Tunneler

This article is about the mechanoid added by the Biotech DLC. For the ideoligious meme added by the Ideology DLC, see Ideoligion.

A tunneler is a mechanoid added by the Biotech DLC.

Summary

As mechanoids, every tunneler is immune to fire, Flame and Heat damage, and temperature extremes, despite having Comfortable Temperatures defined. They have 100% Toxic Resistance and Toxic Environment Resistance, making them immune to toxic buildup, rot stink and other toxic effects. They do not need to eat, rest, and have no mood. They will be stunned by EMP attacks for a time proportional to the EMP damage inflicted and will "adapt" and rendered immune to further EMP strikes for 2,200 ticks (36.67 secs).

Tunnelers do not seem to spawn in regular mech raids, crashed ship parts, or mech clusters.^[Verify] However, they appear as part of certain apocriton summon groups.

Work

Tunnelers are a heavy mechanoid, and require Standard Mechtech to create. Mechs in general count as a partial pawn in terms of raid points, and still contribute towards wealth.

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^{[Detail needed]} - 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 more material, but the increase isn't very large until very high skill levels. For comparison, 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.

As an ally in combat

Tunnelers are incredibly slow, with middling DPS and a decent durability. They have 152% the health of a human, armor slightly worse than normal recon armor, and an innate shield better than a legendary shield belt. While they won't deal as much damage compared to a dedicated melee pawn, nor able to run or lock down enemies like a scyther, tunnelers can draw enemy fire. This lets other combatants focus on dealing damage.

Tunnelers face competition from scythers, a melee-focused mech also unlocked from Standard mechtech. Tunnelers don't have a scyther's speed, and consume +1 bandwidth. However, they are significantly more durable, with significantly more armor, slightly higher health, and the aformentioned shield. The tunneler's base true DPS of 7.59 (4.71 after Melee Hit Chance) seems low at only 75.9% of the 10 (6.2 after Melee Hit Chance) of the scyther. However, tunnelers use Blunt damage. Blunt attacks usually face far less armor than a scyther's Sharp blades.

Against a normal flak vest, the tunneler faces almost no DPS loss at all, while the scyther's DPS is more than halved.
Against centipedes, the scyther is reduced to 70% of their DPS, while the tunneler's AP totally negates their blunt armor.

So, while the scyther still has superior DPS against most enemies, their damage output is far closer than it first appears. Blunt damage's superior damage propagation and overkill mechanics further help narrow the gap against enemies with health scales comparable to humans. If durability is completely irrelevant, such as when using Skip psycast mobbing tactics, then scythers are superior due to their lower bandwidth cost.

Centipedes have 288% the health scale and thus HP of the tunneler, slightly worse armor (Sharp: 72% Blunt: 22%), and no shield belt. They also have 86% of the base true DPS, cost 1 more bandwidth, and are unlocked at High mechtech.

For the sole purpose of tanking against melee enemies, the centipede is almost always better^[Verify] if they can be afforded. Their ranged weaponry also makes the centipede more flexible. However, lower melee DPS and lack of shield can be determental against mixed-range enemies. When a centipede is tied up in melee and unable to fire, it performs worse.

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]