Sleep accelerator

A Sleep accelerator is miscellaneous building added by the Ideology DLC. It increases the rate at which a pawn sleeps, giving them a longer working day, in exchange for increasing the amount of nutrition they require and consuming power.

Acquisition

Sleep accelerators can be constructed once the Microelectronics research project has been completed. They require 50 Steel, 5 Components, 6,000 ticks (1.67 mins) of work, and a Construction skill of 8. Sleep accelerators can only be constructed by colonists with an Ideoligion containing the Transhumanist meme.

Summary

Every valid placement and rotation of the sleep accelerator. Note that only one accelerator can be active for a bed.

Sleep accelerators can be installed to a bed, granting +35% Rest Effectiveness and +20% Bed Hunger Rate Multiplier to the colonist sleeping in it for 400W power. Note that this Rest Effectivenes bonus is applied before the quality multiplier on Rest Effectiveness of the bed, that is the bonus is multiplied by the bed's quality (Rest Effectiveness Factor). It is applied after the multiplier from being a bed being made of stone. It takes 50W power when it's not being used.

As noted by the description, the sleep accelerator must be placed adjacent to and facing the head of the targeted bed to have effect. More than one accelerator has no effect. A double or royal bed only requires a single accelerator to affect both pawns.

The following beds can utilize the sleep accelerator: Bed, Bedroll, Double bed, Double bedroll, Hospital bed, Royal bed, Slab bed, Slab double bed.

Bed Quality	Awful	Poor	Normal	Good	Excellent	Masterwork	Legendary
Rest Effectiveness Bonus	+30%	+32%	+35%	+38%	+40%	+44%	+56%

Nota bene: As the rest effectiveness bonuses apply to the bed before the bed's quality multiplier is applied, the exact bonus the sleep accelerator applies scales with the bed's quality.

Pawns with a Transhumanist ideoligion will gain a +3 moodlet for 24 hours whenever they sleep with a sleep accelerator.

Analysis

Costs and benefits

For full analysis of rest and sleep saved, see Rest.

When sleeping in a normal quality bed, sleep accelerators will save 1.4 hours of sleep per day (5.8% of a day). In a masterwork bed, this is reduced to saving 1.25 hours (5.2% of a day). While this might seem paradoxical, considering the accelerator's increased Rest Effectiveness, using a masterwork bed means that there's less sleep need to be saved. In both cases, sleep is reduced by roughly 20%.

Consequently, other means of sleep reduction, like psychite tea, bionic hearts, circadian assistant, or the Low sleep gene, will all reduce the relative impact of the sleep accelerator. However, with multiple means of sleep reduction, pawns will start to go well "beyond" a 24 hour sleep cycle. In this scenario, setting their schedule to all Anything will reduce the time pawns travel to and from bed, increasing efficiency in a different way.

The power draw is significant and spikes while colonists sleep. If a pawn sleeps for 6 hours a day and batteries are used, then an average of roughly 170 W per day if said power is constantly supplied. Batteries will only store 50% of any excess power. So if solar generators are used while colonists sleep at night, then more power is required, up to the upper limit of 200 W per accelerator. The hunger cost can largely be counteracted by growing more food, or by using a nutrient paste dispenser.

Should you build?

Overall, the sleep accelerator is a permanent +5% or so buff to colonist time, once you can afford the resource and power cost. However, most players should consider these buildings with the entire Transhumanist package. In addition to being happy from accelerators, transhumanists will demand neural superchargers at moderate expectations (80,000 colony wealth). Once high expectations (180,000 colony wealth) are reached, age reversal will also be demanded.

Neural superchargers are another power- and resource- hungry machine, requiring 50 Steel, 4 Components and consuming -400 W all day. For the entire day, the supercharge gives +10% Consciousness, boosting a wide variety of stats, along with +25% Global Learning Factor. However, pawns will be more hungry, in addition to the power cost.
Age reversal takes a minimum of 2.61 days/year, or 4.31% of the year when tuned in a sterile room. In a regular, clean room, this takes 3 days/year (5% of the year). This negates most of the benefit from the sleep accelerator, and comes with the downside of pawns unable to exit freely without biosculpter sickness.

If your colony has not reached high expectations yet, or the −4 to −10 moodlet from no age reversal is taken, then the accelerator and supercharger are a maintenance-free positive to work. If pawns are getting age reversal, then sleep accelerators are a very slight positive to work (though you'll get the full benefit from the supercharger).

Tips

Pawns in a double bed will share a sleep accelerator, so you may want to pair pawns up. Manipulating their actions, using the "Romance" option in the Social tab, and/or using the Word of Love psycast can all help power. If you're using solar generators, then you may want to have pawns sleep in the day in order to ignore the battery's 50% penalty and use the generator's full draw of power. If you are doing this, remember that light impacts both movement and work speed.
If another faction has the Transhumanist ideoligion, then you can have their pawns construct sleep accelerators and neural superchargers without your entire colony demanding accelerators/superchargers/age reversals/body parts. This is also possible with a fluid ideoligion, though development points can be somewhat prohibitive.
- If your faction is against Diversity of Thought, then you can arrest the other ideoligion pawn as soon as they are done building them, and put them in cryptosleep until you need more fancy buildings built.

Version history

Ideology DLC Release - Added.

Architect

Misc: Caravan hitching spot • Egg box • Grave • Marriage spot • Party spot • Pen marker • Sarcophagus • Tool cabinet • Meditation spot • Nature shrine (Large, Small)
(research): Comms console • Cryptosleep casket • Firefoam popper • Ground-penetrating scanner • Long-range mineral scanner • Moisture pump • Multi-analyzer • Orbital trade beacon • Pod launcher • Stele (Large, Grand) • Transport pod • Vitals monitor • Ship landing beacon