Rethinking the Resources - Energy

This is identical to fixing the E:BT cost ratio. Unless you mean that engineers should drain regardless of how fast they are building but that would just be stupid.

Balancing economy was a challenge but how many important choices were made while doing so? I'm not saying balancing your economy is all grunt work but there was a lot of it that could be removed without removing the choices.

Sorry that makes no sense. Engineers can be all over the map and where they are is important. What you assist in your base determines how fast things build. I don't see how any overcommitting mechanics are changed at all.

While I'm generally ok with the idea, this part is pretty much irrelevant. Energy was always the hardest resource to attack since it never had build location requirements.

Anyway, just to clarifly, your idea makes power run C&C style correct? How are defenses/artillery powered?

No reason it can't be though. Solar could be more effective the more sun you get, so it works best on a tidelocked world with no atmosphere close to the star. Wind obviously requires atmosphere, the denser and hotter the better. Fusion's massive output could be balanced by forcing you to build the plant next to liquid water, and needing one helium mine per plant.

I like the idea of energy being used to run the factories, rather than somehow being pushed inside the units. I like ideas that make logical sense inside the faux physics universe we are all after without 'boring' ultra-realism. After all, no-one is suggesting we factor in LS delays between planets

Additionally, I don't see that it necessarily makes things simpler or dumbs anything down. I mean E is going to have to be used for a great number of things that M isn't going to be used for, running your laser towers, radar, auto targeters etc. and I'm sure there's more...

For the record, I like complex, I don't want anything dumbed down SC2 style. The greater number of variables you have to keep track of increases the depth of the experience and gives the player more options for out-thinking their opponent. However, that's my tuppence, the idea looks good to me, please explain why it's cr*p

To fix energy consumption rate at factories / for engineers seem strange at first glance, but it makes sense. The more parts of your economy rely on energy, the more fragile your energy management becomes. While it is quite easy to reduce artillery to a somewhat constant energy drain by building a decent amount of energy storages, the same is not possible with factories yet.

Especially when having multiple factories working on inhomogeneous build queues, the combined energy consumption can suddenly sum up to load spikes which are completely unexpected and impossible to counter unless you had a significant energy overproduction which is considered a bad behavior.

However, i would not remove energy from construction costs. Why?
Because without the need for energy in the early game, the user lacks the stimulus to build a decent energy infrastructure along with his base which will drive unexperienced players into a significant energy shortage once they start building their first energy draining structures. The state of your economy while building such a structure is a good indicator if your energy production would be sufficient to maintain the structure. If the energy drops to zero during construction, then every player understands, that it would be a wise idea to abort the construction and to invest into energy production in the first place.