Tunneler

This article is about the mechanoid. For other uses, see the disambiguation page.

A tunneler is a mechanoid added by the Biotech DLC.

Summary

As mechanoids, tunnelers are immune to fire, toxicity, and temperature extremes, despite having a Comfortable Temperature. They do not need to eat, rest, and have no mood. They will be stunned by EMP attacks and will "adapt" for 2,200 ticks (36.67 secs), rendering them immune to further EMP strikes. Mechs do not count as a pawn for determining raid points, but still contribute towards wealth.

Work

Tunnelers are a heavy mechanoid, and require High Mechtech to create. They are created from a large mech gestator with 150 Steel, 75 Plasteel, 4 Components, 1 Standard subcore, taking up 3 bandwidth from a mechanitor. They must gestate for 4 cycles to be made. Once made, they recharge in a large mech recharger (50% power/day), creating 15 wastepacks whenever the recharger's waste is filled up.

Tunnelers will do tasks associated with the Mining tab, though are unable to use deep drills. They cannot be manually controlled, except when drafted for combat. They have an effective Mining skill of 10, but with a Global Work Speed of 150%.

Combat

In combat, tunnelers have a shield (equivalent to a shield belt) of 250 power. They can also emit smoke, though with a cooldown of 15 days. They have a melee attack. Its weakness is that each time it takes damage, it slows for a few seconds - this means that when tunnelers attack you, even if you can’t kill them quickly, you can intelligently kite them by falling back from your position to escape the blocking smoke, maintain distance and slowly whittle the tunnelers down.

Analysis

Tunnelers are useful for mass mining operations, whether it is expanding out your mountain base or mining mineral lumps found using a long-range mineral scanner. Mechanoids are not subject to illness or mental breaks, and only recharge for 2 days out of every 12.

Work Speed

The following table summarizes the work speed effects of operating within the influence of a mech booster and having control sublinks installed by the Mechanitor. All values are for 50%+ lighting conditions.

Control Sublinks	Work Speed	Mech Boosted
0	150%	225%
1	156%	231%
2	162%	237%
3	168%	243%
4	174%	249%
5	180%	255%
6	186%	261%

A colonist's work speed is based on their Mining Speed stat. At about skill 13, a normal colonist with no traits or health conditions will mine as fast as a tunneler operating without a Mech Booster or Sublink bonus. A similar colonist at skill 18 mines roughly 97% as fast a mech-boosted Tunneler with no Sublink bonuses. Installing a Drill arm allows a Skill 5 pawn to mine faster than an unboosted Tunneler.^{[Mining Specialist?]}

Mining Yield

Tunnelers appear to have no special modifiers to Mining Yield, meaning that they function identically to a Skill 10 Colonist for this purpose. Higher skilled colonists will extract but the increase isn't very large until very high skill levels. A healthy, level 20 human miner has the maximum possible mining yield of 113% compared to the 102% of the tunneler. For maximum resources, leave ores for higher skill colonists, if present, to mine. However, it may be more useful to get a place dug out now then to get a little more ore.

Conversely, a lower mining yield will slightly lower the amount of stone chunks that have to be hauled out of a mountain base. The difference is too small to notice either way.

Health

Specify body type when known.

Body part	Health
Head	38
Skull	38
Brain	15
Nose	15
Neck	38
Jaw	30
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	15
Ear (left, right)	15
Body	60
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	23
Lung^[2] (left, right)	23
Liver^[2]	30
Heart^[2]	23
Spine^[2]	38
Stomach^[2]	30
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	45
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	30

↑ Located inside of Head.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 ^2.2 ^2.3 ^2.4 ^2.5 Located inside of Body.

Version history

Biotech DLC Release - Added
1.4.3531 - Increased armor values from 40/20/200 to 80/40/200

Mechanoids

Mechanoids | Core: Centipede (Blaster, Burner, Gunner) • Lancer • Pikeman • Scyther • Termite
Combat: Centurion • Legionary • Militor • Scorcher • Tesseron
Command: Apocriton • Diabolus • War queen (War urchin )
Labor: Agrihand • Cleansweeper • Constructoid • Fabricor • Lifter • Paramedic • Tunneler
Cluster | Buildings: Condition causer • Count-down activator • Mech assembler • Mech capsule • Mech drop beacon • Mech high-shield • Mech low-shield • Mech node • Proximity activator • Unstable power cell
Turrets: Auto charge turret • Auto inferno turret • Auto mortar • Mini-slugger turret
Creation | Pawn: Mechanitor
Buildings: Mech gestator • Large mech gestator • Mechband antenna • Mechband dish

[Head-1] Located inside of Head.

[Body-2] 2.0 ^2.1 ^2.2 ^2.3 ^2.4 ^2.5 Located inside of Body.

[1]

[2]