What is the community's take on engineering towers?

No they can, but I would have imagined: if the tower has a build rate of e.g. 20 and there is only 1 task in the area, it will assist/make that task with 20 build rate. If there are two, then each task will get 10, etc. That's just how I envision it .

Actualy the point of the system was that it wouldn't divide its build points (although i suppose it could), 10 per project. This was to just stop them from being stationary engineers.

The specifics of targeting and such are a complicated issue that i hadn't really considered but if you had to target them it would be automaticaly distributed by normal rules at first, and then reasigned according to the order you click (or shift click) on things. This way if you give it 8 things to do in sequence it does the last 6 of those. This is however driving towards the accursed micro.

While engineering towers were great in sup com i oh so often just saw them clustered as a pen for rush building whatever was inside because they contribute all their (large) build speed towards that. I came up with this change to make them something unique while maintining their usefullness in a base (or forward repair base for your army).

I'd say yes, as long as they're unique from engineers. I like the idea of them automatically splitting their build rate between projects within their range. Their range would have to be pretty small, but it'd be nice to just build and forget. You get a permanent boost to your build speed, say, at the very heart of your base, and can just forget it's there, no micro required.

So engineering towers are a proper subset of engineers in terms of functionality, but they have a higher build rate. I understand the actual difference, I'm just not sure if that's worth having an extra unit just for that purpose.

With engineers assisting a factory you can see the immediate visual feedback without clicking on anything of who's assisting what. If that could be done with engineering towers, then perhaps its feasible, but at the moment I don't see a way to do this without drawing lines or nano-lathe paths over the long distances that towers are assisting over. That might look too messy.

It's also another calculation you have to do: "If I want to assist my factories, should I go for the flexibility of engineers for a higher cost per build output, or go for less-flexible assist towers?". It's not necessarily another calculation I want to make in my head. It sound along the lines of power storage beside power plants adjacency bonuses from Supreme Commander. I don't think it adds enough value to the game to warrant the added complexity.

But that would be quite an artificial limitation. What exactly prevents it from using all its build power one one project? Or all its build power on two projects at the same time, etc.

There is nothing really complicated about it and there isn't any additional micro compared to normal engineers. By default it just distributes its build power automatically over whatever possibilities are in range. And if you really want to force it to do a specific task, you simply control it like a normal engineer. Engineering Towers in Supreme Commander worked the same way.

Why is the change even necessary? Why not balance it another way, e.g. by adjusting the total build power or its range of influence.

The whole game revolves around such strategic and tactical decision, I don't see how this is a bad thing.


But I get the point, that engineering towers don't really add something to the game, if you can make regular engineers behave like the engineering towers as well. i.e. put them in mode where they do anything they can within their range while being idle. And that means not having to issue an area command to repair, build or assist. It just does what it can by itself, when it has no other orders in its queue.

However, introducing such a toggle (and it needs to be a toggle, so that engineers don't go haywire with your economy for instance, when you aren't looking) might also be seen as an unnecessarily complex thing, hence the invention of engineering towers, which simply has this ability by default.

Ok, this is an idea purely for discussion - I really haven't thought the consequences through in any detail at all. It's more a brainstorming type concept than a solid suggestion. What about engineering towers that prefer to distribute build power? It isn't a controllable builder, its build power is evenly split between all construction projects within range. This would be distinctly different to engineers and would involve no micro. Any obvious flaws I'm missing? It doesn't let you refocus build power on critical projects (leaving that niche for engineers) it just generally makes nearby stuff build faster.

I was assuming some sort of nanolathe flies from the tower to the construction target, does Supcom not do this? Believe me it can be made to look fine.

It is an important choice. This is like the choice between units and static defence. With towers do you want more factory production or do you want to flexibility to send constructors out to do jobs.

god please no - we do not need 300 engie games again

factories need to be more build power efficient than engineers and towers PERIOD.

I am all for Engineering Towers, it prevents me from having to micro manage a ton of engineers inside my base to prevent traffic jams that block my unit production, it also allows me to expand easier since I can task more mobile engineers to expansion work thanks to the stationary engineering towers covering the assist role back in my base.

I would however like a "priority" button on my engineering towers so that I can rapidly switch them between repair, reclaim, or assist being the priority action to take. Much like the button for units that tells them to hold fire/stand ground/aggressive.


I see no reason to force the towers to spread their build power per individual tower, I would rather that the towers act like they are all linked together so that the collection of towers spread the work load. While each tower maintains its max possible build power on the project it is addressing.

See I like engineering towers cause I see them as a way to clean up builders, having 100 builders on the field is a pain. (make sure build power/cost/time are equal! so T1 engies are not the best!) One Idea I had in my head was make engineering towers just a 'builder garrison' and it's purely to clean up your base a bit, maybe make them slightly less efficient, but have more range, and upgrading the tower allows more builders and maybe upgrades it's range or other features. I would like to see towers that only do one thing, like a builder could create a 'reclaim' tower for cheap on the battle field that will quickly vacuum the field clear, balanced by the fact you have to build this reclaim tower and it would be a fragile thing and kinda expensive for a

Also 'experimental builders" Mull on that