Tunnelers should can use deep drills or drill directly.

[Pacman]

I think the fact tunnelers cant use deep drills or drill directily have no sense. Eventually I need plasteel or more steel, if im solo mechanitor the game is over. I can use long scanners, but after I cant go to mine cause I cant leave my colony alone. Obviusly I can buy every steel or plastell to merchants or take a miner mechanitor on start selection. I can recruit another colonist yes, but im playing mechanitor start or mechanitor challenge, why i cant satisfy the most important mechanitor need in a reasonable way. Maybe im wrong and i didnt undestand mechanitor gameplay, Should i forget solo mechanitor run and recruit another colonist? Maybe my approach to mechanitor style was wrong, What do you thing?

They have a lot of tools for improve this like they did with fabricator and meals. Maybe fabricator should can use deep drills. Maybe tunnelers should use deep drills or drill directly. Maybe when you unlock some mech tech your tunnelers or fabricator unlock this ability. Maybe you can unlock long range conection with your mechs for make caravan and send them to mine. Have you some ideas?

[Doomdrvk]

The way I've thought of it is to use agrihands to obtain chemfuel and research the long range scanner and drop pods to gather a large amount of components and drop pod to the deposit and back. Then you start scanning for steel and drop pod there with about 15 components (Extra included for emergencies) and 300-400 chemfuel. You then use the steel there and the components to make 6 or 7 drop pods to send back to base. For defense you can leave most of your mechanoids at base and zone them while setting the defense mechanoids to "work" you may also prepare a pod to send back in a rush.

I would suggest you properly prepare for each deployment to a tile. Usually there are enemies so maybe bring a scyther or tunneler and account for their added weight when trying to get back.

[Fyredrakon]

I have written a guide on this, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2879600928

However I will give you the answer to your question directly, since it may not be 100% clear in my guide. You can leave your colony behind, and take your sole colonist on a caravan to get plasteel. It is a bit finicky, but with proper preparations, it is possible.
You should focus on mining all the steel out of your map with a tunneler first. You may need to get more tunnelers to facilitate steel mining from long range scanner (more to carry the steel than actually mine it).
Obviously, a concern with this is leaving your colony unprotected. You will need some luck and a walled in colony center, so you know where to put defenses, ideally with one or maybe two entrance points for raiders. Then leave large amounts of turrets and mechanoids to cover those entrances. If and when a raid comes, just take your combat mechs(leave them on dormant sleep so they stay in position) and draft them. They won't be able to move, but they will shoot much like turrets (aka you can't choose what they shoot at). That should cover you for the several days needed to mine out a scanned deposit.

For the actual caravan to the mining site: take as many tunnelers as you have. Charge any mechs to 100% before leaving just as a precaution. If you can afford the steel cost to drop pod there, then you will have far less prep to do. If you have a royal pawn, use the shuttle on the way back when needed.
Unfortunately... steel has and always will be more efficient to mine by deep drilling. If your map doesn't have a lot of rock to mine(i.e. mountainous or large hill), then your steel will be incredibly limited without deep drills. Caravanning for steel is incredibly inefficient, since it weighs so much. A single scan of steel will need 9-10 tunnelers to carry. Other ways to get steel include shredding mechanoids and smelting slag or gear. The latter is a bit easier, but both ways rely on raids for continuous slag supply.

There is one thing you can do when mining steel at a site though, and that is building a drop pod launcher there and sending the steel back in pods. It will make it possible to send back all the steel without caravan mass. However it costs steel (which is obviously mined on site), components(which can be obtained other ways), and chemfuel, which can also be manufactured on site, just build a refiner and make sure you can cut trees (bring an agrihand). You may have to do math on how many components to actually bring with you, but 10-15 should be enough, 6 for pod launcher, refiner, and wood gen, the rest to send back pods. If you want to pod your caravan back, then do the math.

Sorry for this being so hideously long, but hopefully you now know there is options.

[Doomdrvk]

All defense mechanoids set to "Work" will patrol the colony, you can define where they stay with a simple zone. It's actually quite effective, not as effective as drafting but you can at least keep them at your defensive location.

