“The pretense of free will is comforting, isn't it?” – Philip K. Dick, "The Adjustment Team"

Update 1 Changelog

• Early Combat Balance: The fight with the cruiser in chapter one is now substantially less brutal.
  
• Engineering Balance: Your ability to gain high levels of engineering in chapter 2 and beyond is now much more flexible, making it easier to get to some of the advanced project chains.
  
• Clarity Adjustments: A couple of clarity things that came up, just minor wording pieces.
  
• Scientist Management: Automated Personnel Management is now something you can quickly unlock, allowing scientists to be removed from your staff at ease.
  
• Dissident Management: Your own guards no longer prevent the removal of dissidents if you are establishing a Cyberocracy.
  
• Achievements Fixes: A few achievements were not triggering under some conditions, and now will.
  
• Power Outage Improvements: An improvement to power outages so that you don't have to wait a turn for the power to come back on.
  
• Exploration Site Visibility: A fix to Exploration Sites being discussed in the history tab before they are actually unlocked.
  
• Debate Tutorial Fix: Fix to the debate tutorial being blocked if you already had another message of a different sort open when you started the debate.
  
• Map Seeding: There are now a proper number of donut shops in the city, preventing some projects from being blocked.
  
• Investigation Target Visibility: A couple of investigation targets are now easier to see on the map.
  
• Future Self Dialogue Tweaks: A couple of shifts to wording from your future self to make it clearer who is talking.
  
• Code Stability: Fixes to a couple of rare code exceptions.
  
• Memory Management: Fixed an issue that could occur with long continuous playtimes on some systems, where the unity log would get bloated and impact performance and eventually start having out of memory exceptions. This did not affect most machines, but was intense on a few (after about 10 hours of nonstop play).
  
• Steam Deck Support: Added a new option for better keyboard and mouse handling on the Steam Deck when in docked mode.
  

Full Changelog

Getting Started with Heart of the Machine

How Many Times Should You Play Chapter One?

Echoes in the System: Your Voice Shapes the Machine

What's In The Game Now?

What's Coming Later?

Final Thoughts

What's New

• The achievements all have icons now, and are uploaded to steam, and are prepped for being in the game, but you can't quite see them yet. That will be shortly.
  
• Liquid Metal dragons are now Innately Alarming, making them a lot more interesting and challenging to use, and not quite so OP, without making them actually physically any weaker. Thanks to folks on discord for the discussion on how to tackle this.
  
• This build has MAJOR localization updates.
  
• First of all, the translations are now fully in place for all of the languages.
  
• Secondly, I fixed a number of bugs with my code for importing those translations. One of them had to do with parsing Excel files, and I had to write my own stinking parser since the one I was using off the shelf just kept doing really wrong things. That was a deep dive into the guts of the Excel format in a way I haven't needed to do since about 2008, back in my business software days, before I even realized I would be a game developer the following year. Anyway, it was annoying, but took me back to old times in a vaguely fond way. And my code is also 4x faster than the off-the-shelf stuff, too, so changing languages is much faster.
  

Unrelated Screenshot

Changes To The Demo Since NextFest, But Which Have Been Available Publicly Since July

• This is 14k of release notes on its own, summarized here: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:After_NextFest
  
• Anyone who played the demo since July already has seen all this, but anyone who played at NextFest has seen none of it.
  
• Massive improvements to unit visibility, including the ability to see them through buildings, and a high-visibility mode.
  
• The entire nature of the machine network has been simplified and prettified, and it is so much clearer now.
  
• A unified lens system rather than having some lens-y things being on the hotbar. This makes investigations a ton easier to do.
  
• Build mode has been completely overhauled, and is now a sidebar on the left rather than the cramped thing at the bottom.
  
• A new UI tour when you start the game.
  
• A HUGE pass to usability and clarity based off of a lot of demo player feedback. This was just massive. It really made things a lot clearer.
  
• That said, all of that is the small set of changes, which is already present in the current demo (but is changed since, say, Splattercat last played).
  

Changes To The Demo Since The Last Public Demo

• This is 70k words of release notes, summarized here: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=HotM:Moving_To_Chapter_Two
  
• The demo is now in all of the languages that the store page actually says! Until now it was all English. Please excuse the WIP bits, but enjoy.
  
• An absolutely titanic overhaul of the UI has been made in partnership with Josh Atkinson from Hooded Horse. A professional UX designer has improved... just everything... everywhere.
  
