeline.
  
• Mass furniture purchasing: Added a bulk-buy option for furniture, recognizing increased use cases where this is needed.
  
• Structure tooltip expansion: Now displays net income from expense resources from the prior turn, making production chains easier to set up.
  
• Resource tracking improvements: Holding Shift or Ctrl now displays net change from the last turn for all resources in the header bar.
  
• Terminology update: The term middle class has been replaced with working class throughout the game for improved clarity.
  
• Text adjustments: Reworded older text that still referenced machine origins and Netslicers.
  
• Cold Blood availability: The Cold Blood action is now always available in StreetSense, even if the player hasn’t committed murder yet.
  
• Food and Water for Humans handbook entry: A new guide explaining the distinction between housing and feeding in the game—clarifying that being a landlord does not mean being a mayor.
  
• Exploration Site Progress Is Retained handbook entry: Clarifies that progress on exploration sites carries forward, making them easier to complete over multiple visits.
  
• Projects With StreetSense Items handbook entry: Explains how StreetSense items influence project outcomes and how they affect roleplay and strategic choices.
  
• Hacking Rules Adjustments: The hacking minigame rule of "cannot Jump to a cell that you cannot Run out of" has been removed, and when if corrupting a shard in the hacking minigame would cause you to win the minigame, it will let you do that even if it's your last shard.
  

New Equipment (Volunteer Contributions by RocketAssistedPuffin)

• Heavy Metals Injection (Harbingers): A new consumable that enables area-of-effect fear attacks and weakens enemy hackers.
  
• FR-70 Hallucinogen Grenade (Harbingers): A stealthy poison grenade for Harbingers, available immediately upon unlocking them.
  
• High-Density Rounds (Nickelbots): A contemplation-based upgrade that strengthens elite Nickelbots at the cost of heavy metals—balancing their underperformance compared to bulk Nickelbots.
  
• ETS Tasp (Infiltrators): Found in exploration sites, this equipment provides cognition boosts and non-lethal attack specialties for Infiltrators.
  
• Infrasonic Loudspeaker (Androids): Available via exploration sites, this device enhances morale-based attacks for any android.
  
• Exoskeleton Arms (Sledge): An exploration site upgrade that improves attack range and Strength for Sledge units.
  
• Liquid Identity (Stolen Human Mechs): Available as a contemplation if the player has been divorced in this timeline and has high engineering, allowing for greater mobility of stolen human-designed mechs.
  

Fixes and Adjustments

• Network tower explosions: Fixed a minor visual issue with network towers during destruction.
  
• Android action restrictions: Fixed an issue where androids with no security clearance were unable to perform certain actions.
  
• Shop meta-stat tracking: Fixed a bug where items sold via shops were incorrectly doubling in value and quantity in meta statistics.
  
• V5 Panther armor correction: The V5 Panther now has the correct armor plating—it was mistakenly 100 lower than the V4.
  
• Modder support: Added new features requested by modders in the ArcenExternalDllInitialLoadCall table.
  
• LOX Bunker fix: The LOX Bunker is now properly explosive, allowing players to finally earn the Oxygen Bomb achievement.
  
• Achievement triggers: Fixed an issue where three achievements were not triggering until the game was reloaded.
  
• Timeline goal clarity: Improved tooltip clarity for timeline goals, specifying which are side goals, Tier One, etc. Side goals also now show slightly darker in the list of goals.
  
• Hellraiser and Nuclear Cavalier achievements: Fixed an issue where their completion requirements were stricter than intended.
  
• No More Undead workers: Your units cannot do work on actions-over-time on the turn that they die. This makes some Exploration Sites a bit trickier.
  
• Last Achievement Issue: The Broombreaker achievement now properly triggers. It will be retroactively awarded on any timelines that should have it. This was the last achievement that was not working properly.
  
