My advice would be to leave the conservatism factor set at neutral unless you have a reason to set it higher such as expectation of exertion, poor fitness level, taxing dive conditions, etc. You can always plan and execute more conservative dive profiles simply by using the planning feature of the computer and deciding how much padding to build into your plan. For example, if you plan to dive to 18 meters/60 feet and your computer gives you a maximum bottom time at depth of 47 minutes, you can decide NOT to stay down at depth for that entire 47 minutes watching your NDL tick down to zero; you can instead plan to spend a far shorter time at depth and make a multi-level ascent along a reef or the bottom, keeping your NDL above some number of minutes you're comfortable with--say 10 minutes, or 15 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever level of conservatism you like. That way you are in control of the conservatism factors on an ordinary dive rather than relying on the computer to decide for you. If you find that you are on a dive that presents some unusual challenges, or if you believe that your physiology puts you at some elevated risk, then you might choose to select a more conservative base setting.
I don't know about the functioning of your Elite T3, but I do know that Suunto computers, when set at higher levels of conservatism, not only shorten NDLs but also add to recommended surface interval times. A micro-bubble warning consisting of a little exclamation point within a triangle appears on the display until the minimum recommended SI has been reached. This has caused some of my divers to skip dives on scheduled trips because their computers hadn't cleared their SI by the time we were scheduled to dive.
I don't know about the functioning of your Elite T3, but I do know that Suunto computers, when set at higher levels of conservatism, not only shorten NDLs but also add to recommended surface interval times. A micro-bubble warning consisting of a little exclamation point within a triangle appears on the display until the minimum recommended SI has been reached. This has caused some of my divers to skip dives on scheduled trips because their computers hadn't cleared their SI by the time we were scheduled to dive.
