Hi all, I'm writing guide for Steam. Someone comment that Caretaker are good to add your build power (if you that person, Hi! :D) I'm not too experienced with Caretaker... In my opinion, although it's best "unit" for more building power, my experience tells me that usually having more mobile Constructor is more benefit (For example, you need assisting Constructor to be send to gain more mex). Of course it's not without its use. If I'm quite lazy, I'll build for an area that maybe need constant repairing/reclaiming. What's your opinion? May you share your advise about using Caretaker? Thank you for reading and giving your advise.
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there isnt any veteran player that doesnt make caretaker at some point in every game, you need your lab to produce more stuff and use metal faster is better than spamming cons
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I personally much prefer to use Caretakers rather than constructors to assist my factory but I know there's some players who use more constructors than I do for that. I would also build Caretakers fairly frequently when I need more buildpower quickly in a specific area e.g. to hoover up reclaim or assist/repair defences. There was a conversation on the topic a while ago but I am failing to find a link.
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Personally, I prefer to use Caretakers to assist my factories, though I'll sometimes use them to set up repair stations. Meanwhile, if my constructors aren't being used to build more buildings, then I typically send them out to repair damaged units, or reclaim metal on the battlefield, almost never to assist my factories (except if I forget to assign them an order, and they automatically decide to assist my factories). Despite having beaten all of the campaign missions (even if it's on Easy difficulty), and despite being familiar with so many of the advanced ways to reduce your need to have high APM, I don't consider myself a veteran, since I can still find new things to learn about the game.
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I'll give a few of my thought about how I set up my factories/caretakers/engineers. I use repeat build a lot, and getting new enginiers is as easy as Alt clicking them. Even easier, I've recently changed my factories to have engineers auto-assist them, so I can build 2, and have them ready for deployment at any time. Besides that, when you get +25/+30 m/s, path finding may start to become an issue around the factory, so I always build caretakers once I hit around 18 m/s in anticipation of future economies. I have all my caretakers set to low priority after they're built, so if I have +15 m/s I can have a constructor build at full efficiency and just slow my factory down, or if I'm going big at like 60 m/s, I can have like 5 welders pop a stinger down without having to set priority. I just set my caretakers up knowing that they share the excess metal. the nanoframe priority for building my mexes is default high priority because they're always worth getting done quick(unless I'm doing an e-stall). A lot of players like to build a caretaker in metal fields, but I rarely do, I much prefer just building more mobile constructors for reclaim. On one recent occasion, the metal field was highly contested and my cons needed to repair and reclaim, so I built a sunken caretaker then to bolster my build power.
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Thank you all XD.   Drone What is "lab"? Cheers.
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You're going to have a rough time writing a guide as a new player, it might be better to just sythesize what you can get from better players if you're going to go to the effort. You should keep making constructors the whole game, as a part of your repeat queue. When you're low on metal expand or reclaim, when you're low on e make energy or reclaim, and when you're full on everything, assist your factory. Once you are in enough income that you have two constructors full-time assisting your factory, build a caretaker and use them to expand. The versatility of cons is best at first, but once they're just sitting on your factory non-stop, it's caretaker time. Caretaker is also great in a wreck field, after you kill a comm, and on the front line to repair razors/gauss versus artillery. It can rapidly turn a wreckfield into a turret nest through reclaim/construction and then do repair or even create a second base.
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A laboratory (British English: /ləˈbɒrətəri/ or /ləˈbɒrətri/, American English: /ˈlæbərətɔːri/ or /ˈlæbrətɔːri/; informally, lab) is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific or technological research, experiments, and measurement may be performed.
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Hi all,     Saktoth You're right about me having rough time XD. And that's exactly why I write the guide, a noob guide from noob. Before I'm become too veteran and having Dunning–Kruger effect (from Wikipedia: highly competent individuals may erroneously assume that tasks easy for them to perform are also easy for other people to perform, or that other people will have a similar understanding of subjects that they themselves are well-versed in). Of course, being noob, I will fall into "beginner mistake" and "bad habit". So please, guide us the newbie :D    [Fx]Drone Oh you mean by "lab" is factories? . I'm confused with "lab" because I think there's no single building with "lab" in their name... Sorry -_- Cheers.