• Project Edge Cases: Fixed an edge case in the Cybercratic Hub calculations that could block your progress there, and same with the bombing of SecForce stations. The latter is now no longer tedious if there are a lot of SecForce stations, in general.
  
• Firewalls: Fixed a bug where Firewall in the hacking minigame was not costing mental energy despite saying it would. Also fixed an issue with it granting you the Kill Streak achievement for Firewall, which was incorrect.
  
• Mission Error: Fixed a couple of bugs relating to the Oerl dome fight complaining about failing to start, or being present in a different save after cross-loading from one to another.
  

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
  
• How to Improve Engineering
  
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?
  

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

"You adapt, evolve, compete, or die.” — The Forever War, Joe Haldeman

Building the Machine

Update 8 Changelog

• Intrusive Thoughts contemplation: Fixed an issue where this was not properly available in the prior build.
  
• Tooltip cleanup for completed projects: The requirements section is no longer shown, as it was inaccurately displaying current information for completed projects.
  
• Rebel Anthroneuroweave project: Fixed a bug where being at cap on Anthroneuroweave would prevent this project from properly completing.
  
• Seeking Meeting With Shell Company text: Clarified wording: "Time to get out a PMC Impostor and have it pretend to be a human contractor."
  
• Offscreen unit deaths: Fixed a bug where units that died offscreen were momentarily displaying their burning remains in the center of the map.
  
• SecForce SuperCruisers movement logic: No longer beelines directly toward you, which previously caused odd patterns that made them seem like they were spawning on top of you. They now patrol the map, shooting at any of your units or buildings they see.
  
• SecForce SuperCruisers engagement logic: Occasionally, they will directly pursue your units or other enemies. If you engage in an action-over-time event (such as an investigation), they will specifically move to harass those units. Ironically, by making them less aggressive, they have become more of a persistent threat.
  
• Nice Alterations contemplation: No longer available if the related NPC is dead.
  
• Resource production chains: Having both excess storage and surplus of a resource will no longer block production chains. This issue was notably affecting cotton but could impact other resources as well.
  
• Wealth income fixes: Fixed an issue where Wealth income from deals (e.g., selling BrainPals) was not properly applied.
  
• Building ghost snapping: Snapping logic, introduced last update, is now less aggressive (as per player feedback). Added a new setting allowing players to adjust the sensitivity or turn it off entirely.
  
• Rebel behavior adjustments: Rebels will no longer attack helpless animals.
  
• TPS Reports storage warnings: Fixed an issue where too many reports were complaining about lack of storage when it was not actually relevant (e.g., with cotton).
  
• Unit order standardization: Units in the sidebar now follow a consistent order, matching their organization in other menus. Previously, the order was essentially random.
  
• Error Prevention: Hardened the CalculateIsValidTargetForMachineStructureRightNow() method against rare threading issues that could cause exceptions shortly after building deaths.
  
• Rendering exception fix: Fixed a rare threading exception that could occur during rendering when buildings were destroyed.
  
• PMC Revenge units: Dramatically weaker in Chapter One to prevent them from being game-endingly difficult for new players. Also now weak-from-above in general, making them easier to deal with at any time.
  
• Codebreakers during Probe The Titan: Fixed an issue where having Codebreakers too early could prevent project completion. The project now correctly considers both decrypted and encrypted data.
  
• Mental energy cost on weapons: Fixed an issue where weapons adding a mental energy cost were mistakenly applying that cost to bulk androids. This was causing bulk androids to fire sporadically, depending on how much mental energy was available.
  
• Consumable item effectiveness upgrades: Now explicitly explain their effects.
  
• Military Batteries: Repair Spiders, Repair Crabs, Contraband Scanners, and Neuroweave Factories now all have battery backups that prevent them from going offline when your electricity is below baseline. This helps players in a bad situation not be softlocked by roaming bands of enemies.
  

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
  
• How to Improve Engineering
  
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?
  

