Tunneler

A tunneler is a mechanoid added by the Biotech DLC.
== Acquisition ==
Dead, friendly tunnelers can also be resurrected at the using the "Resurrect heavy mechanoid" bill. This requires the corpse of the friendly tunneler, steel, and 1 gestation cycle taking to initiate.
== Summary ==
Dead tunnelers may be shredded at the machining table or crafting spot for steel and plasteel. However, these values are affected by mechanoid shredding efficiency, as well as missing parts on the tunneler.
Tunnelers do not seem to spawn in regular mech raids, crashed ship parts, or mech clusters. However, they appear as part of certain war queen and apocriton summon groups.
=== Combat ===
In combat, tunnelers use sharp melee attacks. They have an innate smokepop pack ability, but this has a cooldown of 15 days.
Tunnelers have the highest armor values of any mechanoid in the game, with more Sharp and Blunt armor than the war queen. However, with a health scale of 1.52, it doesn't have the hit point pool of the larger mechs. They have an innate shield, which is equivalent to a shield belt, just with 250 HP. This is higher than even a legendary quality shield belt.
Tunnelers use regular staggering mechanics, as with any other enemy. A tunneler can theoretically be staggered by a weapon with at least 3.5 stopping power, however no weapon in the game has enough stopping power to do so.
=== Armor ===
Armor
=== As an ally ===
Once made, they recharge in a large mech recharger (50% power/day), creating 15 wastepacks whenever the recharger's waste is filled up. 
=== Work ===
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%. 
For reference, every other labor mechanoid has a Global Work Speed of 50%. As control sublinks and the Mechanoid Labor precept both act as additive offsets to work speed, the tunneler receives a relatively smaller boost. For example, a cleansweeper could go from 50% to 70% work speed - a increase. A tunneler would go from 150% to 170%, which is only a increase.
== 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 ===
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 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, with middling and a decent durability. They have 152% the health of a human, armor slightly worse than normal recon armor, and an innate shield better than a legendary shield belt. While they won't deal as much damage compared to a dedicated melee pawn, nor able to run or lock down enemies like a scyther, tunnelers can draw enemy fire. This lets other combatants focus on dealing damage.
==== Comparison to scythers ====
Tunnelers face competition from scythers, a melee-focused mech also unlocked from . Tunnelers don't have a scyther's speed, and consume +1 bandwidth. However, they are significantly more durable, with significantly more armor, slightly higher health, and the aforementioned shield. Tunnelers cost 75 steel more to make.
This is at the cost of DPS. The tunneler has a of 7.59 (4.7 after Melee Hit Chance), of the scyther. The slightly higher of the tunneler does not matter in practice. Both tunnelers and scythers deal sharp damage 
If durability is completely irrelevant, such as when using Skip psycast mobbing tactics, then scythers are superior due to their lower bandwidth cost. If durability is relevant, such as for melee block tactics, then you may want a tunneler. In addition, a tunneler used for mining might as well be used for combat whenever possible.
==== Comparison to centipedes ====
As durable mechs, tunnelers also face competition from centipedes. Centipedes have the health scale and thus of the tunneler. In return, it has slightly worse armor (Sharp: % Blunt: %) and no shield belt. In addition, centipedes cost 1 more bandwidth and are unlocked at . All centipedes have identical durability to each other.
Centipedes deal 86% of the , however their melee attack deals Blunt damage. Against enemies with high sharp armor, centipedes can actually do more damage. For example, a centipede headbutt has enough to ignore another centipede's armor, but the tunneler would have its damage reduced by 70%. After considering the mechanics of the Scratch damage type, the tunneler is slightly better against unarmored targets and slightly worse against armored.
So for the sole purpose of tanking enemies, the centipede is almost always better even when considering the tunneler's shield. The centipede's ranged weaponry makes them more flexible in combat. But centipedes are more expensive. When a centipede is tied up in melee, unable to fire while being fired at, it won't be much better than a tunneler.
== Health ==
=== Body parts ===
== Gallery ==
Tunneler east.png| Age 0-99 Tunneler facing east
Tunneler north.png| Age 0-99 Tunneler facing north
Tunneler south.png| Age 0-99 Tunneler facing south
TunnelerAncient east.png| Age 100+ Tunneler facing east
TunnelerAncient north.png| Age 100+ Tunneler facing north
TunnelerAncient south.png| Age 100+ Tunneler facing south
== Version history ==
* Biotech DLC Release - Added
* Somewhere between Release and 1.4.3641 - Power claw attack changed from Blunt to Scratch.
* 1.4.3531 - Increased armor values from 40/20/200 to 80/40/200
* 1.4.3682 - Removed special stagger mechanic from tunneler mechs. Previously, tunnelers would be staggered for on any ranged attack, no matter how strong it was. Staggering is now based on weapon stopping power as with all other pawns.
Category:Mechanoids