Nuclear stomach

Nuclear stomach

A micro-nuclear reactor combined with complex chemical synthesis replaces the body's need for food energy. Food is required only to replace matter lost from the body, reducing the user's intake needs significantly. This artificial stomach cannot get food poisoning. However, there is little room to shield the reactor, so the radiation increases the risk of cancer.

Base Stats

Type

Medical Items – Body Parts

Tech Level

Spacer

Market Value

1030 

Mass

4 kg

HP

50

Flammability

100%

Body Part

Stomach

Creation

Crafted At

Required Research

Artificial metabolism

Skill Required

Crafting 8

Work To Make

26,000 ticks (7.22 mins)

Resources to make

15 + 4

Technical

thingSetMakerTags

RewardStandardLowFreq

techHediffsTags

Advanced, ImplantEmpireCommon

tradeTags

Bionic, ImplantEmpireCommon

The Nuclear Stomach drastically reduces a human's hunger rate to just one-quarter of its normal value and prevents food poisoning, however it causes an elevated rate of cancer. Like a bionic stomach, it also provides 125% part efficiency.

Shocking a pawn with this stomach using EMP will force them to vomit.

Acquisition

Nuclear stomaches can be crafted at a fabrication bench once the Artificial metabolism research project has been completed. Note that this research requires a techprint. Each requires  15 Plasteel,  4 Advanced components, 26,000 ticks (7.22 mins) of work modified by the general labor speed of the crafter, and a crafting skill of 8.

Alternatively, they can be purchased from traders and outlander and empire settlements.

Summary

Body part

A nuclear stomach replaces the user's organic stomach. The nuclear stomach has a part efficiency of 125%. This not only fully replaces the functionality of a normal stomach - when coupled with the stomach body part having a Digestion importance of 50%, it results in an increase in Digestion of +12.5% over natural. Digestion, in turn, improves the rest rate multiplier by +3.75%, meaning the colonist will require slightly less sleep.

Eating capacity and eating speed are unaffected.

Other effects

A nuclear stomach reduces the hunger rate of a pawn by 75%, meaning they only require 1/4 the food to live. Contrary to what is displayed on the item info card this effect is applied as an offset to the hunger rate instead of a multiplier. All artificial stomachs are immune to gut worms, and installing one will instantly cure the disease. A nuclear stomach also grants full immunity to food poisoning. Unlike the bionic stomach, but similar to the other Royalty DLC stomach replacements, EMPing a pawn with a nuclear stomach will force them to vomit.

However, it also causes a carcinoma on the torso of the host pawn on average once every 120 in-game days.

Installation

Installing the part requires 2,500 ticks (41.67 secs) of work, 2x medicine of herbal quality or better, and a Medical skill of 5.

Removing the part requires 2,000 ticks (33.33 secs) of work, 1x medicine of herbal quality or better, and has no Medical skill requirements.

If the operation fails, the part will be destroyed.

Analysis

On its own, the nuclear stomach provides minor buffs to sleep and greatly reduces food consumption. However, since food is unlikely to be an issue once a sun lamp greenhouse is made, and because this stomach provides an EMP vulnerability and cancer chance, installing it on colonist is generally not worthwhile. Furthermore, a bionic stomach is cheaper, provides the same sleep buff, and has no EMP vulnerability. Still, there are a few cases where it can be worth installing:

• Food emergency: Installing a nuclear stomach will help if food is running dangerously low, and can cure/prevent gut worms.
• Colonists that are already EMP-vulnerable due to brain implants: the stomach's EMP vulnerability is a non-factor, making the nuclear stomach more appealing to use.
• Ghouls: Ghouls have strict food limitations, so the nuclear stomach can help if it is likely that meat cannot be procured. Ghouls do not get cancer, although they are still vulnerable to EMP.
• Slaves: Installing nuclear stomachs on slaves can be done in the late game, after your main colonists receive the more useful bionics. Slaves are easily replaceable if cancer is too hard to treat; if you know the slave will die soon, the stomach can be uninstalled. The EMP vulnerability can be a benefit, as it can force vomiting in a pinch, although brain implants are better for this purpose.

While EMP-wielding enemies are relatively rare, but the weakness makes it harder to use EMP grenades against enemies, as friendly fire can stun a pawn. Melee pawns are especially susceptible to friendly EMP fire, but any pawn can get into the blast radius if a mech drop pod raid happens.

It is important to note that since the hunger reduction stacks additively with hunger offsets such as smokeleaf high and neural superchargers, rather than multiplicatively, the effect may be much weaker than expected in combination of other modifiers.

Carcinoma

All the following calculations will assume industrial medicine is being used, and otherwise a near best case scenario (15+ skill doctor with bionic arms, clean hospital with vitals monitors, etc.).

There are three strategies to deal with carcinoma: surgery, treatment, and external curing.

First, surgery: all surgery has a 2% failure chance, and the "Excise carcinoma" surgery has a 25% death chance on fail. This means that for every carcinoma that grows, there is a 0.5% chance the pawn will die. You can expect to lose a pawn at around the 138th carcinoma, on average. This seems rather high, but you could get unlucky and have it happen sooner, especially if you use nuclear stomachs on many pawns.