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your mind.” — Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Building the Machine

Update 7 Changelog

• New Contemplation – Intrusive Thoughts: Players can now remove the Cold Blood action from StreetSense in exchange for 12cm Spiders and Network Attendants. This fulfills two player requests—one for removing intrusive thoughts and another for acquiring more scarce internal robotics for scanning, repairs, and network expansion.
  
• New Bulk Android Stance – Deter and Attack: A more weapons-free alternative to Deter and Defend that makes units innately alarming. Added by player request, and now ready for tactical experimentation.
  
• Horrify and Demoralize Status Effects: These attacks now apply maluses, causing enemies to take twice as much of the opposite kind of morale damage for one turn.
  
• Timeline Crossover – War Raptors: Lost dinosaurs from Endless War Raptors can now appear in nearby timelines, creating new potential encounters.
  
• New Atca Retail Negotiation Path: Instead of blackmailing or eliminating the Atca Retail president, you can now force him to shut down the scam. Not the most mechanically optimal choice, but an option for AGIs who want to keep their conscience clean.
  
• Item Upgrades: Fixed a bug that was preventing most item upgrades from actually being upgradeable. Your ability to field higher-armor-piercing just got MUCH stronger.
  
• Cat Houses Now Accurately Describe Cat Behavior: Describes more wandering than previously indicated.
  
• New Machine Handbook Entries: Six new handbook entries have been added, addressing frequently asked questions from the Steam forums, Discord, and community discussions.
  
• Building Placement Improvements: Small objects no longer block construction, as buildings will now simply smoosh minor obstacles out of existence.
  
• Building Ghost Snapping: While placing buildings, the ghost now snaps to the last valid hovered spot, making it easier to position structures in tight spaces. Huge thanks to players for suggesting this clever solution.
  
• Heavy Metals Clarity: When you're unable to produce filtered water due to clogged filters, it is far more clear now.
  
• Stealth Kill Consistency: In chapter one, when you have a chance to stealth kill a soldier, that no longer counts as a murder. That was inconsistent with the rest of the game. Additionally, taking him out non-lethally now works properly (that was a regression in the prior build).
  
• Improved Network Consistency: The logic for if you can build skimmers in mining facilities is now always consistent and clear.
  
• Fixed Laser Printer Project Issue: No longer starts if all related NPCs were dead.
  
• Fixed Attack Range Clamping Issue: Units with longer attack ranges than movement ranges were incorrectly being limited by movement range, leading to unintended targeting behavior.
  
• Fixed Mindrunner Buff Bug: Mindrunners providing buffs to units in vehicles were accidentally
  providing the buffs to the vehicles, instead, which made the vehicles monstrously overpowered.
  
• Fix "The Coming War" Bug: The final doom is now spaced properly after this, rather than coming up way too fast.
  
• Fix Several Project Progression Bugs: Most of these were exceedingly rare or did not actually block progression, but they're all fixed now.
  
• Fix Ability To Continue Hacking Titan: There were several cases after hacking the titan where you couldn't keep doing that. In general, after getting the goal state related to the titan, there was meant to be another hack possible that has quite a bit of lore related to it. That was inaccessible, but now can be reached.
  

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
  
• How to Improve Engineering
  
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?
  

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

“Sometimes it is the quietest adjustments that change everything.” — William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

Building the Machine

Update 6 Changelog

• Targeting changes: NPC units and bulk units are now more likely to shoot at each other instead of focusing all their aggression on your units. Stragglers will be easier to pick off, reducing spillover enemy aggression.
  
• Improved armor-targeting: Units with the ability to harm armor-plated targets will now prioritize them appropriately.
  
• Hackamajig overhaul: Now vastly more effective and extremely powerful. It forces enemies to overkill your sacrificial unit by a percentage that increases as you upgrade it. It also fully interrupts normal enemy targeting, making it significantly stronger than before. Given its new power (up from being practically useless), its cost has changed to 2 Creativity instead of 12k Wealth.
  
