Two exciting pieces of news today!

First up, AI War 2 has a large new patch: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.599_Sockets_And_Sidekicks

Badger and Zeus have really outdone themselves here, with a bunch of clever ideas.

In particular, there is a new Socket Increaser structure that is possible to find in the galaxy when you have the Sidekicks mod enabled. This then allows for a lot of fun new objectives for sidekicks, necromancers, and similar to go get in order to have more sockets.

The Dark Zenith have also been rebalanced to be more... well, balanced in all respects. A lot of thought from these two went into it, and it was carefully implemented.

There are other more-minor balance changes, comparably, and a bunch of other mod updates. Good times!

It has been just over a year since there were last people outside of Arcen or Hooded Horse able to playtest this game. I had thought many times that testing was just on the horizon, and I must have been an awful tease about that -- it was completely unintentional, apologies. But testing is not just soon, it's NOW.

The first batch of about 30 testers (18 returning and 16 new) got their hands on the game today. The next batch of 15 people will get the game on Monday, and those are already locked in. But there are still some openings on the batch for Thursday, and there will be more waves following on after that every few days.

The reason for the staggered waves is to continually collect fresh first impressions, after people's feedback from the wave before. So don't worry about missing an earlier wave if you want to be a tester; that just means you get a more-polished version to start from in the near future.

The store page is in dire need of a refresh (the visuals and text are a year out of date), but be sure to wishlist it if you haven't already: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

And if you want to sign up for testing, be sure to stop by our discord! https://discord.gg/arcengames

Cheers,
Chris

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.598_Sidekicks_And_Elderlings

Some bugfixes and balance shifts related to Elderlings, and then some more Sidekick mod updates.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in... "soon" amount of time! I am going to go out on a limb and say that it may be within the next 1 week for real this time. We're getting gradually closer! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1225940358052188252 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.597_Sidekick_Bits

A few tweaks to the sidekicks mods.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in... "soon" amount of time! I am going to go out on a limb and say that it may be within the next 1.5 weeks for real this time. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1225940358052188252 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.596_Deflicker

Fixes a couple of minor regressions from last week's build, and then has a few tweaks to some mods.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in... "soon" amount of time! I am going to go out on a limb and say that it may be within the next 2 weeks for real this time. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1225940358052188252 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.595_Deprotect

This one has a mix of fixes and improvements from Dismiss, and Sidekicks updates from Badger. The biggest changes in here are things to help with memory usage in extreme scenarios (think thousands of Dark Zenith in battle at once, that sort of thing).

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in... "soon" amount of time! I am goin gto go out on a limb and say that it may be within the next 3 weeks for real this time. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: ⁠⁠https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1225940358052188252 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.593_Devourest

This one is entirely from Dismiss. It has a lot of backlog of minor approved fixes and tweaks to things to fix a few bugs, and to make a few new things possible for coders in a non-regression-likely way. It also includes some mod updates, and a new mod called the Devourest Golem, which basically makes that existing faction more interesting and dangerous.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in... "soon" amount of time! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: ⁠https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1212790205824639027 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. A few things are taking me a bit longer than expected, leading to testing having been pushed back a bit again, but it's creeping asymptotically closer. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.591_Exception_Tidying

This one is various bits of tidying and mod updates.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in 1-2 weeks! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: ⁠End of Feb update on testing if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.590_Informative_Quickstarts

This one adds more tweaks to the Sidekicks mod, and also adds more information on the quickstarts screen. It also fixes a regression in the prior build where the savegame folders were not in the most-recently-used order.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in about 2 weeks! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: ⁠End of Feb update on testing if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5

New AI War 2 build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:Post_Completion_Part_II#5.589_Lone_Zombie.2C_Progressive_Quickstart

This one fixes a few bugs in last weeks' build, like the fact that double-the-zombies were being generated most of the time. There was also a multiplayer-specific regression with an exception in general.

Quickstarts are being reorganized and expanded a bit by Strategic Sage. Previously, there was a progressive flow of easier-to-harder for the base game, but the DLC quickstarts weren't really organized in that way. Now they are, alongside other improvements to them.

There are also more to the Sidekicks mod.

Enjoy!

Heart of the Machine private testing will resume in about 2-3 weeks! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ Feel free to go to our discord https://discord.gg/arcengames and post here: https://discord.com/channels/240637654717300736/1212790205824639027 if you're interested in being a part of one of the phases of testing in the future. There is now a direct signup form here: https://forms.gle/sYj9hH3Bh2TJ2Hbx5