Tunneler mechanoids unable to operate deep drills.

[Jingo]

Are tunnelers only meant to work on surface mining or am I missing something? Makes it rather hard to run a mechanoid-only playthrough.

[The Grand Mugwump]

They can't run deep drills for me either. You'll probably have better luck with long distance scanning for close deposits of resources. I find taking 5 scythers + a tunneler keeps me pretty safe and gives some decent carry capacity to the caravan. The big downside is leaving your base unattended while away. Your mechs will keep functioning on whatever group order you assigned them, but they're pretty bad at fighting off raiders unless you have them assigned to guard zones or use lots of sentries.

[Juicy Beefcake]

Tunneler was something I only ever felt I needed one of. By the time I had mined out my starting map I was ready to start up the ship. They are super slow and not terribly useful in combat past being a bullet sponge. After you've strip mined the map, just dismantle it and use the capacity elsewhere.

[Aranador]

Yah Tunnelers cant use the base game deep drills it seems (sadface). Wieldly, they were able to use the chemfuel powered deep drill from Chemfuel Appliances, but they were soooooo sloooow at it. Mods and their wacky interactions yah? I wonder how they would work with one of those quarry or mine mods, once those are updated?

[Zalzany]

I mean they are tunnelers not all in one super miners... I kind of expected them to not run complex machinery, and just dig tunnels... Scrap them if you this far and build something else with the link slots...

[The Blind One]

Yeah the work types of the mechanoids are a bit wonky.

I modded my tunnelers to be able to deep drill as well as be excellent wood cutters since they'd be idle a lot otherwise. Sadly though I don't have any knowledge in C# coding otherwise i'd have made it so they'd deep drill without using the deep drill building lol.

All my mechs are now capable of multiple job types, constructoids can make stone blocks for example or go tree cutting though they are vastly less efficient at it than agrihands or tunnelers at knocking down those trees. It's something they'll only do if their construction job has been completed. Every mech now has a redudancy built in but is less efficient at a redundant job compared to the dedicated mech so it remains more efficient to diversify and see them all zip across the map. It just helps out out a lot when there's an overflow in one job demand.

Was getting a bit annoyed that my constructoids were just sitting still while I 'could' theoretically abuse the roofing system to make them cut down trees, but if they can do it like that why not just allow them to cut trees as a redundant ability when their construction job is done? Other weird mechanics like the paramedic not being able to treat animals or feed patients was kinda lame to me, so I added that in too lol. They're all quite versatile now but not so versatile that it replaces another mech, they can all fill in for each other without replacing the other mechs.

So yeah I got a bit carried away but all my mechs are zipping around being productive.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by Jingo:

Are tunnelers only meant to work on surface mining or am I missing something? Makes it rather hard to run a mechanoid-only playthrough.

I noticed the same thing. However a mechanoid-only playthrough is still very viable.

I would advice using the long range mineral scanner instead of deep drills and then caravaning out there with your mechanoid and a few tunnelers.

[The Blind One]

Ok so I discovered after enabling deep drilling on the tunnelers in the xml code that they can go to the deep drill and mine at it ... except not really ... they just stand there and the progress bar moves like 2% for a whole days work (so it is erroring out somewhere). That's not gonne cut it boss.

So someone more talented than I am that knows how to C# code properly will need to find a fix for it because I couldn't figure out where in the C# code it breaks down either :(

Alternatively I hear the Mines mod will work though so I'm checking that out now.

[The Blind One]

The Mines mod works fine for the tunneler.

So I suggest for anyone that wants to get their tunneler working on quasi-drilling is to do the following.

Use the mines mod, then when you find a deposit, put a mine over it (to simulate it being something you actually found), limit the amount of resources to be gathered by the amount of resources actually in that location found by the ground penetrating scanner, then put any mech on its work tab and once it is finished, simply leave it as if the mine was emptied out. That's the best workaround for the moment.

Alternatively use the caravan mining option combined with the mineral scanner is an option.

[JD]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

So yeah I got a bit carried away but all my mechs are zipping around being productive.

Why just don't play a human colony instead of hacking around and trying to make multi-jobs mechs?

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by JD:

Originally posted by The Blind One:

So yeah I got a bit carried away but all my mechs are zipping around being productive.

Why just don't play a human colony instead of hacking around and trying to make multi-jobs mechs?

They are still much more limited than colonists. They don't have access to all jobs, just the ones that kinda make sense for their purpose.

The short answer is, cooler automation, long answer is, I'm going for the self-sufficient colony where mechanoids are versatile semi-intelligent creations and not empty robots who can only perform one task. Mechanoids are considered by the lore to have some basic sentience. If all they can do is 1 job, then they are worse than robots in terms of interesting creations and as beings. They are as a part of the family as they are an extension of the mechanitor.

Why my mechanitor got to make stone blocks? You telling me a constructoid can make complex machinery and technologies like comms console, fabrication bench, furniture and what not but can't hammer out a few stone blocks?