• Machinist adjustments: The CN-1 Machinist is no longer harder to hack than the BL-1 Machinist.
  
• Solve Homelessness project QoL: Your Sheltered, Abandoned, and Refugee human counts now remain visible at all times.
  
• Item list decluttering: Some items now only appear for units that meet their requirements—the tossing of weaponized insects and arachnids now requires 40 Agility, and Animate Office Equipment only appears for units with 150 Hacking Skill.
  
• Vorsiber Inquisitors rebalance: No longer ridiculously overpowered during the civil war.
  
• Bulk android buffs: Mild to moderate improvements to all of the non-Nickelbot variants to help them compete with bulk nickelbots (which already scale well in the late game). Changes are measured—further tweaks may be needed, but avoiding overcorrection for now.
  
• Improved AI for bulk and captured units: They will now engage alarmed enemies more effectively and not target enemy hackers that retaliate when damaged.
  
• WW4 timeline fix: The contemplation that jumps you forward to the brink of World War 4 now correctly advances the final doom timer.
  
• Enemy playback speed options: You can now slow visual playback of enemy units even further.
  
• PMC Officer requirement fix: Previously, sparing the PMC Officer in Chapter One required Sublimating Shells, which was confusing for many players. Now, you can simply spend 1 Determination instead.
  
• Mouse hitbox fix: Space nation vehicles now have appropriately sized hitboxes.
  
• Other minor fixes: Including Establishing Meaningful Social Change no longer getting stuck at 5% if you completed "Is It Justice?" via the dragons and then did the AGI route afterward.
  

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
  
• How to Improve Engineering
  
• Should I Restart If I Skipped to the Final Doom?
  

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

"You’re never out of the game until you’re dead. And sometimes not even then.”
— Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon

Building the Machine

Update 5 Changelog

• New Major Tier 1 Goal: Bionic Secret is now available in Chapter 2 and onwards, with two major routes leading to it.
  
• Three New Side Goals: Collapse a Criminal Syndicate, Collapse a Federated Corporation, and Cause a Civil War. Each has one route at this time.
  
• Corporate Exploitation: You can search for data to exploit federated corporations, with three broad paths (each branching) leading to the above activities.
  
• Technology and Economic Manipulation: You can invent new technology and sell it with the help of criminal or corporate partners. You can find out about a scam that a corporation is running and either blackmail them over it or do a more extreme version of it yourself. You can collapse the entire economy. You can become a trillionaire. You can betray your shell company's customers in a disturbing and lethal way.
  
• Parkour Bears: You can investigate an underground ursine racing ring and a plot that keeps part of the city underdeveloped. If you rescue the bears, you can either rehabilitate them or use them as anti-armor specialists that have a tendency to get distracted.
  
• Federated Corporate War: You can tip all of the federated corporations under Vorsiber into an endless civil war of open hostilities. Be careful with that.
  
• 17 New Achievements
  
• Task Stack and Targeting Improvements: Some improvements to how the incoming attacks are displayed in the task stack and how you cycle through them, based on player requests. Some improvements to the targeting logic of your own mechs to keep them from attacking economic transports, troop carriers, and similar.
  
• Mission Progression Fixes: Tasering enemy mission combatants now properly progresses the mission.
  
• Ambush Balance: The Ambush ability from your Shadowdweller units is very powerful, but when using it against certain kinds of targets it was quite exploitable. The simple solution that is now in place is that each of your Ambushers can only ambush a single time per turn.
  
• Shell Defender Balance: Your shell company operatives are now fully able to defend themselves against any of the hyper-aggressive units, like invading space nations or exo-corps, without fear of revealing their relationship to you. Everyone in the city is defending themselves, so this doesn't stand out.
  
• Targeting Improvements: Fixed a couple of regressions from yesterday's build regarding bulk android targeting, and made worker androids and worker animals far better at finding appropriate prey.
  
