Mechanoids
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Mechanoids - Autonomous intelligent robots built for domestic, industrial or military purposes. Only available to advanced cultures because such complex AI is needed to control them.
For the faction of hostile mechanoids, see Mechanoid hive. For information about the Biotech DLC, see Mechanoid creation and Mechanitor.
Mechanoids are deadly autonomously intelligent robots.
Summary
Mechanoids are machines. They do not eat, do not feel mood or pain, and are immune to fire, toxic buildup, and temperature extremes - despite having a Comfortable Temperature range. Enemy mechanoids have no needs at all. As machines, they are vulnerable to EMP attacks, though will "Adapt" for 2,200 ticks (36.67 secs) (regardless of source), making them immune to all further EMP strikes.
Enemy mechanoids will automatically die if they are downed for any reason, or if their Manipulation is at 0%.
Mechanoid Hive
Hostile mechanoids are part of a Mechanoid Hive. They can be found sealed in ancient ruins in all biomes, which spawn inside mountains or outside on the landscape. They may also raid the player's base directly, or be found in most poison ships, psychic ships, and mech clusters
. They may sometimes appear dormant in Ancient Complex and guarding any relic with Ideology
DLC.
Allied Mechanoids
In the Biotech DLC
, many more mechanoid types are added. You can create friendly mechanoids by gestating them. A mechanitor with enough bandwidth is required to both create them, and keep mechs from going feral. The Biotech DLC must be active for you to create mechanoids.
These gestated variants require power and have to be recharged, which creates Pollution. Friendly mechanoids can be repaired with power and no other cost. As long as they leave a corpse, friendly mechanoids can be ressurected for a steel cost.
Mechanoid Types
Mechanoid forces are specialized by their unit types, with each unit performing a single role. Basics summaries are available here, see the individual pages for further details and analysis.
Core
Centipede
Heavy combat mechanoids that glide on dozens of tiny legs. Their thick carapace and firepower makes them very effective against bunched-up static defenders. They are somewhat vulnerable to mobile hit-and-run tactics.
Lancer
Fast human-sized combat mechanoids built for medium and long-range combat. Their bodies are light, making them vulnerable targets at close range - especially in melee combat.
Pikeman
A clunky multi-legged combat mechanoid specialized as a long-range weapons platform. While effective at distance, it is weak in close-range fights and in melee combat.
Veterans of mechanoid wars know that often, the safest place to be around a pikeman is touching it.
Scyther
Fast, spindly, human-sized combat mechanoids specializing in rapid approach and close-range combat. Their bodies are covered in points and blades, but they mostly use their two arm blades to lop off limbs or gut their victims alive.
Termite
A medium-sized mechanoid. Termites specialize in burrowing, digging, and breaking through defensive structures. Defenders need to decide whether to try to eliminate the termite before it can dig through their defenses, or take it where it emerges.
Biotech
 | This section relates to content added by Biotech (DLC). Please note that it will not be present without the DLC enabled. |
A small mechanoid designed to sow and harvest crops. While it is better suited to labor than combat, it can fight with built-in cutting blades if necessary.
A mechanoid commander designed to coordinate and motivate other mechs during long extermination campaigns. Its most obvious power is its ability to resurrect recently-killed mechs by supercharging their self-repair processes. Less obviously, it is intelligent and psychically present, radiating hatred into the minds of anyone in a wide radius.
While all mechanoids have a dim psychically-present intelligence, only the apocriton and a few others truly feel hatred for their victims and understand the suffering they inflict.
An ultraheavy mech with a built-in shield bubble generator. The centurion carries a point-defense bulb turret capable of firing while the mechanoid is moving.
A light mechanoid designed for cleaning. Lacking a ranged weapon, it can make only weak melee attacks.
A small mechanoid designed to perform construction tasks. It can perform blunt melee attacks if necessary.
An ultra-heavy mechanoid with an ultra-powerful hellsphere cannon. Made for siegebreaking, its hellsphere cannon takes time to charge up a shot, but can melt concrete and vaporize bone. The diabolus dissipates the hellsphere cannon's waste power in a heat column mounted on its back, which can pulse to ignite flammable objects nearby.
This mech's name comes from a thousand-year-old poem written by a Haspian monk who survived the erasure of his monastery. His religiously-tinged work describes a razor-bodied fiend pulsing with flesh-searing heat as it crushed scorched bodies under massive claws. The few who have faced a diabolus and survived tend to agree with this depiction.
A small work mechanoid designed to craft all manner of manufactured objects.
A combat support mechanoid with a wide range bullet shield and long-range needle gun. Designed to support other mechanoids from long range, the legionary is vulnerable to anyone who can get inside its shield.
A small mechanoid designed for hauling. Lacking a ranged weapon, it can make only weak melee attacks.