• Several visual upgrades have been made, including to how antialiasing and edges are drawn.
  
• You can now play all the way to the end of chapter one in the demo, which includes several notable new events. It's another 15% or so of length to the prior demo, which was already large.
  
• The Raven unit is now available, and so is the ability to hack units to either disable them, or wololo them to your side.
  
• The entire system for the unit economy, and how units (regular and bulk) are deployed has been completely overhauled.
  
• This is now handled via a menu, rather than you having to find buildings and click an icon on the map.
  
• Bulk units now have variable costs to your unit cap for them, which makes for dramatically more options in how you use them.
  
• Resources are colored for higher visibility, and the economy itself has also been revised heavily to be clearer.
  
• The old color-matching system from combat has been removed, in favor of more equipment options, "feats" held by units (like the Technician's Taser), and more of an emphasis on various forms of combined arms.
  
• The way that you manage equipment has been completely changed as well, adding convenience and also allowing you to adapt on the fly right after you get into a new situation, rather than having to fail, adjust, and then come back. Aka, the equipment system has a cooldown after changes, rather than a warmup before changes apply.
  
• Lots more handbook entries for those who are curious, but also fewer handbook entries shoved in your face when they don't need to be.
  
• The research flow has been streamlined a lot, no longer requiring you to wait a bunch of time for things that don't matter.
  
• The entire prologue has been rewritten from scratch (after the initial intro), and now has three major paths through it with sub-variations, instead of being on-rails. It's much more engaging.
  
• There is a new debate system that allows you to convince some NPCs to do things they would not otherwise do
  
• There is a whole new morale system, and you can attack enemy morale either via fear-based or argument-based attacks.
  
• The nature of how buildings are constructed, and how their caps work, is entirely different. They are simpler to build, but you now have cross-building-type "internal robotics" caps that make for much more interesting choices. So tedium was reduced, and interesting decisions was increased.
  
• The way that vehicles load and unload has been dramatically improved, and a number of new vehicular abilities are now in place. Vehicles in general have a much more interesting role in combat in late chapter one.
  
• The control scheme has been heavily altered based on user feedback, so that left-click is always to select a thing, and right-click is always to give an order. RTS games mix this up with left-click being used differently in build mode and in "targeted abilities," and originally this game matched that. However, anyone coming from anywhere other than an RTS background was deeply confused by this. Options exist to restore those controls if you prefer them, but in general this is now more consistent with other tactics games and RPGs.
  
• The full music for the game is now in place, instead of just the main menu track!
  
• The most confusing parts of chapter one have had heavy alterations to guide players more, and to cut down on mental overload.
  
• Background conflicts are now present in the city, and you can engage with them to mess with enemies if you want.
  
• There are several new side-quest-y things that now start in chapter one and the demo, and which pay off later in chapter two. The two most notable ones are "Slum Cats" (which can allow you to adopt your first pet) and "The Girl With The Flower."
  
• You can now start your own shell company in the first chapter, although it doesn't have too many uses until chapter two. That said, starting a shell company in chapter one does allow you access to some new shops and some new wealth-generation options.
  
• The way that storage is handled has been absolutely and completely overhauled, and is much simpler. The old system wasted a lot of player time on choices that were not really interesting choices.
  
• So, so, so, many quality of life and balance improvements. Far too many to mention. It's like a whole other game.
  
• The above WAS the brief version...
  

CAVEAT ON EXISTING SAVEGAMES:

• As you can see from the above, the entire economy and how all of your units function, and how the prologue AND chapter one flow have all been dramatically altered (for the better).
  
• You might expect this means that you can't use old demo saves -- but you can. However, when you do, expect to see a lot of warnings, and a lot of unfamiliar things that are guiding you into fixing those warnings so that you can get your economy fully set up for the new style. It only takes a couple of minutes, as most of the big changes are auto-fixed for you. It's just the things that we can't automate that are left to you.
  
• That said, even though older saves do work, the sheer scope of the changes make it worth starting fresh. After the intro, the prologue has almost nothing in common with what you experienced before. And there are new little surprises and cool moments all throughout chapter one, as well. So while you CAN use existing saves, there's a lot to be said for starting fresh this time.
  
• During early access, we won't need to go through this sort of titanic overhaul again, so no worries about this being something that comes up again. But as noted, even with this many changes, savegames are still compatible!
  