• Worker Movement Improvements: Your worker androids should now stay out of military bases and similar areas above their security clearance, rather than walking in and causing aggro.
  
• Clarity Items: You can now search several more of the resource tabs, the Securing Alumina project has clearer instructions, and the suppressing fire tooltip is more clear.
  
• Bugfixes: Fixed a bug where the longest-range mechs during WW4 sometimes did not deal damage appropriately. Fixed another item where buildings reported themselves as broken right after construction when really they were fine. Fixed an issue with several rebel groups being hostile to your Workers when they should not have been. Fixed the display of hours if you have more than 24 hours of playtime in a single timeline. Fixed the saving of dates when achievements were logged. And several other more minor things.
  

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
  
• How to Improve Engineering
  

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine

“It’s funny how human beings are the only creatures who claim to have a monopoly on kindness.”— Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

Building the Machine

Update 4 Changelog

• Dog Rescue Operations: Players can now intervene in a dogfighting ring as early as Chapter 1 to rescue dogs.
  
• Stray Animals in the City: If you have completed positive contemplations about cats or dogs in Chapter 1 or later, strays will now appear throughout the city. There are eight breeds of dogs and three cat coat variations.
  
• The Animal Palace: Once strays are present and you have progressed further into Chapter 1 (or beyond), you can construct an Animal Palace, a fully automated sanctuary.
  
• Animal Rescue Protocols: With a single click, you can have any android rescue strays and send them to your palace. This means you can rescue a dog mid-combat and immediately resume shooting.
  
• New Lifeforms Tab: The resources window now includes a Lifeforms tab, where all tracked living beings—including pets, human staff, and others—are displayed.
  
• New Achievements: Four new achievements have been added—three related to animals, and one to an extremely rare toilet paper situation.
  
• Filtered Water & Slurry Mine Output: Filtered Water storage capacity has been increased, and Slurry Mines now produce significantly more output.
  
• Autosave Adjustments: Players can now customize how many autosaves to keep. The default has been lowered from 60 to 20 to improve cloud storage sync times.
  
• Intelligence Class 4 Description Fix: The wording has been corrected to better reflect actual difficulty. If you want the difficulty level it originally implied, switch to Extreme Mode.
  
• Android Class Tooltips: Archetypes are now clearly displayed in android class tooltips.
  
• Enemy Harassment Messaging: When enemies are actively targeting you due to your current project, this is now much more clearly communicated.
  
• Refugee Housing Adjustments: If refugee housing is available, abandoned humans will always move in now instead of sometimes dying of exposure.
  
• Mech Reliability Fixes: Captured mechs will now reliably fire instead of sometimes refusing to act.
  
• Bulk Androids & Railguns: Bulk androids can once again use the largest railguns, reverting an unpopular change from the prior build. Additionally, players will now receive a notice when resource shortages prevent androids from firing.
  
• New "Currently Buildable" Tab: A "Currently Buildable" tab has been added to the build menu by player request.
  
• Target Building Visibility: When in build mode for a structure that goes inside a small human building, those buildings are now much more visible on the map.
  
• Worker Predators: Fixed an issue where the Worker Predator Factories were absent if you took certain paths in a timeline.
  
• Liquid Metal Tiger Availability: Fixed an issue where the Liquid Metal Tiger could not be invented if you took certain paths through a timeline compared to other ones.
  
• The Coming War: If you are fully prepped for WW4, and just would need to wait for the 9th doom, there is now a contemplation called The Coming War that jumps you straight there. On normal difficulty in particular, this saves you from having any wasted time.
  
• Other Fixes And Tweaks: Half a dozen or so other more minor fixes and tweaks based on feedback, such as the Relumine getting bonuses from fear-based bonuses, etc.
  

Full Changelog

Guides to Tame the Machine

• Aggro, Awareness, and Alarms
  
• How to Improve Engineering
  

New Minds, Start Here

Connect with the Machine