Mechanic Side: Freedom Guard Type: Infantry Movement Type: Foot Ground Weapon: None Anti-Air Weapon: None Range: 1 Damage: +5 Hit Points: 66 Sight Range: 8 Movement Speed: Fast Cost: 500 Requirements: Repair Station Built At: Training Facility

Mechanics work tirelessly to keep Freedom Guard vehicles in tip-top shape, even in the middle of battle.

On-Site Repairs

Mechanics are the Medics for your vehicles. They are slightly faster but just as fragile. It is a good idea to keep them in the back lines, behind your tanks where they will be slightly more protected.

Mechanics can only repair vehicles, which means they cannot even heal themselves. It would be advantageous to keep some Medics around to heal your Mechanics if it weren’t for the fact that Mechanics die almost instantly to any attack, and usually before the Medic can even realize he needs healing. If you are using primarily vehicles, it may be a better use of your credits to just crank out more Mechanics instead of trying to keep them alive with Medics.

Mechanics can only repair ground vehicles; they cannot repair air units.

As with Medics, and seemingly even more so than with Medics, Mechanics are generally targeted with very high priority by the automatic unit AI and it is therefore difficult to keep them alive. Use this to your advantage, however, if the enemy is using Mechanics against you, because dispatching his Mechanics will allow his vehicles to be destroyed all the more quickly.

Like any other unit that has no attack, Mechanics will flee when damaged, running away from the very units they are supposed to be repairing. So you may need to keep an eye on them and hit s occasionally if they are starting to flee too far away.

The Mechanic’s repair ability functions as a weapon, and it is therefore governed by the same behaviors that control weapon use. Be sure to set the Mechanic’s Independence and Pursuit Range to HIGH if you wish him to automatically repair your units.

Also, it is a good idea to shift the Damage Tolerance setting of your vehicles to HIGH while you have Mechanics on the field; otherwise, the units will run off to the Repair Station instead of waiting for a Mechanic to tend to them.

One tactic is to post one or two Mechanics near your Water Launch Pad, your Power Generators, or the resource nodes themselves. This will allow them to automatically repair your Freighters as they harvest or drop off resources, undoing any damage they may have run into on the field.