Build Mode

• The first one shows the new Recommended tab, which gives you a subset of just the things that are likely to be the most useful.
  
• The second one shows the new All tab, which lets you quickly search via text, or just browse by name. In this particular example, I did a search.
  
• This revamp also folds the territory control flags into the build menu properly, which you can see in the first image.
  

Resource Trends

Other Notes

• My wife Kara continues to plow through the text of the game, excising my wordiness and enhancing clarity. So far it's been about a 10% reduction in word count, which is great for anyone who gets fatigued by lots of text.
  
• As far as my post-nextfest clarity and flow work goes, I'm pretty much down to the UI tour on the first turn, and then some last minor items. This is very exciting, as I'm greatly looking forward to getting back into content development. Hopefully I can finish the last of the non-content stuff tomorrow, bu we'll see how it goes.
  

Testing Group Reminder

New in this build

• The resources section of the inventory now includes some very helpful filters as well as a search.
  
• The unit types section of the inventory now includes some filters, and then multiple tabular views which allow you to see which units are the best at various things.
  
• Bulk androids have gotten some much-needed clarity updates to their buildings, and then also some fixes to the accuracy of how their stats are predicted in the inventory before they exist.
  
• The way that events like the prismatic tungsten and the seed collection are placed on the map now gives you a lot more options, and should feel better.
  
• TPS Reports are at long last fixed up so that when they are missing some precursors, others properly show the right values.
  
• And then a bunch of other smaller improvements and fixes as well.
  

The main things remaining:

• A complete revision of the build menu, in general to be more tycoon-like and less citybuilder-like, for similar reasons that tycoon games diverge in general. Clarity and volume, basically.
  
• A way for players to see a list of all jobs producing and consuming resources, to help diagnose shortfalls.
  
• The turn-one UI tour, and other final bits of clarity and thematic bits for turn one.
  
• A couple of new pieces of clarity related to when you first start constructing buildings.
  
• A few fixes related to bulk android targeting.
  

• You can now choose the location of your tower if you skip past the prologue!
  
• There is a new Research Window, which includes a lot of additional helpful formatting and functionality, and unifies a lot of things that were previously in a couple of disparate spots.
  
• If you felt like you were chasing around certain events in StreetSense that moved too frequently, that's a thing of the past.
  
• The flow of opening notifications is now a bit better, and has an option to make it work like in the prior version if you disagree.
  

What's New

• The lenses on the radial menu have been expanded notably, and unified between the map view and main view.
  
• The investigation, StreetSense, and Contemplation abilities are gone from the android ability bar, and are now converted to being Lenses only.
  
• Investigations now work a lot more smoothly in a lot of ways detailed in the release notes.
  
• StreetSense works entirely differently, and is dramatically easier to use. It's also no longer different per-android.
  
• There are now "Lens Filters" next to the radial menu, and these allow you to customize what you see as part of the various lenses. This has let me actually combine three lenses (Navigation, Beacons, and POIs) into a single one (Navigation), and it allows for you to do a lot of filtering-out of information that you might not need in the Forces lens, without it being completely inaccessible.
  
• The prologue has had a number of updates to it to reflect the new changes, plus other things that people found confusing. It also doesn't make you do any equipment management, as that is more naturally introduced later.
  
• There are now keybinds for jumping straight to specific lenses!
  

Other Items

• Snipers hit less hard.
  
• MilStyle armor now also hides the identity of Predators and similar.
  
• Armor has been extended quite a bit in general, and more unit types have more options. The Nickelbot is steadily gaining in usefulness.
  
• Lots and and lots of writing edits courtesy of my wife Kara. She's been focusing on making sure that text flows better and causes less fatigue.
  
• Employment and housing balance has been notably updated, so that unemployment rates are now in the appropriate ranges.
  
• Because of the removal of so many abilities (that are now Lenses), the ability bar for all units has been rearranged to a notable degree. This is likely to cause some muscle memory issues, but I think that the new order makes sense if you look past that. Details in the notes. Discussion welcome if it doesn't seem to be the case.
  
• Employment and housing balance has been notably updated, so that unemployment rates are now in the appropriate ranges.
  
• Many various other smaller changes, fixes, and so on. This is actually three large releases in one since the last build outside of the playtest branch.
  

Next Things

Testing Group Reminder