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It's an old term from Total Annihilation for the 'KBot lab' which really makes no sense when you think about it.
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That's why I don't like to use any older names, so that newer players would know what I'm talking about. After all, who among the newbies would know what a "Warrior", "Zeus", or "LLT" is?
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LLT is not an old name, it's the current description. [Spoiler]The unit used to actually be called "L.L.T." but that was ten years ago.
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What even is a "LLT" anyways? A "Lotus"?
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Light Laser Tower, so yeah, Lotus.
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Caretaker is one of my favourite units. It's like a builder with a wider auto-patrol that just takes care of problems like assist building, reclaiming and repairing without me having to tell it to. It's useful to boost production, but I find it even more useful to assist porc. It will repair defensive structures under attack and reclaim the wreckage after a battle. If you use retreat points you want a caretaker there to patch up the damaged units when they retreat. You can sink them into the ground and they become quite survivable even in an artillery barrage. When you have several like this in a web they self repair each other and create a web of goodness. I've had porc smashed up, and counterattacked and rebuilt everything in an instant thanks to deeply buried caretakers.
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I personally think caretakers are over-rated, but understand that most people of high MMR like them more than me, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I like to make 2 before I make caretakers. The reason for this is because it gives you a lot of options, and it's more granular. You should always have at least one worker at your base anyway, for building energy etc. So before 10 metal, you don't need a caretaker because your factory is going to deal with your BP requirements on it's own. Before 15 metal, you only need a worker at base. After 15 metal, spending 80 additional metal on BP you don't yet need is anti-tempo. It's more efficient technically, but if the BP isn't being used the caretaker up to 25 BP is not going to be worth for a while. Once you're 20 m/s, you can build the caretaker and then peel off one worker to go build forward or reclaim. As for caretakers that are not at base, I think they're generally bad but there are situations in which they excel. They do need terra for them to have any chance of living though. If you manage to nab 110 metal off the ground the caretaker has kinda payed for itself by also denying this metal to opponents. When reclaim is in range of a caretaker but not another worker type this tends to be when I build them on the front line.
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Not enough emphasis is being placed on field Caretakers. Imagine if you could instantly teleport constructors produced at your factory directly to your frontline, how much would you pay for that? Sometimes you need more BP so much that an inability to move is an acceptable price to pay.
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I'd argue that except for repair zones, porc-line support and sometimes construction assistance, one generally should never build caretakers in the fields (i.e. outside of the base). I never use constructors to assist my factory simply because mobile build-power usually has much more important work to do: reclaim, repair, expansion, porc, etc. On the other hand, caretakers are perfect fit for factory assistance for great BP/cost ratio. So, all in all, my view: Caretakers: factory assistance, repair zones, porc support & repair, fast porc construction (rare). Constructors: Reclaim, reclaim & reclaim! And the rest of construction tasks. Edit: Also take into account the amount of attention and APM to manage your conses:
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One thing is if you do it in the fields. This is the core mechanic of the game and you can't get away from this APM draw.
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Another thing is micro-ing your conses around the base. Even with auto-assist it doesn't really work. Consider: do you have too many or too few assisting? If you leave them as is, they won't be selectable with handy shortcuts Ctrl-V/Ctrl-B which select idle construction units. Imagine your place second factory or strider hub - you will again need to manually reassign constructors for your new lab.
Caretakers do have automation and you would rarely need to give them any order. So the spare APM could be spent somewhere else.
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Making a guide while you don't know the game well is going to be primarily useful to you - as a way of learning. Much like how people recommend learning a subject by trying to teach it to someone
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I think caretakers are best danger zone reclaimers. You just have to terraform them in.
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