Electroharvester

The Electroharvester is a building that harnessess usable power from contained Entities, at the cost of containment strength reduction and occasional injuries.

Acquisition

Electroharvesters can be constructed once the electroharvester research project has been completed. Note that this research requires dark study to unlock. Each requires 1 Component, 25 Bioferrite, 50 Steel, 4,000 ticks (1.11 mins) of work modified by the construction speed of the builder, and a construction skill of 4.

Summary

The electroharvester will generate electrical energy from entities contained in connected platforms, providing power to its connected power grid. The amount of energy produced is based on the combined body size of all entities. It produces 200 watts of power per 1 body size, up to a maximum output of 2000 watts at 10 body size. For reference, a gorehulk has a body size of 2, and contributes 400 watts to an electroharvester. The Electroharvester reduces the containment strength of all connected platforms by -25. Additionally, it significantly increases the activity gain of connected entities. For example, a nociosphere normally gains 10% activity per day, but this jumps up to a whopping 25% when an electroharvester is attached. While this can be situationally useful, it also dramatically increases the risk of catastrophic failure.

A feature of the electroharvester not explicitly mentioned in-game is that it will periodically harm connected entities, applying a few electrical burns at infrequent intervals. The amount of damage applied is usually trivial, around 1-3 HP^[check] of damage with an MTB of 2 days. Because of their inability to regenerate health, shamblers will eventually die from these burns, making shambler power non-renewable. Other entities which are able to regenerate health will still, albeit rarely, take damage to the brain or eyes. This damage will scar and eventually cause death, though due to the slow nature of this process it is unlikely to prove lethal unless the entity has been confined for many in-game years.

Electroharvesters will also halve the knowledge gain of connected entities, in addition to the knowledge penalty from reducing containment strength. It should be noted that intermittent scarring to the brain from the electroharvester may also indirectly increase the Escape interval of an entity, which is influenced by movement of a pawn. If the brain HP falls below 30%, the entity will become incapacitated, completely nullifying the escape risks. At this point, it should ideally be relocated to a different containment cell where only its bioferrite can be harvested forever without risk.

Analysis

The electroharvester provides a cheap early-game building for colonies to consistently generate power utilizing void entities. Reasonable setups where a single electroharvester is connected to 6 containment pads holding Sightstealers, Shamblers, and Gorehulks can match or surpass the power generation of the Chemfuel and Wood generators. Compared to Solar and Wind generators, the Electroharvester is cheaper, and is unaffected by light or wind levels, but will generally offer less overall power unless connected to large body size entities such as Gorehulks or Chimeras.

The Bioferrite generator can be seen as a direct lategame upgrade to the Electroharvester, although it consumes 6 bioferrite per day as fuel, which may be a burden on colonies with smaller harvesting setups or frequent void rituals. It is possible to use an electroharvester in conjunction with a Bioferrite generator- they are not mutually exclusive.

The wounds inflicted by the Electroharvester can provide consistent and risk-free opportunities for pawns to train up their medicine skill.

Production rates of Twisted meat from fleshmass nuclei rise with higher activity levels. Colonies utilizing twisted meat to feed ghouls, inhumanized colonists, or as an ingredient for chemfuel refining may prefer to have a fleshmass nucleus connected to an electroharvester.