Loading...
  OR  Zero-K Name:    Password:   

Modify Caretaker behaviour

11 posts, 677 views
Post comment
Filter:    Player:  
sort
3 years ago
Is it possible to modify caretaker priorities?
Right now they seem to work in the following order priority:
Repair, reclaim, assist
I would like to modify them to:
Repair,, assist, reclaim

Obviously any manual orders should be on top of the list.
If there is currently no such option, it would be nice if you'd implement that, I would offer to code it myself if necessary.
Also, I don't really see why this is the standard behaviour in the first place. If I build a caretaker near my base, it's because I need buildpower, not income.
+1 / -0
Plenty of people, including me, build caretakers in the front as a means of quickly reclaiming stuff. Their reach lets them reclaim wrecks safely that other builders could not.

Also, reclaiming is almost always a good idea, whenever assisting diverts resources you might want going elsewhere.
+1 / -0

3 years ago
Caretakers are on patrol, I think that's all there is to the AI. So caretakers will get 'stuck' in a task, by looking for the closest thing act upon and acting upon it until it is done, rinse and repeat.

A caretaker built near a factory given no orders from me isn't 'assisting' the factory, it's 'patroling.' Factorys have a small gap in time after building a unit before placing a nanoframe for the next unit. So if there is a large reclaim field by your fac, or a group of low HP heavies nearby, and you are building cheep raiders from your factory, your army of caretakers will spend 65 metal on a glaive, then start reclaiming wrecks in that tiny gap of time, and they will not stop reclaiming the chosen wreck until it is drained dry. If a commander died near your factory, this is painfully noticeable, as there's like a 400m wreck shard, as well as multiple raider/module components, and if you're building <75m units your caretakers have a chance to start excising some of that reclaim without player input, which is unfortunate because the general approach to caretakers is automated/no player input increase to factory buildpower.

Some people have made caretaker automation widgets, but I don't know anything about them. And a poorly written widget may act in a way you would not intend, because of bugs or oversight issues, but if they've written a widget it's probably sensible.
+0 / -0
i sometimes give cons attack move to front, so they just reclaim or assist/repair -also ally- stuff on their way.
although its not perfect id be happy if it could ignore ally stuff to assist
+1 / -0
3 years ago
BRrankManored sure, but if you have reclaim fields next to your factory, something has gone wrong anyway. And when you build caretakers to reclaim, most of the time you don't have a production facility nearby.

The other way round is much more problematic. I'm talking about you building a caretaker for buildpower and it starts reclaiming some rocks nearby, right into the void due to excess.
+0 / -0
I usually tell my caretakers to guard their factories as soon as their nanoframes are up. This prevents them from wandering off-task in between units.

Its true that you don't usually have production facilities near the front, but you might be building defenses or allies might be building defenses, and you may prefer that your nanos keep reclaiming rather than help with those things. Good metal management means you're always starved for metal, which means that a nano deciding to reclaim rather than assist is (usually) the best behavior. If a nano is assisting when you're starved for metal, its technically wasting a percentage of its build power, whereas its never wasting build power when its reclaiming.

I think the current default caretaker behavior is ok, but having a way of allowing/disallowing certain things would be nice, I guess. When I build frontline nanos I usually wish there was a way to disable automatic build assist, while still having the nano automatically repair and reclaim within its range. I want support nanos in the front but I don't want them to potentially disrupt my economy by randomly assisting with ally buildings and so.

(low priority is a thing but this causes the nano to be stuck assisting that thing until its done, during which time it won't repair or reclaim, so its not a full solution)
+1 / -0


3 years ago
It's possible to make a widget that modifies Caretaker behaviour. No sufficiently-controllable widget has emerged. Also, there might be obscure state/key combinations hidden in the engine for what you want.
+0 / -0
3 years ago
also can we have caretakers order presets? so let's say if i hold down the 1 key while queueing caretakers they will all be placed with the order preset 1, it would help if i want to build a caretaker array to repair units but they all waste metal on the next caretaker.
+0 / -0
3 years ago
GoogleFrog: I have just found out that there is, but its kind of a pain.

I haven't tested it, but theoretically disabling auto-assist could be achieved by turning on repeat, giving the nano an area reclaim command the size of its range, and then giving the nano an area repair command the size of its range while holding ctrl. According to the wiki, holding ctrl while giving an area repair order will disable building assist and make the unit only repair.

So the nano would continuously reclaim everything within its range and then repair everything within its range without assisting anything, and then repeat.
+0 / -0
3 years ago
the circles dont have to be the size of it's range.
i've used plenty of area repairs and the simplest way is for you to make the circle bigger than the map. the nano wont try to rep anything out of it's range.

so i guess command presets are what we need?
+0 / -0
3 years ago
That works if you want the nano to only repair, but if you want it to alternate between repair and reclaim, I think a command like that would make the nano be stuck forever trying to repair things that are outside of its range. I'm not sure though, would have to test.
+0 / -0