Best mechinator

[Bosh]

Which kind of pawn is best to turn into a mechinator?

[di eshor ribly]

One with high crafting skill, preferably with a passion. Crafting is the only skill required to create and maintain your robot minions. I mean, personally I also prefer some intellect, medical, and melee* too, but they're gravy on top.

*Your mechanitor is a high value target, you want to keep them safe. Therefore I slap shield belts on mine for protection... so a melee specialist or also a psycaster.

[The Blind One]

yeah medical is essential especially in solo runs until you can get the medical mech which is a long way down the tech tree.

Agrihands and constructoids make plant and construction skills completely unnecessary on your mechanitor even in the early game. Animals can be completely safely ignored as well. Same can be said for the combat skills in regards to combat mechs, though having some is always useful. If you don't plan on recruiting and just mind ripping you can forget about social skills too. Lastly if you don't mind feeding sludge to your pawn they can live on nutrient paste meals their entire existence without much detriment especially if they have the ideology for it.

That really just leaves you with intellect, crafting, medical, mining.

Mining is surprisingly useful early on since you'll need that steel for making more mechs and it can be painfully slow early on without a mining bot. The mining bot at 2nd tier is pretty decent but its use wears out fast once you've mined the top map and can't send it anywhere to deep drill. Assuming you're playing vanilla of course. (I really wish they'd fix that)

Crafting and medical can be substituted at 3rd level mechtech with fabricors and paramedics but it takes a long time till you get there so these are quite useful to have until the bots can take it over from you.

Technically the only real essential skill for a mechanitor is intellect but due to the early game mechanics, mining, crafting and medical are extremely useful to crucial to your survival.

[di eshor ribly]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Crafting and medical can be substituted at 3rd level mechtech with fabricors and paramedics but it takes a long time till you get there so these are quite useful to have until the bots can take it over from you.

Keep in mind that only a mechanitor can incubate or repair mechs. Fabricors help a lot in cutting down your workload (stone cutting, smelting, component crafting, etc.) but should not replace your mechanitor. Fabricors are also stuck at 10 crafting and generally produce Good quality equipment - so if you want better gear keep your mechanitor on quality crafting duties.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

Keep in mind that only a mechanitor can incubate or repair mechs. Fabricors help a lot in cutting down your workload (stone cutting, smelting, component crafting, etc.) but should not replace your mechanitor. Fabricors are also stuck at 10 crafting and generally produce Good quality equipment - so if you want better gear keep your mechanitor on quality crafting duties.

You're quite right, the fabricors can 'substitute' and 'supplement' but not replace your crafting needs entirely. They are a great help though as you mentioned in clearing the mundane workload (stone cutting, smelting, component crafting, etc. but are not a replacement for 'quality' gear in any shape or form and the skill is pretty much a hard requirement for repairing mechs.

Genies really are the ultimate mechanitors lol. +Crafting +Intellect. They were made for this.

[Doomdrvk]

Also as a mention crafting skill affects gestation speed which can significantly lower gestation cycles.