Shamblers and their use

[CryoChick]

So I was doing some experiments in dev mode and found that shamblers have one of the lowest containment strength requirements and can produce 4 bioferrous and 800 mws each if you have a thrumbro megasloth or elephant shambler. The problem now is how do you get these shamblers downed without killing them? I am thinking maybe a heatbox, but would love spark discussion on how to breed kill resurrect and capture these large animals in order to produce a ton of reliable steady energy.

[Veylox]

800mws per containment platform is way too low isn't it ? I don't see this competing with toxifiers/geothermals

I never managed to down a resurrected shambler, they seem to die immediately, but maybe I was just unlucky.

[HunterSilver]

As long as you're willing to build a containment setup that can consistently drop them on command whenever they break containment that's not an issue. You're not getting a lot for the amount of work and setup it takes to catch a shambler though.

I think their comfortable temp is only 60c, so you can drop them with as little as 1 or 2 heaters depending on the temperature of your map. But for the effort, why not just use one of the slough of other large anomalies that the game floods you with like Chimeras.

I'm a bit dazed and mentally frazzled from playing too much, so I don't know the numbers offhand, but is it even worth bothering with a the bioelectric generator when the bioferrite generator seems so much more efficient?

[CryoChick]

Originally posted by HunterSilver:

As long as you're willing to build a containment setup that can consistently drop them on command whenever they break containment that's not an issue. You're not getting a lot for the amount of work and setup it takes to catch a shambler though.

I think their comfortable temp is only 60c, so you can drop them with as little as 1 or 2 heaters depending on the temperature of your map. But for the effort, why not just use one of the slough of other large anomalies that the game floods you with like Chimeras.

I'm a bit dazed and mentally frazzled from playing too much, so I don't know the numbers offhand, but is it even worth bothering with a the bioelectric generator when the bioferrite generator seems so much more efficient?

the thing that's good about them, the breakout time of a simple room with their super low strength requirement is forever meaning unlike tox gens you don't have to worry about the negative for a long time. and geos there's only a limited amount of those you can get. I don't think any of the others have a larger power gain either cause from what I can tell it's 200*body size (ferrite gen seems 1*body size*modifiers) meaning that with the three body size 4 animals it's the most, idk if any other entities have moidfiers to power I didnt' check the ones I didn't encounter. so there could be ones that gen more, but none with a super low containment requirement

[HunterSilver]

So experimenting with things a bit and it looks like turning creatures into shamblers doesn't cure all afflictions. A corpse with paralytic abasia, for example, will turn into a shambler with paralytic abasia that you can just scoop up and capture. I'm not sure if this is useful in any way.

It also looks like electroharvesters can't harvest through walls, so to get the most out of them you'd need 3~4 large creatures contained in the same room to hit the 2000w cap. The space requirements are a bit extreme for my taste, but considering how relatively cheap and easy this is to setup, it's not terrible. The issue being that if any one of those breaks out, they all break out.

I can't easily see all of the numbers side by side to compare at the moment, but I'll do some practical experiments and see how they go. My big concern is just recapturing targets when they break down. An 2 year long mtb seems like it's effectively forever, but just like with nuclear stomachs, if you get enough of them they'll happen pretty frequently on average.

Edit: Further testing reveals that not all missing limbs are healed either. If you can amputate legs, you should be able to create permanently downed shamblers with enough tries. Even without any containment strength that means you can just utilize them for free, safe, clean power and bioferrite.

The issue now is that we can't amputate animal limbs normally.

[HunterSilver]

Further testing confirms that you can have entities with no escape chance, making them effectively free bioferrite, power, and research.

Limb destruction during a deathpall is the best way to capture shamblers, including large shamblers. You can keep killing them and the deathpall will keep reviving them until you can destroy their movement, allowing for permanent capture.

[Veylox]

Honestly the best use for shamblers is to just create a corpse room with a deadlife trap in it and make it a path to your colony. It's genuinely one of the best defenses available in the game, and it doesn't even use a shard. The funniest part is that since the effect lasts for a while, some of the first raiders your corpses kill will get raised, and the raid will try to kill itself.

[YourLittlePogchamp]

Originally posted by HunterSilver:

Further testing confirms that you can have entities with no escape chance, making them effectively free bioferrite, power, and research.

Limb destruction during a deathpall is the best way to capture shamblers, including large shamblers. You can keep killing them and the deathpall will keep reviving them until you can destroy their movement, allowing for permanent capture.

I have a fleshbeast whose spine is shattered and is permanently downed thanks to that. Free power and ferrite forever, except for component repairs every 10 minutes :\