A new layer of side stories, tactical rewards, and visual clarity arrives in Update 21. The Dark Underbelly framework opens with its first narrative thread, "The Executive Tomb," a contemplation-initiated side arc that is available as early as Chapter 1. Depending on your choices, it can lead to rapid-fire weapons, augments, and the games first diseases. All of it is optional. All of it reactive. Networked weapons and telemetry augments join the Intelligence Class 5 unlock pool, and a set of quality-of-life improvements make territory control and structure placement easier to navigate. One upgrade gets stronger. One hacking event gets a failsafe. And quite a few quality of life improvements on top of all that. If youve been spending time with Heart of the Machine and would like to leave a review, Id be grateful. It doesnt have to be long. Just your honest thoughts, whatever stood out or stuck with you. Steam reviews matter a great deal for a project like this, and they help guide future patches. Thanks again for playing.

Update 21 Changelog

General

• New Side GoalDark Underbelly: Introduced to house smaller side stories. The first, The Executive Tomb, can begin in Chapter 1rare for timeline goals.
• Quick-Hack Failsafe: During the first hacking scenario, players now always receive enough Determination to choose the quick-hack route.

The Executive Tomb (Dark Underbelly Storyline)

• Contemplation Unlock: "Exploring Wealthy Residences" is now available as a contemplation when Contemplations first unlock.
• Flexible Timing: Can be pursued across most chapters (not post-apocalypse).
• Dome Encounter: Optional fight under a dome unlocks 3 new rapid-fire weapons and a new augmentdesigned by community member Pingcode.
• Diseases Introduced: Completing the storyline unlocks the first in-game diseases, with wide-reaching timeline applications.
• Achievements: 5 new achievements tied to this storyline.

Intelligence Class 5 Additions

• Networked Arsenal:
  • 4 new android weapons with networked targeting
  • 1 cruise missile for vehicles
  • Augments for androids, mechs, and vehicles that enable telemetry-sharing for these weapons
• Community Credit: All networked weapon content designed and implemented by Pingcode.

Clarity

• Flag Placement Guidance: Territory flags now show tooltips and draw a line to the nearest valid placement.
• Embedded Structure Assistance: Structures placed inside human buildings now draw a pink line to the nearest valid host (e.g., skimmers).
• Minor Wording Improvements: In chapter one, several minor pieces of wording have been clarified.
• Bulk Unit Equipment: Feats and costs on equipment that don't apply to bulk units are no longer shown on bulk androids. For example, the Ambush feat, or the Mental Energy cost.
• Building Status Visibility: Badges and other statuses on buildings are now drawn in their tooltips as they are on units, making them much easier to see.
• "Highest Respect" Confusion: If you reach chapter one without overwriting any other androids, it now gives you Highest Respect immediately, rather than only doing that after you've talked to the AGI researchers.

Balance

• Microbuilder Upgrade Extension: "Better Microbuilder Fabs" now boosts Full and Industrial Microbuilder Fabs. Vorsiber DRM-locked midsize fabs remain unchanged.
• Cybercratic Haven Establishment: When you are in the project Secure Your Cybercratic Haven, if you've reached at least 98% secured, then it goes ahead and just marks it as done. Those last 1-2% could be painfully slow in some cities.
• Unidentified Hostile Aircraft: For vehicles that are marked defective, they are instead now marked as Unidentified Hostile Aircraft, which is much more thematically-appropriate, as well as being just much worse in general. Aka, it's a lot more like Innately Alarming, and guards and other passerby really want to shoot down the aircraft a lot more intently.
• Enemy Spawn Cascade Prevention: Vulnerable buildings now stun themselves when overwhelmed, preventing uncontrolled enemy spawns in mid-to-late game.
• Enemy Spawn Cascade Reversal: After units have spawned against your vulnerable buildings, they now leave the battlefield if their target is destroyed. This is useful for cases where you're all right taking that loss, but don't want a ton of angry enemies then swarming the rest of your empire.
• Faster Housing Agencies: Housing Agencies now work 50% faster than before, making the Solve Homelessness project not last so long.

Bugfixes

• Chapter One Achievements: The Journey Begins, Budding Pacifist, and Taking Extra Care can now be properly achieved on a playthrough in a secondary timeline in an existing profile.
• Mech Hacking: Fixed a regression where the hacking scenario for mechs was always being the basic tutorial, rather than the full hacking experience.
• No Revelation During WW4: Fixed a bug where The Revelation was still available during WW4.
• Exponential Power Growth: Fixed an issue where you could get softlocked in chapter one if you finished building a better brain before you build any computronium refineries (this is very difficult to do, and quite an edge case).
• Worker Units Tab: Fixed a bug where if you played through The Great And Terrible Protector, it was possible that the "Worker Units" concept was not also unlocked, and therefor you could not use the Workers tab of command mode.
• Messages On Replay: Fixed a generalized issue with certain messages not showing up if you were replaying chapter one for a second time in the same profile.
• Stuck Freighters On Long Maps: Fixed an issue where on long and narrow maps, if a regional or international freighter spawned at just the wrong spot, and the related airport was super far away, then they would just sit around indefinitely at the edge of the map.
• Worker Android Sanity: Worker androids will no longer open fire on protestors or other nonviolent parties.
• Proper ID Scrub: Fixed an issue where the Contractually Valid Target badge was not being removed by ID-scrubbing-type activities.
• Territory Flag Aggro On Load: Fixed an issue where, when loading savegames, sometimes it would act like you did not have enough deterrence and spawn in a bunch of enemy units around territory control flags.
• Morale Can't Be Murder: If you attack units with morale attacks, that no longer ever counts as a murder or an attempted murder. It wasn't intended to, but there were some cases where it did.
• Safety From High-Altitude Transports: Even if high-altitude military transports (and a variety of other NPC units) have less than full health, they will no longer attack players and player-allied units UNLESS the player has done either physical or morale damage to the units in question.

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