Paramedic

This article is about the mechanoid added by the Biotech DLC. For colonists performing medical duties, see Doctoring.

A paramedic is a mechanoid added by the Biotech DLC that can perform doctoring duties, fight fires, and jump long distances.

Acquisition

Paramedics can be gestated by a mechanitor at a Mech gestator once the High mechtech research project has been completed. They require 100 Steel, 1 High subcore and 1 gestation cycle taking 1,800 ticks (30 secs) to initiate. They take up 1 bandwidth from their linked mechanitor.

Dead, friendly paramedics can also be resurrected at the mech gestator using the "Resurrect light mechanoid" bill. This requires the corpse of the friendly Paramedic, 25 steel, and 1 gestation cycle taking 1,800 ticks (30 secs) to initiate.

Summary

As mechanoids, every paramedic 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).

Dead paramedics may be shredded at the machining table or crafting spot for 10 steel. However, these values are affected by mechanoid shredding efficiency, as well as missing parts on the paramedic.

Combat

Paramedics can only make melee attacks. They have a melee hit chance of 62%, equivalent to a pawn with a Melee skill of 4.

As mechs can't be tended to, paramedics are never found in mechanoid raids.

As an ally

Mechs under player control require power: paramedics 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.

Work

Paramedics will do all work under the Doctoring tab, such as surgery, tending, and rescue. They will also feed prisoners as a warden.^{[Firefighting?]} Paramedics have an effective Medical skill of 10. They will rescue pawns before tending to them.

They have a base Global Work Speed of 50% and have a base move speed 83% that of a human, equivalent to a baseline human in plate armor.

Abilities

When drafted, paramedics are capable of long jumping. This ability can be used twice, then has an 8 game-hour cooldown per charge.

It can jump to any tile in line of sight and within a 15 tile radius, but outside a 6 tile radius. This means it can jump over rock chunks and fences, but not walls.
There is a short 30 ticks (0.5 secs) warm-up before jumping, and a 480 ticks (8 secs) cooldown after each jump.^[Verify]
It cannot be hurt mid-jump, even by explosions directly under it, but can still get hit during the warmup.

Unlike regular movement, the long jump can both be initiated and land outside of the mechanitor's command radius, with no restrictions so long as the mechanitor is present and not downed or in a mental break. Paramedics can carry a downed pawn with them during this jump.

They also have the ability to release a 3.5-tile radius burst of firefoam on command, putting out fires, preventing the spread of other fires, and reducing the flammability of pawns in the area to 0%. It takes 30 ticks (0.5 secs) to deploy. It has no reload cost, but has a 300,000 ticks (5 in-game days) cooldown.

The on-screen gizmo to initiate a long jump
The on-screen gizmo to initiate a firefoam pop

Analysis

Paramedics work slowly without a mech booster. For reference, a skill 2 pawn is faster than a base paramedic, and skill 6 is faster than a mech-boosted paramedic. When triaging situations with multiple bleeding pawns, send almost any human doctor for patients who are critically bleeding out, and paramedics for the rest.

In any tending situation, paramedics have 3 main advantages:

Paramedics do not suffer from mental breaks, can never get diseases, and will rarely get wounded - all factors that can weaken or disable human doctors.
Paramedics are an extra hand. When you have a lot of injuries to tend to, your 'main' doctors' hands may be full. Having a mech tend is better than no tending at all.
Paramedics only 'sleep' for 24 hours out of every 6 working days, and can be turned off and on when needed.

You may want to group the paramedic with other combat mechanoids, keeping them dormant until a combat situation or disease outbreak occurs. Note that the mechanitor must be conscious to change Work Modes, so solo mechanitors should keep paramedics active, and consider having more than one.

Paramedics cannot tend while drafted; they need an empty medical-set bed or sleeping spot in order to rescue pawns and start treatment. If tending needs to be done urgently, then place a sleeping spot near any wounded colonists and set it to medical. In these situations, you should temporarily set the pawn to Doctor care but no medicine so that the paramedic doesn't waste time hauling medicine from your base.

Nonurgent

With a clean, well-lit hospital with a high quality hospital bed, a paramedic can reach the 98% surgery success chance cap of a human. They cannot clean their own hospitals, are slower to heal injuries caused by surgery failures, and rely much more on the quality of the hospital than high skill humans.

If no doctors are above Medical 10, or when playing with a solo colonist, then a paramedic is the obvious choice for surgery and disease.

Firefighting and rescue

With their firefoam pack and immunity to fire and heat, paramedics excel at firefighting and rescuing pawns from situations involving heat that would wound others.

Due to the flexibility of the long jump, paramedics are useful for rescuing pawns.

A paramedic takes up 1 bandwidth. A human combatant, who would otherwise be "lost" rescuing, almost certainly makes up for the loss of combat mechs from a single bandwidth.

Work Speed

The Medical Tend Speed of a paramedic is dependent on their Global Work Speed, which is 50%. A mech booster's effect increases work speed to 75%. Each control sublink installed in their Mechanitor increases the work speed by +6%, up to a maximum of +36%. Multiple mech boosters do not stack, and the bonus from control sublinks is not multiplied by mech boosters.

All values are for 50%+ lighting conditions.

Control Sublinks	Medical Tend Speed
Control Sublinks	Base	Mech Boosted
0	50%	75%
1	56%	81%
2	62%	87%
3	68%	93%
4	74%	99%
5	80%	105%
6	86%	111%

A healthy, skill 2 colonist beats a base paramedic in terms of tend speed. A skill 6 colonist will beat a mech-boosted paramedic with no sublinks. A skill 12 colonist, or skill 6 with 2 archotech arms, will beat a mech-boosted Paramedic with maximum sublinks.

Health

Specify body type when known.

Body part	Health
Head	25
Skull	25
Brain	10
Nose	10
Neck	25
Jaw	20
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	10
Ear (left, right)	10
Body	40
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	15
Lung^[2] (left, right)	15
Liver^[2]	20
Heart^[2]	15
Spine^[2]	25
Stomach^[2]	20
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	30
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	20

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

Gallery

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

Age 100+ Paramedic facing east
Age 100+ Paramedic facing north
Age 100+ Paramedic facing south

Version history

Biotech DLC Release - Added.
1.4.3541 - Fix: Paramedic mechs can't carry pawns while jumping.
1.4.3542 - Fix: Paramedic mechs can't carry pawns while jumping. It is unknown why this fix was/had to be implemented twice.
1.4.3641 - Fix: Paramedics not fighting fires automatically.

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]