SoldierbotReport
English：Soldierbot · Races
A specific model of Skeleton — double vision range, triple heal rate, 200 HP in every body part. It is the only Skeleton subrace you are guaranteed to be able to recruit, and most of the characters in the game called "Soldierbot" are not it.
The Skeletons are a complete mystery, nobody knows where they came from and how they were made but they are suspected to be thousands of years old. Fully sentient and capable of feeling sadness, anger, excitement, compassion, thrill and enjoyment, although they don't possess the ability to express anything visually. This combined with their dry sense of humour often confuses the other races, whom the Skeletons see as somewhat volatile and unpredictable. They have no prejudice or fear of death, and make for brutally effective warriors. — in-game race description
The Soldierbot is a specific model under Skeleton, not a loose term for "a Skeleton that fights". In the game files it is its own subrace, and its numbers are clearly separated from a plain Skeleton's.
How it differs from a plain Skeleton
| Property | Soldierbot | Plain Skeleton |
|---|---|---|
| Vision multiplier | 2 | 1.25 |
| Heal rate | 3 | 2 |
| Hit chance | Higher | — |
Double vision range means it sees you before anything else does. A heal rate of 3 means it repairs itself while standing, with no repair bed and nobody's help. Together those two are a patrol-and-engage configuration.
All seven body parts sit at 200, the head included, which is rare in Kenshi — for most races the head is the weakest part on the body. Blood 100, bleed rate 0.1, hunger rate 0: it neither eats nor bleeds out. It is immune to every weather effect, so acid rain, dust storms and gas do nothing to it.
For equipment it can only wear body armour and legwear. Headgear, shirts and footwear are all blocked, so there is not much room to configure its protection.
Skill tendencies
- +20%: Perception
- −20%: Dodge, Field Medic, Martial Arts, Stealth, Thievery
One bonus, and it is the ranged one. The five penalties close off the thief route and the unarmed route both. The whole spread says the same thing: this was designed to stand still and hit things with a weapon.
The one you can recruit
The Soldierbot is the only Skeleton subrace you are guaranteed to be able to recruit, and there is exactly one in the game: Agnu. He sits in a cage in the Tower of Abuse, and prising it open recruits him for free.
Every other Soldierbot belongs to one of three factions: Skeletons, Old Machines, and the Broken Ones. The Broken Ones appear only in the Reprogramming Workshop in the north-east corner of the Deadlands, and they are broken Soldierbots. They have one property that is easy to misread: most Broken Skeletons attack on sight, but the moment a player character walks into that workshop, every skeleton inside becomes your ally and follows you indefinitely.
Three different things are called "Soldierbot"
This is the part of the entry that most needs saying, because the game itself uses the name loosely.
| What you meet | Actual model | Faction | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soldierbot (the race / subrace) | Soldierbot | Skeletons, Old Machines, Broken Ones | Various |
| The character named Soldierbot | Screamer MkI | Ancient Ruins | Dead Workshop |
| Soldierbot Guard | Soldierbot | Skeletons | Scraphouse |
The middle row is the one that gets confused. Those 0 to 10 things in the Dead Workshop that call themselves Soldierbots are recorded in the game files as Screamer MkI, not as Soldierbots. They wear no armour, carry weapons manufactured by Ancient or Skeleton Smiths, and sit at Strength, Toughness and Dexterity 60, Melee Attack 72, Turrets 72 — and Perception 1.
The bottom row is the genuine article. Soldierbot Guards watch the Scraphouse with Combat Cleavers, coloured Armoured Rags and Armoured Rag Skirts. They carry no dialogue package, which in practice means they will not react to seeing you steal.
The malfunctioning skeletons labelled ErrorCode 0x000000 in the Dead Fishing Village and the Police Barracks are also of the Soldierbot subrace, under Old Machines. Their stats sit somewhere around 27 to 43, far below what this model should be capable of.
Who built it
There is no settled answer here, and the two accounts on this site currently contradict each other.
Account one: it was the Second Empire's military and police. This is the line taken in the Agnu entry, argued from his dark blue-grey colouring and loincloth pattern matching Second Empire police units, which makes the Soldierbot the backbone of Cat-Lon's legions and police.
Account two: the Second Empire could not build Soldierbots. This is the possibility raised in the English wiki's trivia section, on the grounds that the Hydraulic Knights, the Police and the Skeleton Legion are all made of lower-quality Log-Head MKII units, and that the "II" in the model name may be the Second Empire's own design marker. Read that way, Soldierbots are older, and the Second Empire could only use what was left of them.
Both are inferences; the game never states it. The one thing that is certain is cosmetic: the Soldierbot uses the Log-Head MKII head model on a body matching most MkI Skeleton subraces.