[The Blind One]

drop podding steel seems like the most uneconomical thing in the world lmao

imagine if they shipped steel by airplane ... or worse ... by SpaceX rockets

Plasteel, gold, silver, jade and uranium all make 'some' economical sense to ship with drop pod if you are capable of doing so but steel itself?

I dun the math, it costs you ~25% of the steel just to drop pod the stuff based on the drop pod steel costs and it's like an easy ~500 to ~600 steel as an upfront cost just to get this venture project going. It'll be even harder and more expensive if you also have to ship the chemfuel if the worksite doesn't have a proper biome that you can convert biomatter into chemfuel but luckily if you have enough of it at home it's not that big of a deal.

Still

P.S
I honestly would love to see tunnelers deep drill without the deep drill. That would be amazingly cool too see and would make them a superb mechanoid.

[Pacman]

Originally posted by Fyredrakon:

I have written a guide on this, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2879600928

However I will give you the answer to your question directly, since it may not be 100% clear in my guide. You can leave your colony behind, and take your sole colonist on a caravan to get plasteel. It is a bit finicky, but with proper preparations, it is possible.
You should focus on mining all the steel out of your map with a tunneler first. You may need to get more tunnelers to facilitate steel mining from long range scanner (more to carry the steel than actually mine it).
Obviously, a concern with this is leaving your colony unprotected. You will need some luck and a walled in colony center, so you know where to put defenses, ideally with one or maybe two entrance points for raiders. Then leave large amounts of turrets and mechanoids to cover those entrances. If and when a raid comes, just take your combat mechs(leave them on dormant sleep so they stay in position) and draft them. They won't be able to move, but they will shoot much like turrets (aka you can't choose what they shoot at). That should cover you for the several days needed to mine out a scanned deposit.

For the actual caravan to the mining site: take as many tunnelers as you have. Charge any mechs to 100% before leaving just as a precaution. If you can afford the steel cost to drop pod there, then you will have far less prep to do. If you have a royal pawn, use the shuttle on the way back when needed.
Unfortunately... steel has and always will be more efficient to mine by deep drilling. If your map doesn't have a lot of rock to mine(i.e. mountainous or large hill), then your steel will be incredibly limited without deep drills. Caravanning for steel is incredibly inefficient, since it weighs so much. A single scan of steel will need 9-10 tunnelers to carry. Other ways to get steel include shredding mechanoids and smelting slag or gear. The latter is a bit easier, but both ways rely on raids for continuous slag supply.

There is one thing you can do when mining steel at a site though, and that is building a drop pod launcher there and sending the steel back in pods. It will make it possible to send back all the steel without caravan mass. However it costs steel (which is obviously mined on site), components(which can be obtained other ways), and chemfuel, which can also be manufactured on site, just build a refiner and make sure you can cut trees (bring an agrihand). You may have to do math on how many components to actually bring with you, but 10-15 should be enough, 6 for pod launcher, refiner, and wood gen, the rest to send back pods. If you want to pod your caravan back, then do the math.

Sorry for this being so hideously long, but hopefully you now know there is options.

Mmm i apreciate your coment and your guide, very interenting, thx. Even with all this solutions, i feel it very unorganic, i mean im playing your solo mechanitor chalgenge that i see on your trailer, you know. I think mechs need some fixs for to improve and make your experiencie more organic.
Another exemple, when you draw your mechanitor and mechas you cant send them togheter around them map, first you need send your mechanitor and after your mechs, this or put your mechs on guard mode. The last week the fabricator couldnt prepare meals or lifters move corposes to smelt. I think fix tunneler will be next step, maybe nerf their minendrill speed and improve them for deep drilling, or maybe the solutions that i proposed on the first coment i dont know.
Having said that, i think its very good dlc, good price, and good content, good art Congratulations.

[JD]

There is a mod that allows Tunnelers to drill, and there is another mod AutoDrills (operator not needed).

[{GFG} Kage]

Tunnelers not being able to use drills is intentional. It was pretty clearly stated in the blog posts for the DLC. It's in part for balance reasons, but also the tunneler has giant claws for tearing through metal, not an appropriate tool for using human made machinery. If you want to use the deep drill, there isn't any reason why you can't have your mechanitor run the drill themselves. On my second playthrough, I made sure my mechanitor had an interest in mining because of a need to get steel and components from mining early on, as well as being able to use the deep drill and scanner.

