Request: Customizeable Careaker Target priorities

Have you tried auto patrol nanos v2 widget? I think it does almost exactly what you are asking for. To use it press Alt+F11 in battle and enable it in the widget menu.

Part of the problem would be to figure out what the expected behavior is for a multitude of scenarios.

Caretakers currently finish one job before attempting another. If they're assisting your factory on low/medium priority while you have a bunch of constructors using up all your metal on high priority, the caretakers will do nothing even if they could be repairing.

Let's say that behavior changes so they reassess their possible tasks every 5 seconds and you have a factory and a plate. Would you be OK with them assisting either your factory and plate randomly instead of finishing your demistrider on your fac while your plate solo builds raiders? Would you like them to swap back and forth between plate and factory every 5 seconds?

What if you bring an almost dead cyclops to your factory? Are you OK with going into metal excess because your caretakers are repairing?



I find this whole situation is more of a challenge because you're trying to solve multiple problems with one solution. You can have caretakers assisting your factory, spending a predictable amount of metal. The rest of the tasks, whatever those are, can be carried out by a slowly growing pool of "free" cons directed to amove towards the front line. They'll repair and reclaim anything they happen to pass by. You shouldn't have 50+ of unused BP sitting in a corner, but having 10-30 BP on stanby near the front line is a good thing. Your units don't need to retreat as far to get repaired. You take the reclaim as soon as it appears, denying it from the enemy... Unlike caretakers, cons can retreat.

Seems to me you should swap some of that work from caretakers to cons.

quote: As for your fac vs plate example. Yes that would be wholly acceptable behaviour.I believe they will already do this anyway if they are in range of 2 factories/plates. As Lawesome mentioned, if i wanted them to only target a specific fac/plate, I can already do so by simply ordering the caretaker to do so.

Which behavior? Sticking to one thing or going back and forth? I put up two contradicting examples and you just answered "yes".
Right now caretakers do not switch. They finish their current job, then find a new one. You'll only have the impression they switch because if they assisted making a raider, that will finish quickly and then they'll go to the next task. The raider won't exit the plate fast enough for another one to be started immediately, so the caretaker will find the expensive wireframe (griz, cyclops...) and assist that. Over time, caretakers all merge into the most expensive thing being built in their range. That's why they don't repair.

Even if you were to somehow change their target priority, they'd still wait to finish the griz/cyclops before repairing anything. That's why I put up the question about reacquiring task every 5 seconds, and why I asked how to resolve the conflict that is assisting which project.

quote: I also think overspending metal to repair is acceptable. Again if don't want them to do that, I can already limit their resource priority to be lower than factories or whatever.

Repairing does not cost metal, only energy. That means if you send a strider to your caretakers and they drop their assist jobs to repair, you can go into metal excess. Going into metal excess is never good.

quote: Constructors have the same issue though. Arguably worse, because they will just immedately and forever assist their home factory as soon as they spawn, when the factory destination is set to attack move. You will then also have to babysit them and ensure they don't walk into danger without sufficent guard. Yes they can be set to auto retreat but thats far from a guarentee of successfully doing so.

Easy. Queue a move order far enough from your factory so attack move won't make your new cons assist it. From that point you can hold shift to queue another command and order a moveattack command closer to the front. The cons walk out of factory, move to safe distance and then automatically attack move towards the front. As far as them dying, what are you doing when you play? What are you looking at? Where do you spend the most time giving orders? It should be at the front. The game has a good amount of automation, but it doesn't play itself entirely. You need to provide some input.

quote: Why is solving multiple problems with a single solution a negative? Thats is the point of versatile units, such as constructors and caretakers.

For the reasons you didn't address. Your one, apparently simple suggestion introduces conflicts you are not recognizing.

From the options proposed, neither seems to address that constructors/caretakers could behave more intelligently: decide to repair or to build depending on resources. Generally you have more energy than metal, and probably more build power than metal. So, many times you will be in the situation where a caretaker could repair rather than help a build (and not succeed due to lack of metal). You got a sudden metal income, caretakers could change to build rather than repair.

Does the above happen often enough for someone to code it? No clue, code is open source so if someone cares enough it can be implemented, I also do more front side repair (and micromanage the occasional strider repair), so I would not code it, but maybe give it a try if someone else does.

Mach56 Sorry yes, that was a brainfart.