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.

Acquisition

Tunnelers can be gestated by a mechanitor at a Large mech gestator once the Standard mechtech research project has been completed. They require 150 Steel, 75 Plasteel, 4 Components, 1 Standard subcore and 4 gestation cycles taking 1,800 ticks (30 secs) each to initiate. They take up 3 bandwidth from their linked mechanitor.

Dead, friendly tunnelers can also be resurrected at the large mech gestator using the "Resurrect heavy mechanoid" bill. This requires the corpse of the friendly Tunneler, 100 steel, and 1 gestation cycle taking 1,800 ticks (30 secs) to initiate.

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 war queen and apocriton summon groups.

Combat

In combat, tunnelers use sharp melee attacks. They have an innate smokepop pack ability, but this has a cooldown of 15 days.

Tunnelers have the highest armor values of any mechanoid in the game, with +5% more Sharp and Blunt armor than the war queen. However, with a health scale of 1.52, it doesn't have the hit point pool of the larger mechs. They have an innate shield, which is equivalent to a shield belt, just with 250 HP. This is higher than even a legendary quality shield belt.

Tunnelers use regular staggering mechanics, as with any other enemy. A tunneler can theoretically be staggered by a weapon with at least 3.5 stopping power, however no weapon in the game has enough stopping power to do so.

Armor

Armor

As an ally

Once made, they recharge in a large mech recharger (50% power/day), creating 15 wastepacks whenever the recharger's waste is filled up.

Work

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%.

For reference, every other labor mechanoid has a Global Work Speed of 50%. As control sublinks and the Mechanoid Labor precept both act as additive offsets to work speed, the tunneler receives a relatively smaller boost. For example, a cleansweeper could go from 50% to 70% work speed - a ×140% increase. A tunneler would go from 150% to 170%, which is only a ×113.3% increase.

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.

Comparison to scythers

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 aforementioned shield. Tunnelers cost 75 steel more to make.

This is at the cost of DPS. The tunneler has a true DPS of 7.59 (4.7 after Melee Hit Chance), 75.9% of the scyther. The slightly higher AP of the tunneler does not matter in practice. Both tunnelers and scythers deal sharp damage

If durability is completely irrelevant, such as when using Skip psycast mobbing tactics, then scythers are superior due to their lower bandwidth cost. If durability is relevant, such as for melee block tactics, then you may want a tunneler. In addition, a tunneler used for mining might as well be used for combat whenever possible.

Comparison to centipedes

As durable mechs, tunnelers also face competition from centipedes. Centipedes have 288% the health scale and thus HP of the tunneler. In return, it has slightly worse armor (Sharp: 72% Blunt: 22%) and no shield belt. In addition, centipedes cost 1 more bandwidth and are unlocked at High mechtech. All centipedes have identical durability to each other.

Centipedes deal 86% of the base true melee DPS, however their melee attack deals Blunt damage. Against enemies with high sharp armor, centipedes can actually do more damage. For example, a centipede headbutt has enough AP to ignore another centipede's armor, but the tunneler would have its damage reduced by 70%. After considering the mechanics of the Scratch damage type, the tunneler is slightly better against unarmored targets and slightly worse against armored.

So for the sole purpose of tanking enemies, the centipede is almost always better even when considering the tunneler's shield. The centipede's ranged weaponry makes them more flexible in combat. But centipedes are more expensive. When a centipede is tied up in melee, unable to fire while being fired at, it won't be much better than a tunneler.

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.

Gallery

Age 0-99 Tunneler facing east
Age 0-99 Tunneler facing north
Age 0-99 Tunneler facing south

Age 100+ Tunneler facing east
Age 100+ Tunneler facing north
Age 100+ Tunneler facing south

Version history

Biotech DLC Release - Added
Somewhere between Release and 1.4.3641 - Power claw attack changed from Blunt to Scratch.
1.4.3531 - Increased armor values from 40/20/200 to 80/40/200
1.4.3682 - Removed special stagger mechanic from tunneler mechs. Previously, tunnelers would be staggered for 120 ticks (2 secs) on any ranged attack, no matter how strong it was. Staggering is now based on weapon stopping power as with all other pawns.

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]