Growth vat

Growth vat

A vat of fluid which can gestate an embryo or accelerate a child's growth.
While growing or gestating, the vat must be fed with a constant supply of nutrition to provide the feedstock for growth. Gestating an embryo takes twice the nutrition of accelerating a child's growth.
Embryos are gestated for 9 days before a baby is formed. There is a risk of health complications.
Child growth can only be accelerated up to age 18, but not beyond. While growing, a child's skills will slowly increase. Children raised in growth vats will have lower skills and gain fewer passions than normal.
The device uses chemical injections, electrical stimulation, and simple mechanite treatments to push the body to grow. Growth vats are often used to quickly manufacture engineered workers or warriors.

Base Stats

Type

Building

Market Value

440  ^[Note]

Mass

30 kg

HP

500

Flammability

50%

Path Cost

42 (24%)

Building

Size

1 × 2

"PassThroughOnly" is not in the list (impassable, pass through only, standable) of allowed values for the "Passability" property.

Passability

PassThroughOnly

Cover Effectiveness

50%

Power

-80 W

Creation

Required Research

Growth vats

Work To Make

8,000 ticks (2.22 mins)

Resources to make

150 + 4

Deconstruct yield

75 + 2

Destroy yield

37 - 38 + 1

Technical

buildingTags

Biotech

The growth vat is a building added by the Biotech DLC. It allows the gestation and accelerated aging of babies and children.

Acquisition

Growth vats can be constructed once the Growth vats research project has been completed. Each requires  150 Steel,  4 Componentss and 8,000 ticks (2.22 mins) of work.

Summary

Growth vats take a constant 200 W of power as well as nutrition. Both raw and processed foods, including nutrient paste, can be inserted inside. Hosting an embryo costs 6 nutrition per day, and aging a child costs 3 nutrition per day. If there's no power or nutrition, the being inside will enter Biostarvation, which increases nutrient consumption and will kill in 2 days.

Growth vats be used to grow an embryo in 9 days, twice as fast as natural pregnancy. This comes without risk to the mother, but the baby can still arrive sick.

Colonists under 18 can also have their aging sped up by 20x, i.e., it takes 3 days to age 1 year. This ignores the default 4x aging multiplier for babies and children, so a vat is 5x faster than that. While in the vat, their needs are frozen like in cryptosleep, and children will not gain growth points.^[??] Every 3 days inside the vat, they will gain a small amount of skill, even if a baby.

While in a growth vat, the parents will have a −4 My baby/child is in a growth vat moodlet while their kid is inside.

Analysis

Babies can be placed in the growth vat to speed up reaching toddler age. There are no apparent ill effects on the baby, and they even train an age-3 valid skill (Shooting, Melee, Social).^{[Not extensively checked?]} However, parents gain a -4 moodlet, and it negates the mood buffs from having a happy baby in the colony.

Even if a child is at growth tier 8, they lose out on the skill training provided by the Lesson learning type. Meanwhile, aging a teen (13-17) to 18 is usually worthwhile - pawns under 18 have workspeed penalties.

Nutrition

While raw food can be put into the dispenser, virtually any means of cooking a meal gives more nutrition per food item.

Nutrient paste meals are the most efficient way to convert raw food into nutrition, tripling their nutrition. However, colonists won't automatically dispense nutrient paste for a growth vat; they will only haul meals on the floor to it. See Nutrient paste#Manually producing meals for how you can stockpile nutrient paste.

Without nutrient paste researched, baby food is the next best way to prepare vegetables. Creating baby food gives an efficiency of 200%, meaning that the food is doubled. Simple meals are the next best way to prepare other food items.

There are no penalties to anyone for using insect meat, already-butchered human meat, or other usually undesirable food items in a vat. Regardless, cooking them into simple meals (create a bill just for them) remains a better option, and your pawns won't get upset for simply cooking the meal, either.

Version History

• Biotech DLC Release - Introduced.