The other option is treatment. Carcinomas are quite variable, having a random chance to grow or shrink on their own, independent of treatment. On average they take 111 days to cure with the best treatment, slightly shorter than the 120 day average carcinoma generation rate from the stomach. This means you can expect your pawn to nearly constantly have a single mild carcinoma, requiring a 1 medicine treatment every 4 days (15 medicine per year per pawn). Technically this also makes the body part have −25% efficiency, but nuclear stomach carcinomas generate in the torso, and torso part efficiency has no effect on any stat.

Treatment is the safer method to handle carcinoma, but takes more time for both the pawn and their doctor, and costs 13 more medicine per year. Neither method is strictly better, it depends on how severe you consider the 0.5% chance of death to be, and the value of the pawn.

Finally, carcinoma can be cured by luciferium, the biosculpter pod, the non-senescent gene, unnatural healing, or Chronophagy if the pawn would be age to 22 or below. Healer mech serum can be also used but is likely not worth using. None of these methods are worth using on a disposable pawn, but if one of these methods is already being used for a different reason, then the cancer downside can mostly be ignored.

Genetic synergy

The nuclear stomach has significant synergy with the gene system added by the Biotech DLC. As metabolic efficiency is one of the key costs to beneficial genes, the nuclear stomach's −75% reduction to the base hunger rate can reduce even the worst metabolic efficiency with a hunger rate of 225% to only 56% that of a baseline human. Furthermore, the carcinoma risk from the stomach can be totally negated by the Non-senescent gene.

Comparisons

The Royalty DLC introduced a number of stomach replacements to complement the base bionic stomach, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. All three of these variants include the benefits offered by the bionic stomach in addition to their unique benefits however they are also susceptible to EMP, causing the pawn to vomit uncontrollably for a short length of time.

Bionic Stomach

In comparison to the nuclear stomach, the bionic stomach eliminates the vulnerability to EMP and cancer risk in exchange for being vulnerable to food poisoning and requiring 4x as much food.

Sterilizing Stomach

In comparison to the nuclear stomach, the sterilizing stomach eliminates the cancer risk in exchange for requiring 4x as much food.

Reprocessor Stomach

In comparison to the nuclear stomach, the reprocessor stomach eliminates the cancer risk in exchange for vulnerability to food poisoning and requiring 3x as much food.

Stomach	Cost	Digestion	Hunger Rate	Food poisoning	Gut Worms	EMP vulnerability	Side effects	Market Value
Stomach	-	1x	1x					-
Bionic stomach	10+  3	1.125x	1x	×50%				785
Sterilizing stomach	15+  4	1.125x	1x					1,030
Reprocessor stomach	15+  4	1.125x	0.75x					1,030
Nuclear stomach	15+  4	1.125x	0.25x				Carcinoma	1,030
Fleshmass stomach	-	1x	1x				+8% Pain	-

Trivia

• Despite being called a Nuclear stomach, it does not require uranium to craft.

Version history

• 1.1.2570 - Now prevents food poisoning as claimed.
• 1.1.2589 - Fix: Incorrect description on foor (sic) poisoning chance factor for artificial stomachs.

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Artificial body parts

Arm/Hand

Archotech arm • Bionic arm • Power claw • Prosthetic arm • Wooden hand • Drill arm • Elbow blade • Field hand • Hand talon • Venom talon • Flesh tentacle • Flesh whip

Head

Archotech eye • Bionic eye • Bionic ear • Bionic jaw • Bionic tongue • Cochlear implant • Denture • Aesthetic nose

Head implants

Joywire • Painstopper • Circadian assistant • Circadian half-cycler • Gastro-analyzer • Learning assistant • Mindscrew • Neurocalculator • Psychic harmonizer • Psychic reader • Psychic sensitizer • Venom fangs • Control sublink (Standard, High) • Mechlink • Mech gestation processor • Remote repairer • Remote shielder • Repair probe • Pilot assistant

Spine

Bionic spine • Revenant vertebrae

Stomach

Bionic stomach • Nuclear stomach • Reprocessor stomach • Sterilizing stomach • Fleshmass stomach

Heart

Bionic heart • Prosthetic heart • Heart • Adrenal heart • Corrosive heart • Metalblood heart

Lung

Lung • Detoxifier lung • Fleshmass lung

Kidney

Kidney • Detoxifier kidney • Blood warmer

Organs

Liver

Visceral implants

Death acidifier • Aesthetic shaper • Coagulator • Healing enhancer • Armorskin gland • Stoneskin gland • Toughskin gland • Immunoenhancer • Love enhancer • Ghoul plating • Ghoul barbs • Vacskin gland

Leg/Foot

Archotech leg • Bionic leg • Prosthetic leg • Peg leg • Wooden foot • Knee spike

Related

Psylink neuroformer • Xenogerm

Deprecated

Scyther blade • Psychic silencer