A small combat mechanoid armed with a low-powered mini-shotgun. Roughly four feet tall, militors lack the power, range, and toughness of more senior combat mechs. However, it is cheap to gestate and maintain, and so is often used as a rear guard or swarm attacker.
In war, mech armies are known to send militors into urban ruins to hunt down survivors after breaking the human defenses. For this reason, they are considered by some to be the most cruel of all mechanoid patterns.
A small mechanoid designed for non-violent emergency situation management and medical care. The paramedic can rescue the wounded, fight fires, treat the sick, and even perform surgery when a more-qualified human is not available. Its built-in jump launcher allows it to jump into, and out of, emergency situations, and its built-in firefoam popper can quickly extinguish fires.
A close-approach war mechanoid that specializes in incendiary attacks. Its flame burst attack has little reach, but once it closes on a group of defenders it can ignite and disrupt them with blasts of searing flame.
A medium-range combat mechanoid. While it is fairly vulnerable to attacks, the tesseron's sweeping beam graser attack is so deadly that few opponents can get shots off against it.
A heavy mechanoid built for mining in treacherous locations. While intended for excavation, the tunneler's gigantic power claws and ultra-thick armor makes it a dangerous force in combat.
An ultra-heavy mech with a built-in mech gestator. Fed with appropriate resources, the war queen can form small war urchin combat mechs within its massive carapace and deploy them into combat. Even more than other mechanoids, the war queen resembles a giant, living insect. All war mechs can be terrifying, but humans tend to find the war queen disturbing on a deeper level.
A small, deployable combat mechanoid usually manufactured inside an ultra-heavy war queen mech. War urchins are expendable fighters designed to swarm-attack enemies. They are mounted with short-ranged spiner guns and have a non-rechargeable power source.
Lore
Killer machines of unknown origin. Hidden in ancient structures, under mounds of dust, or at the bottom of the ocean, mechanoids can self-maintain for thousands of years. This group of mechs seems to be unified in purpose, but not well-coordinated in action. While local scholars believe they're autonomous weapons left over from an ancient war, tribal legends describe them as the demonic servants of a sleeping god. - Faction description.
In the lore, Mechanoids are autonomous intelligent robots built for a variety of purposes. The technologies required to build them vary based on the complexity of the resultant mechanoid, with Spacer-level[1] urbworlds[2] being able to construct more simple mechanoids for companionship, combat and labor use, while only glitterworlds are capable of constructing the more advanced, quasi-conscious versions.[1] Others still are constructed and utilized by archotechs. [3][4]
In-game, mechanoids can be constructed and controlled with a mechlink. Otherwise, only combatant mechanoids from a single, somewhat mysterious source are seen. There are some indications that the Mechanoids seen in game may have been built by, or otherwise allied with, an ancient army, perhaps that of the Ancients faction.[5]. Whatever the case however, they have since lost any allegiances they may have had and are now hostile to every other faction.
Defoliator ship parts are usually associated with orbital-drop mechanoid armies.[6]
Insectoid ecosystems were genetically engineered to fight Mechanoid invasions[7] and thus the two factions are always hostile to one another.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Cryptosleep Revival Briefing
- ↑ Backstory of Markus 'Keuneke' Keuneke
- ↑ Backstory of Ang 'Codex' Gao
- ↑ Quest descriptions
- ↑ Orbital mech cluster targeter description
- ↑ Ship part (defoliator) description
- ↑ Megascarab description
Trivia
- Although all mechanoid-only weapons are 'Spacer' in terms of tech level; the hidden mechanoid faction itself is actually 'Ultra' tech level - one above 'Spacer', and the second highest tech level in the game, below 'Transcendent'.
- All mechanoids have a 'clean' and an 'ancient' version. A mechanoid will turn ancient after 100 biological years, going from having a white hue to a faded light green hue, but the difference is purely cosmetic.
Version history
- 0.4.460 - Mechanoid raids added.
- Beta 19/1.0 - Mechanoids now die whenever downed.
- Biotech DLC - Added many more mechanoids, the ability to create mechanoids, and mechanitor
- Mechanoids | Core
- Centipede (Blaster, Burner, Gunner) • Lancer • Pikeman • Scyther • Termite
- Combat
- Centurion • Legionary • Militor • Scorcher • Tesseron
- Command
- Apocriton • Diabolus • War queen (War urchin )
- Labor
- Agrihand • Cleansweeper • Constructoid • Fabricor • Lifter • Paramedic • Tunneler
- Cluster | Buildings
- Condition causer • Count-down activator • Mech assembler • Mech capsule • Mech drop beacon • Mech high-shield • Mech low-shield • Mech node • Proximity activator • Unstable power cell
- Turrets
- Auto charge turret • Auto inferno turret • Auto mortar • Mini-slugger turret
- Creation | Pawn
- Mechanitor
- Buildings
- Mech gestator • Large mech gestator • Mechband antenna • Mechband dish