Game says caretaker is most efficient - what about plates?

Hi!
I'm new to this game. I tried the search function, and didn't get a good result (just a topic about new players being warned when over-building buildpower relative to their income)

While playing the campaign, all the loading screen tips and mission tips etc are telling me that caretakers are the most efficient way of adding buildpower to my side.

Obviously, this is super-important (I've played plenty of supreme commander and total annihilation, so I'm familiar with having buildpower equal/exceed mass income!)

But I'm really puzzled by all the tips. From what I can gather, a caretaker (I think you guys call it a nano, a takeaway from TA I guess) costs 180, and has 10 buildpower.
A plate, otoh, costs 150, and seems to also have 10 buildpower.

Now, I know that the units take time getting 'off the plate', but does this really matter enough to make them less efficient that a caretaker (>20% of their building time?!)?

As a new player, I'm a bit confused by all the advice telling me to build caretakers for efficient buildpower, when it seems like my economy would be better suited with extra factory plates if I manage things properly and don't need the utility of a caretaker. So I'm left confused..


Again, I'm new. Thanks in advance for helping me understand this
(And if plates indeed ARE as efficient as caretakers, then it might be worth dialing back the tooltips, really!)

I understand those pros and cons, thanks for clarifying though. x
I'm taking your reply as a suggestion that I'm right in my assumptions about this, which helps me lots.

My query/issue, though, is why the game keeps telling new players that nano towers are 'THE most EFFICIENT' way of adding buildpower to forces... Much more than once!
When, in fact, they are not. Plates are clearly more efficient.

Yes, towers can be much more versatile, I get that
- (even though there are edge-cases where plates can offer an advantage beyond buildpower/cost - like if I have an expensive unit nearly finished, but need a constructor right NOW to reclaim or something). Generally speaking, there are more edge-cases where towers are going to be more versatile.

But then, if we're talking versatility:
So are constructors.
So are new factory types.

But the tooltips keep saying that caretakers (nanotower) are THE most efficient way of adding buildpower.
Not the most versatile.
Not the "general best"....
"The MOST efficient" (at 10 buildpower for 180)

I think it's a really confusing thing to keep telling a new player, when the tooltips clearly display the costs of a 10-buildpower plate at 150, and a 10-buildpower tower at 180.
I generally thought I must be missing an important resource or downside after the game kept telling me this.
Is it, perhaps, because the campaign/tooltips were made before plates were 'added' to the game? (Just my guess!)

(Also, thanks for the welcome! This looks like a lovely game to get playing! I love my strat games!)

Your guess is right! For most of the time where this game existed, fac plates didn't exist yet. Those tips have been written at that time. They should really be updated.

Fac plates are the most efficient source of buildpower. If you consider the time to walk out of the factory, plates become even more efficient because the walking time is parallelized whereas with nanotowers, you have a single bottleneck which becomes relevant only at high build power. I usually prefer nanotowers, though, because managing only one factory requires less attention and if I'm a bit late with increasing my buildpower, the nanotowers can help to build the next nanotowers faster.

quote: there are (imho rare) use-cases for this

From a singleplayer/1v1-perspective, those are not rare at all.
The main advantage is that you can have different default-states for your units.
Example:
- Main factory builds ronin/reaver/builder, has auto-retreat active for them and sends them into a specific direction.
- First plate the same, but different direction
- Second plate only makes glaives without auto-retreat.
- Third plate is not set to repeat like the others but is used to build single units on demand, like iris or phantom.

maybe factory plates should be pushed back to the caretaker mission, and not be unlocked from the start

If I'm planning to build something expensive and my eco sucks I tend to make a second plate just for that. That way my army doesn't stop growing while I'm preparing for a grizzly or a lance assault

Caretakers are still better than plates because you don't have metal sitting on the plate in the form of nanoframes
you can think of the metal of the nanoframe on the plate as being wasted by the plate and just add it onto the plate's cost
thus, if you're building anything that's not fleas, it's better to just spam caretakers (ignoring the time it takes for a fac to start a new unit, but that's usually a lot smaller than the nanoframe cost unless you have FFA income, at which point you shouldn't be using non-strider facs anyways)

quote: Caretakers are still better than plates because you don't have metal sitting on the plate in the form of nanoframes you can think of the metal of the nanoframe on the plate as being wasted by the plate and just add it onto the plate's cost

Huh, is it as simple as this? I tried to think of a way to say something along these lines, but didn't develop it enough to post. Does your way of thinking about it imply that a factory plate pumping units that cost X metal is wasting X/2 metal on average, and that we can add this waste to its cost? This would imply that plates break even when their construction costs 60 metal, and Caretakers are more efficient for higher cost constructor. If this holds up then I'd be quite happy for Caretakers to retain the "most efficient" title.

Even with this analysis, I expect plates would beat Caretakers on efficiency for spamming relatively cheap units if rolloff time becomes a huge factor. Although in this case the optimal setup may be a single plate and some Caretakers, so they can switch between the plate and the factory as each waits for rolloff.

There are also still edge cases where plates are more efficient for large units. Say you're trying to build four Grizzlies and you only care about when you finish the fourth. You start with:

• A fixed +60 income
• A factory
• Four standard constructors

If you build three plates rather than three Caretakers you'll save 90 metal so be done 1.5 seconds faster. This is extremely contrived though, as 1.5s is nowhere near worth the value of having a single Grizzly ready before the fourth is complete.

quote: Just replace "the most efficient" by "an efficient".

This feels a bit wishy-washy to me. If we said "an efficient" I'd also want to give guidance of the kinds of situation Caretakers are good in.