Constructoids being able to make stone blocks for example have something to do in between construction jobs now. They can haul stuff to a work site (vanilla) so why not allow them to haul (stone chunks for example) if they got no construction jobs left or stone blocks to make? It keeps production going and makes this mechanoid an interesting companion that can do all the construction related tasks while my mad lad scientist keeps working on his science and fabrication bench for more mad lad mechanoids.

Its honestly satisfying seeing each mechanoid excelling and completely replacing a part of the labor that was done by humans. I found myself faced with the burden of either increasing my colonist count due to the work restrictions of mechanoids or just adding the work to the mechanoids. Preferring an all mechanoid setup I chose this method.

[JD]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Originally posted by JD:

Why just don't play a human colony instead of hacking around and trying to make multi-jobs mechs?

They are still much more limited than colonists. They don't have access to all jobs, just the ones that kinda make sense for their purpose.

The short answer is, cooler automation, long answer is, I'm going for the self-sufficient colony where mechanoids are versatile semi-intelligent creations and not empty robots who can only perform one task. Mechanoids are considered by the lore to have some basic sentience. If all they can do is 1 job, then they are worse than robots in terms of interesting creations and as beings. They are as a part of the family as they are an extension of the mechanitor.

Why my mechanitor got to make stone blocks? You telling me a constructoid can make complex machinery and technologies like comms console, fabrication bench, furniture and what not but can't hammer out a few stone blocks?

Constructoids being able to make stone blocks for example have something to do in between construction jobs now. They can haul stuff to a work site (vanilla) so why not allow them to haul (stone chunks for example) if they got no construction jobs left or stone blocks to make? It keeps production going and makes this mechanoid an interesting companion that can do all the construction related tasks while my mad lad scientist keeps working on his science and fabrication bench for more mad lad mechanoids.

Its honestly satisfying seeing each mechanoid excelling and completely replacing a part of the labor that was done by humans. I found myself faced with the burden of either increasing my colonist count due to the work restrictions of mechanoids or just adding the work to the mechanoids. Preferring an all mechanoid setup I chose this method.

I see what you mean but aren't those low-tier mechs actually robots that are programmed to do one specific job? Otherwise what you described is not much different from joywired colonists with bionic/architech upgrades to me.

But anyway it's your game and you can do whatever you want :)

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by JD:

I see what you mean but aren't those low-tier mechs actually robots that are programmed to do one specific job? Otherwise what you described is not much different from joywired colonists with bionic/architech upgrades to me.

Well such is the fate of any colonist that wishes to join my faction, you will either be a sentient robot or be turned into one

Mwuaahahahaha **evil doctor laugh**

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

They are still much more limited than colonists. They don't have access to all jobs, just the ones that kinda make sense for their purpose.

The short answer is, cooler automation, long answer is, I'm going for the self-sufficient colony where mechanoids are versatile semi-intelligent creations and not empty robots who can only perform one task. Mechanoids are considered by the lore to have some basic sentience. If all they can do is 1 job, then they are worse than robots in terms of interesting creations and as beings. They are as a part of the family as they are an extension of the mechanitor.

Why my mechanitor got to make stone blocks? You telling me a constructoid can make complex machinery and technologies like comms console, fabrication bench, furniture and what not but can't hammer out a few stone blocks?

Constructoids being able to make stone blocks for example have something to do in between construction jobs now. They can haul stuff to a work site (vanilla) so why not allow them to haul (stone chunks for example) if they got no construction jobs left or stone blocks to make? It keeps production going and makes this mechanoid an interesting companion that can do all the construction related tasks while my mad lad scientist keeps working on his science and fabrication bench for more mad lad mechanoids.

Its honestly satisfying seeing each mechanoid excelling and completely replacing a part of the labor that was done by humans. I found myself faced with the burden of either increasing my colonist count due to the work restrictions of mechanoids or just adding the work to the mechanoids. Preferring an all mechanoid setup I chose this method.

Note that there is a mech that can make stone blocks (without modding the game), namely the fabricator.

[Pacman]

Maybe is bugged. Have no sense that tunneler go useless on mid-late game. Purpose of robots is automation. If you dont have miner in your colony how can you mine anything?
They direcly alow tunelers use drills or drill directly without drill machine, or more accurate think. When you unlock drills your tunnelers upgrade for drill deposits discovered.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by Pacman:

Maybe is bugged. Have no sense that tunneler go useless on mid-late game. Purpose of robots is automation. If you dont have miner in your colony how can you mine anything?
They direcly alow tunelers use drills or drill directly without drill machine, or more accurate think. When you unlock drills your tunnelers upgrade for drill deposits discovered.

While its inconvenient they are hardly useless.

Just use the long range scanner and go out with your mechinator and the tunnelers to get the resources.

Deep drills aren't required in anyway shape or form.

That said, having tunnelers have deep drills "built in" that they can use sounds like a neat idea (but you need to be able stop them or direct them to certain deposits somehow, getting a ton of resources you don't need is just gonna increase colony wealth).