Also, it's pretty easy to send your mechanoids with your mechanitor on the map. You can pop them into escort mode, as one option, the other is that anything on work mode can also be selected for the caravan. You can't select mechs on recharge or dormant though. One advantage to selecting mechs in Work mode is that you don't need to send the mechanitor for those caravans, as long as you have at least 1 human colonist in the caravan. This is good if you have multiple colonists, as you can keep your mechanitor at home to control combat mechs for base defense, and send some one else to handle the trading.

[Pacman]

Originally posted by {GFG} Kage:

Tunnelers not being able to use drills is intentional. It was pretty clearly stated in the blog posts for the DLC. It's in part for balance reasons, but also the tunneler has giant claws for tearing through metal, not an appropriate tool for using human made machinery. If you want to use the deep drill, there isn't any reason why you can't have your mechanitor run the drill themselves. On my second playthrough, I made sure my mechanitor had an interest in mining because of a need to get steel and components from mining early on, as well as being able to use the deep drill and scanner.

Also, it's pretty easy to send your mechanoids with your mechanitor on the map. You can pop them into escort mode, as one option, the other is that anything on work mode can also be selected for the caravan. You can't select mechs on recharge or dormant though. One advantage to selecting mechs in Work mode is that you don't need to send the mechanitor for those caravans, as long as you have at least 1 human colonist in the caravan. This is good if you have multiple colonists, as you can keep your mechanitor at home to control combat mechs for base defense, and send some one else to handle the trading.

Yes i know, "It was pretty clearly stated in the blog posts for the DLC. It's in part for balance reasons, but also the tunneler has giant claws for tearing through metal, not an appropriate tool for using human made machinery" but for me the most organic think is that tunnelers could be able to mine without deep drill cause they have giant claws... For exemple, when you unlock deep drills, your tunnelers gain the ability to mine like deep drill without deep drill.

[The Blind One]

How are they balanced for flat maps though? On flat maps there's barely enough metal to even gestate a tunneler by the time you unlock him. I literally had to run a deep drill to get the steel needed to make one because the map was emptied out and I was being quite conservative with my steel.

Yeah they are great on mountain bases but short of that they are kinda lackluster. They did get beefed recently so haven't checked them out for combat yet but from a utilitarian perspective ... they're not that great if you're on a flat or small hills map.

Deep drilling should definitely be part of their job imho. What else am I going to use them for? They cost 3 bandwidth too which is 3x a normal working mechanoids. They better be deep drilling for that cost.

[XelNigma]

I would love to see the tunneler get a deep tunnel ability where they dive underground for X time and retrieve resources. While underground they cant be targeted but also cant quickly return if raided.

Maybe set a deep tunnel location marker so it can be automatic instead of needing constant player interaction.

It would work just like deep drilling, requires scanners to find depos other wise he just returns rock chunks. Still a chance of insects. all that jaz. just doesnt require a deep drill and only the tunneler can do this job.

This way the tunneler gets to actually do its job on flat maps (the map all pros play on btw), and it can be balanced independently of the deep drill.

[Helios]

I dont think tunnlers should be able to use deep drills instead they should deploy the drills to the ground and act like a deep drill :)

[The Blind One]

+1 to XelNigma's idea.

[Pacman]

Originally posted by Helios:

I dont think tunnlers should be able to use deep drills instead they should deploy the drills to the ground and act like a deep drill :)

I think so, witih acurate balance like limited speed mine at 10 like other mechs, increase cost or as i said when you unlock deep drills, then tunnel gain deep dril skill without deep drills.

[Setsuna]

The tunneler should have a “deploy” option that extends its outriggers and it converts its forward drill into a downward drill. Bonus if it undeploys to recharge and redeploys when charged.

It will become a self powered deep drill. As befitting of a dedicated mining bot.

[Tamiore]

On the subject of long-range scanner mining, do keep in mind that if you have "call shuttle" imperial permit on your mechanitor, you can return to your colony effectively instantly.