Tunneler
 | This article relates to content added by Biotech (DLC). Please note that it will not be present without the DLC enabled. |
Tunneler
A heavy mechanoid built for mining in treacherous locations. While intended for excavation, the tunneler's gigantic power claws and ultra-thick armor makes it a dangerous force in combat.
Base Stats
- Type
- Mechanoid
- Market Value
- 1200
- Flammability
- 0%
Armor
- Armor - Sharp
- 80%
- Armor - Blunt
- 40%
- Armor - Heat
- 200%
Pawn Stats
- Move Speed
- 1.9 c/s
- Health Scale
- 150% HP
- Body Size
- 3.5
- Mass
- 210 kg
- Pack Capacity
- 122.5 kg
- Carrying Capacity
- 263 kg
- Filth Rate
- 1
- Comfortable Temp Range
- -100 °C – 250 °C (-148 °F – 482 °F)
Melee Combat
- Attack 1
- Left power claw
22 dmg (Blunt)
33 % AP
2.9 second cooldown - Attack 2
- Right power claw
22 dmg (Blunt)
33 % AP
2.9 second cooldown - Average DPS
- 4.7
Creation
- Crafted At
- Required Research
- Standard mechtech
- Resources to make
150 + 
75 + 
4 + 
1
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 - 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
 | This section has been suggested for recoding. Reason: Add the actual mining speed stat of the tunneler to the table below, to allow for direct comparison to human miners. If it is already in mining speed and work speed, convert language to reflect that. You can help RimWorld Wiki by improving it. |
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, and deal poor DPS - especially compared to Scythers, who are in the same research tier and take one less bandwidth. However, they are fairly bulky. They have roughly 150% the health of a normal human, armor slightly worse than normal recon armor, and an innate shield better than a legendary shield belt. This makes them an excellent tank throughout most of the game. While they won't deal much damage on their own, they can draw enemy fire and let your colonists or other mechs focus on dealing damage.
A centipede has a health scale of 4.32 (2.88x more HP than the tunneler), and slightly worse Sharp armor (72% vs 80%), but no shield belt. It also has worse Blunt armor (22%), is weaker melee, costs 1 more bandwidth, and is unlocked at High Mechtech. For the sole purpose of melee tanking, the centipede is strictly better. And in ranged combat, the centipede can fire back. (Of course, a centipede can't mine for you.)
Health
Specify body type when known.
Version history
- Biotech DLC Release - Added
- 1.4.3531 - Increased armor values from 40/20/200 to 80/40/200
- 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