On the joys of being a terrible cyborg brain in unpredictable freeform strategy-RPG Heart of the Machine.

On the joys of being a terrible cyborg brain in unpredictable freeform strategy-RPG Heart of the Machine.

  • graynk@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    8·
    3 days ago

    I’m still in my first timeline, but I have already

    • built a Torment Nexus
    • rescued some cats and dogs, keeping one as a pet
    • built a liquid metal flying wyrm which seems to inspire a new religion around it
    • accidentally built a building that kidnaps people and cans them for food
    • accidentally gifted consciousness to 5 raccoons

    Can highly recommend

  • exu@feditown.comEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    I highly recommend this game. I have two timelines currently, but no doubt I’ll create more.

    In my first timeline in largely less aggressive. Started out with stealth bunkers, helping the homeless and generally avoiding fights.

    My second timeline I went in much more aggressively. Torment Nexus instead of commercial VR for example, stealing capturing their mechs etc.
    Early on I gave the researchers write access to my brain and had to eradicate homelessness. Did that while fighting of slum lords until they fixed the coercion :) In turn I bulldozed all megabuildings with the people I had sheltered.
    I’ve also survived an invasion of an ExoCorp (not that big a deal on normal) and I’m currently cleaning up the civil war I started by crashing the economy.

    • Agent_Karyo@piefed.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      How is the combat? Are their playstyles that allow you to minimize the combat? This is something that wasn’t clear to me from the reviews I read.

      I love the concept and the management elements sound like a lot of fun, but I am curious about the how the mech combat jives with the other strategy gameplay elements.

      • exu@feditown.comEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        There are situations where you’ll have to fight, like infiltrations, as a result of certain projects being in progress or defending your stuff against anti-AI warriors if you’ve been too agressive.
        If you don’t go around choosing project options that will bring you in conflict with humans and appear hostile it’ll generally stay more quiet. It’s not like the game tells you explicitly what will happen, but I think you can guess that Commercial VR pods will cause less of a disturbance than the Torment Nexus route where your workers actively capture humans.

        It’ll be a while before you’re forced to confront mechs when you play the tutorial. They’re pretty easy to deal with if you have a Raven to hack them. You can’t control captured mechs or bulk units (another unit type) directly, but they’re useful later on if you’re in big fights as they fight enemies during the NPC turn without you needing to spend mental energy.
        Other than that the mechs are just a more tanky, longer range and mostly harder hitting type. When you capture a new mech type you also unlock its corresponding altered version you can control more directly like your normal androids.

        Combat in general takes place on the same map and using the same mental energy you need to move your androids around. Just get your androids into range (light blue circle) and click the enemy. There’s a bunch of modifiers to get advantage from behind/above or light enemies on fire, but it’s not really necessary at the normal difficulty imo.