Circadian half-cycler

The circadian half-cycler is an artificial body part that removes a pawns need to sleep at the cost of a permanent Consciousness penalty.
== Acquisition ==
== Summary ==
A circadian half-cycler is installed in the brain and removes the Sleep need entirely and the cost of a in Consciousness. This consciousness penalty in turn negatively affects almost every task a pawn can perform, as it directly affects the capacities, and these in turn affect most stats including several that affect work speeds. See the respective capacity pages for full details on which stats are affected and how.
Note that without the need to sleep, pawns will not use their bed outside of medical circumstances and therefore will rarely, if ever, engage in Lovin' or receive a moodlet from their bedroom or barracks. Non-ascetic nobles will still desire a bedroom that meets their needs, however.
The circadian half-cycler also renders a pawn vulnerable to EMP. Taking EMP damage from any source will inflict brain shock on the pawn, capping their consciousness at and downing them for between and .
=== Installation ===
Installing the part requires of work, 2x medicine of herbal quality or better, and a Medical skill of 5.
Removing the part requires of work, 1x medicine of herbal quality or better, and a Medical skill of 5.
If the operation fails, the part will be destroyed.
== Analysis ==
Assuming a colonist sleeps for 8 hours, this implant allows them to work an additional 1/3rd of the day, and saves space on a bedroom. Even with the consciousness loss, this makes pawns have more work time, and thus better for many tasks. This assumes you don't have many sleep reducers; see #Comparison to reducing sleep for details on that.
An unfortunate side effect of the half-cycler is mood. No sleep will generally prevent Lovin', remove the moodlet from an impressive bedroom, and deprive a pawn of a bed's Comfort level. Chairs can provide comfort for pawns during meals and if working at work benches, but the stacking loss of these mood buffs can still be significant. 
Not needing bedrooms can also be an important space saving measure in very large colonies, however keep in mind that non-ascetic nobles will still want a bedroom that meets their needs.
Brain shock can be used to immediately end a berserk pawn's mental break or a slave's revolt safely and quickly, by equipping another pawn with EMP grenades and targeting the pawn with the half-cycler.
=== Work ===
The Consciousness loss has a different effect on different work types.
Good:
*Research, Hauling, Cleaning: All these tasks are done slower, but have no quality, so the extra time makes up.
*Cooking: Like above; food poisoning chance is not increased.
*Construction, Crafting, Art: will produce the same-quality items, so the extra time is a net positive. Note that low-skill construction is more likely to fail.
Mixed:
*Plants: Allows more plants to be grown/harvested, but lowers yield per plant. Bad when plant space is limited, good if not.
*Mining: Good for mining regular rock or deep drilling, bad for mining ores.
Bad:
*Social, Animals: The half-cycler is of little help: trade is limited, prisoners and animals sleep. Lowered Consciousness means more failed attempts and higher prices.
*Medical: Tends slower, with less quality, and have less successful surgeries. Tend speed is time-sensitive; speed is important, but you don't need to tend all the time.
*Combat: Worse accuracy, will get injured more, and more likely to die from Consciousness loss. Being tired does not penalize combat, so the half-cycler is a pure negative.
**EMP also becomes harder to use due to Brain Shock. You may want to use EMP anyway, and if it hits the half-cycler pawn, they'll be stuck downed.
Of course, pawns can be good at multiple work tasks. A pawn that mostly does Crafting can also be your main Social pawn, for instance. Each case should be weighed individually.
=== Synergy with genes ===
 
Since the half-cycler removes the need for sleep, making any effect on Sleep Fall Rate irrelevant, it synergizes well with the Sleepy and Very sleepy genes. Both become essentially free negative genes, providing and metabolic efficiency respectively. This is perhaps not enough to make the whole implant worth it alone, but on any pawn who already has a half-cycler, this is a large, completely free, secondary benefit.
=== Comparisons ===
==== Comparison to reducing sleep ====
Other than quick sleeper, the following can decrease the time needed to sleep:
* High quality beds, further improved with royal beds
* Improvements to digestion and blood pumping (like bionic stomachs, bionic hearts, and luciferium)
* Drugs, like psychite tea and wake-up.
* Sleep accelerators.
* The low sleep gene.
And, of course, the circadian assistant.
The following combinations warrant comparison:
Amazing Beds + Assistant: In total, a masterwork bed + assistant reduce sleep to 5.04 hours - that's 21% of the day. A legendary royal bed + assistant reduces sleep to 3.96 hours (16.4% of the day). If you can easily create Masterwork/Legendary beds, such as with a Production specialist, then the half-cycler can end up a negative to work compared to a circadian assistant.
Excellent Beds + Sleep Accelerator: An excellent bed + sleep accelerator reduces sleep to 5.1 hours (21.2% of the day). A legendary royal bed + accelerator reduces sleep to 3.75 hours (15.6% of the day). Note that the accelerator does cost a fair bit of hunger and power, and is only available if you have a pawn with a Transhumanist ideoligion.
Just Low Sleep: On a normal bed, low sleep alone reduces sleep to 3.43 hours (14.26% of the day). As the half-cycler reduces practically all work by -15%, this gene is a flat out improvement. The gene comes at the cost of -4 Metabolic Efficiency, which must either be compensated with bad genes, or increase hunger by up to x200%. Sanguophages already come with Low Sleep - installing a half-cycler is a net negative to them.
In all 3 cases, the pawn can still receive a bed's comfort, Lovin', and the Impressive Bedroom moodlets. These scenarios can be further improved with any of the other methods listed above. However, they'll have to walk to and from the bedroom/barracks, which is a minor time loss.
==== Comparison to Never Sleep ====
The never sleep gene will completely prevent sleep with no Consciousness loss. However, with a metabolic efficiency of , it requires negative genes or archite metabolism to even be used at all. It takes a large amount of negatives to negate the penalty, or 2 archite capsules for the aforementioned metabolism gene.
Never sleep is not found in any of the default xenohumans, so a genepack must be found/bought. You must also obtain a genepack to compensate for metabolism. Alternatively, you can start with a xenotype with the gene - this still comes at the genetic cost. 
Category:Medical Item Category:Body Part Category:Implant