I have seen several threads based on the "problem" of people stacking 100 engineers onto a factory instead of building more factories, I would like to explain my thoughts on the subject. The reason people used engineers instead of building more factories is because there are to many negatives to building more factories than building more engineers, in short it was unbalanced. For example 1 land factory in supcom has 4 build capacity, 1 engineer has only 1 build capacity so 4 engineers= 1 factory so having 4 engineers assist a factory is a total of 8 build capacity and builds at the same speed as 2 factories. A land factory costs 240 mass while 4 engineers only costs 208 mass so it was cheaper to just build more engineers and assist a factory. Also 1 factory takes up about the same amount as 12 engineers while 4 engineers obviously only take up the amount of space 4 engineers do. Also building more factories means you will need to spend more mass building point defenses to defend those extra factories. Now there are many ways this could be balanced but I will only focus on 2 ways. You could increase the cost of building engineers to the point where 4 engineers cost more than a factory to build or decrease the cost of a factory to below 208 mass. A different solution would be to increase the factories build capacity to say 8 and each factory would still cost 240 mass to make but you would need 8 engineers to match that build capacity which would cost 416 mass. Now doing that wouldn't make engineers completely obsolete because on smaller maps you have limited space to build and you could save room by using engineers instead of building factories. The same would apply when building a small expansion base on say an asteroid, you have limited room and you save room by using engineers instead. The other reason to still use engineers would be because you need to protect factories with PD as stated earlier while 1 pd is enough to protect a factory and its engineers, so it all comes down to the situation you are in. Now of course this really only applies in SupCom but if PA adopts anything similar they would need to make sure there is a use for both because as it stands in SupCom there is very little reason to build more than one factory.
You forgott one point in your calculation: You can't speed up the build progess indefinitly as there remains a fixed period of clearing the construction site and prepairing the new construction which can not be evaded by just using more engineers. If the actual build time would deceed that static period with only 8-10 engineers, then there would no longer be a point in adding to many engineers to one factory as the effect would be limited. In short: Add a preconstruction preperation phase to construction where engineers can not assist and which duration is based on the actual build time of the unit, and the output of a single factory will be limited without eliminating the purpose of engineers as assistants. The postproduction phase of leaving the construction site also adds up to this duration, but can not be relied on as air units or fast units move out of the site far to fast.
You should generalise this by talking about the build power/cost of different units. I think this is what everyone in the engineer spam thread meant when they compared the cost of factories or engineers.
For me this is a no brainer. To head of the cries of, it'll just result in factory spam, I think that is less likely because you can only sprawl so far and the further you do the harder it is to defend. Specialised factories should be the most powerful way to build things. Engineers should certainly be able to assist but in a less efficient manor as a trade-off for their general purpose nature and mobility.
The most important thing is that non-assisted construction must be viable, and that means engineer assists should be relegated to super expensive quick-builds of things you need really fast, like if you desperately need a counter. You should pay a big premium for that extra building speed. So even assisting with one engineer should always be less cost effective than building straight out of the factory.
In TA, builders build as fast as the factories they are built by. They cost more energy but much less metal. Guarding factories with construction units is a no-brainer. It sounds like SupCom improved this scenario a bit, although at the same time it presented a new problem: engineer spam, lol.
So you're saying we shouldn't be able to produce units quickly, just because you don't like the aesthetics of there being a lot of engineers?
Remove the ability to guard/build assist? Don't be silly. It's simple: Make them build faster and more expensive (compared to the factory) than they are in SupCom, so you don't need as many.
Factories take up lots of space, and factories should be the primary method of unit production because of that. If you want to build a big army quickly, you have to have a big place to build them at, rather than spewing them out of a single factory in seconds flat. Big bases are harder to defend and mean larger targets for artillery, and that is the tradeoff you undertake. I'm not against engineer assist, but it was just way too easy in SupComm. Ground construction units in TA had limited space to fit and sometimes couldn't reach to assist from certain angles. Construction aircraft were a different story, but that has more to do with the lamness of airblobs.
Factories don't NEED to take up lots of space. I think making them really big in SupCom was a mistake.
Maybe factories could have upgradeable add-ons that increase build speed, to a maximum of 3-5 x base rate, at about the same cost efficiency per upgrade as building a separate factory (both options should be more efficient than engineer assist). That would mean 3-5 x less factory spam and more space efficiency.
I think it's a bad way to correct the problem. Engineer are mobile AND they can help buildings, tank, plane etc... It would be natural to make them less cost efficient than fatories which are static and can only build a small subset of the techtree. Specialized -> more efficient ... no ? I think it's the most elegant way to deal with the problem It's not just about estetics. But gameplay too: with engineer spam, you don't need to plan nor to so wee what your ennemi is doing because you can just switch your production in a second. Planning should be a first class citizen in a strategy game! Secondly, scouting your opponent would give you an advantage. To know what kind of factory he has. Gathering intelligence is a must have in a strategy game. To repeat my self: I love engineer, they only should be less cost efficient than factories.
Large factories makes the available space more important and it also makes their placement more important. Relative to the units' sizes, the factories weren't even that large in Supreme Commander (compared to Total Annihilation).
