What are the best skills for a tribal Mechanitor?

[alation13]

I did a tribal start (as usual) and now have called down the first mech ship. Since I have all the skills covered with a base with about 12 pawns, I was curious about who I should give the link to?
What skills does a Mechanitor need the most as part of a group?
Also can you be a Mechanitor and a leader, psycaster, priest, or other specialist, or do they conflict?

[Swordmouse]

Being able to smith is the only hard requirement I believe, though I'm fairly certain the act of "mechinating" if you will is as much a psychic-esque activity as a physical one, much like anima pruning, so I don't think high crafting etc will help much if at all.

A colonist with traits that help reduce the chance of mental breaks (sanguine, iron-willed etc) will always be a solid choice, since the last thing you want is a mechinator having a break right before or during a fight.

It's obviously going to be a high-value colonist, so giving the role to someone who is already considered backline like a doctor or a researcher isn't a terrible idea. Though you might want them free to repair mechs instead of doctoring after a fight if they are your only healer.

And yeah, you can have a royal vampire priest mechinator if you'd like. The only thing I'd possibly warn against is making them a vampire, since having your mechinator on death rest, or going nuts because a centipede used an inferno cannon nearby would be... not ideal. Same goes for being a royal and possible mood penalties, but those can be managed. Since you're tribal, I imagine most of your casters will be natural anyway.

[alation13]

Originally posted by Swordmouse:

Being able to smith is the only hard requirement I believe, though I'm fairly certain the act of "mechinating" if you will is as much a psychic-esque activity as a physical one, much like anima pruning, so I don't think high crafting etc will help much if at all.

A colonist with traits that help reduce the chance of mental breaks (sanguine, iron-willed etc) will always be a solid choice, since the last thing you want is a mechinator having a break right before or during a fight.

It's obviously going to be a high-value colonist, so giving the role to someone who is already considered backline like a doctor or a researcher isn't a terrible idea. Though you might want them free to repair mechs instead of doctoring after a fight if they are your only healer.

And yeah, you can have a royal vampire priest mechinator if you'd like. The only thing I'd possibly warn against is making them a vampire, since having your mechinator on death rest, or going nuts because a centipede used an inferno cannon nearby would be... not ideal. Same goes for being a royal and possible mood penalties, but those can be managed. Since you're tribal, I imagine most of your casters will be natural anyway.

Thanks, I was considering using my best crafter, but he is also great at too many other things. I will check out my leader/royal's wife as they both share a luxury room and not the common barracks. I am not running any vampires as I saw the daylight and fire debuff and thought that it would not be worth doing the quest linked to getting one in my tribe.
I think that I must be the only person playing this game who runs a tribe but would rather use the royalty based psycasters (I just get sick of seeing my best pawns standing around meditating for half their lives).
I guess the BEST piece of advise that you gave which I have not seen anywhere is to give the link to your most stable pawn. I think I did actually roll an Iron willed, sanguine pawn, maybe I need to give him some rudimentary crafting skills.

[alation13]

It is not my iron willed pawn but still pretty unbreakable with a minor passion in crafting.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2886680821

[Fyredrakon]

Well mechanoids are initially not really for tribal, since they come during industrial. If you are just gonna go ahead, then research past tribal stuff is going to greatly benefit from a good intellectual, especially because later on you will need to work past the research speed detriment from low tech.

[Ixal]

Isn't repair speed crafting dependent? That is the only real skill activity I can think of. The active part of gestating mechs where the mechanitor has to do something is quite quick. Making basic subcores is probably crafting but higher level ones are I think an automatic extraction.

So imo good crafting is nice, but focus on good traits first (everything that keeps your mechanitor controllable)

[ichifish]

If the only real difference is skills, go with crafting. The mechanitor tasks are crafting focused, but they aren't all day jobs, so there's plenty of time for regular duties. Doing a solo mechanitor run, so it's not quite the same thing, but I found with the limited range of militors my pawn is always near the action. If I were doing a tribal start I'd choose a good psycaster and load him up with eltex gear and a shield belt.

[alation13]

I ended up picking a pawn with passable crafting (but a passion in it so I could easily increase it), he is also a good cook, miner and researcher. I mainly picked him for his ability to never break by combining sanguine, steadfast and bloodlust, he is never unhappy and unfazed by combat trauma. About the only better traits I can think of would be psychopath and iron willed.