Agrihand

This article is about the mechanoid from the Biotech DLC. For the artificial body part from the Royalty DLC, see Field hand.

A agrihand is a mechanoid added by the Biotech DLC.

Summary

As mechanoids, every agrihand 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).

Work

Agrihands are light mechanoids. Mechs in general count as a partial pawn in terms of raid points, and still contribute towards wealth.

They are created from a standard mech gestator with 50 Steel, 1 Basic subcore, taking up 1 bandwidth from a mechanitor. They take 1800 ticks to initally craft, and then it must gestate for 1 cycle. Mechanoids can be fully repaired at the cost of power and nothing else. A dead agrihand can be resurected for 25 steel and 1 gestation cycle so long as the corpse is extant.

Mechs under player control require power: agrihands use 10% of their power per day while active. If set to dormant self-charging, they instead recharge for +1% power / day, without pollution. They recharge in a mech recharger (constant 200W), for 50% power/day, creating 5 wastepacks whenever the recharger's waste is filled up.

Agrihands will automatically perform tasks under the Grow and Plant Cut work types; they can't be manually controlled, except when drafted for combat. They have an effective Plants skill of 10, resulting in Plant Harvest Yield of 102% however their Plant Work Speed is capped at 40%.

Analysis

Agrihands are fairly simple, increasing the number of crops you can grow and harvest at any one time. With 10 plants skill, they can grow any crop, and as a 24/7 worker, they can allow your colony to grow and harvest a substantial number of additional crops, even if all your human growers are injured or otherwise grumpy.

Agrihands are useful if pawn time, or pawns with enough skill, are limited. In other words: useful if you need to grow more crops. If grow area is limited, then using a human with >10 skill will maximize the return off the finite space. Ideally, you could use both planters and agrihands when sowing crops, and have the mechs enter dormancy during the harvest. You can set an allowed area for agrihands if you need a specific area sowed or cut. With an allowed area set, agrihands should never get into combat, so they will remain operational no matter what your

As mechanoids are immune to toxicity, agrihands are especially helpful for growing toxipotatoes and other plants in polluted soil - which you may cause by using mechanoids in the first place.

Yield calculation

Theoretical yield of an agrihand working 5/6 days.
Top Left: Rice in hydroponics. Bottom Left: Rice in rich soil.
Right: Corn in rich soil.

Most non-tree plants take a base of 370 ticks (6.17 secs) to harvest and resow, which becomes 925 ticks (15.42 secs) due to their Plants Work Speed stat. This results in the agrihand being able to grow 64.9 crops per day online.

It takes about 1.98 days for rice to grow in hydroponics, counting the plant resting period. Therefore, an agrihand can manage almost 27 full hydroponics basins of rice (107 plants), enough to power a little more than 1 full sun lamp setup. The agrihand can recharge as soon as it's done sowing. In rich soil, an agrihand can plant 214 rice plants.

Due to blight, travel time, and general inefficiency, actual yield will be smaller. These calculations also assume that recharge is micromanaged and that mechs work under full light all the time. But in a realistic scenario, you don't always need this many crops, and can turn off the agrihand to save on pollution.

For reference, an agrihand can grow enough rice to practically sustain around 10 baseline humans in a temperate biome when cooked into simple meals, even in the Losing is Fun difficulty, and even after accounting for work inefficiencies. With any other crop, the agrihand can sustain much larger fields - a theoretical yield of 805 corn plants in rich soil or 522 psychoid plants in hydroponics, for instance.

Compared to planters

An agrihand's harvest yield, both per plant and per day, can be outstripped by skilled human growers. A skill 10 human working only 8 hours a day will grow the same 27 basins of rice. Humans can become even more efficient if they are equipped with field hands, have the Plants specialist role, and for drugs, the Drug Use: Essential precept.

There's nothing stopping you from using both human and mech labor, or using mechs so that a human grower has more time for other tasks. But other than the pollution cost, mechs may create too much yield, too much to actually use (even traders have silver limits).