EvenFlow

The EvenFlow Engineers mod is designed to address one of the fundamental inconsistencies in the original game: buildpower.

Buildpower is a value used by engineers and factories to determine how quickly they build a given item. The only problem with it is that it's not consistent from unit to unit. While an engineer could build one unit using 3 or 4 mass per second, another unit built by the same engineer could consume dramatically different values. This makes it difficult to predict your economy since usage will fluctuate wildly from build to build. In the same line of thought, 10 buildpower on an engineer is not the same as 10 buildpower on a factory.

To me, this seems odd, since you get situations where tiny engineers were expressing vast amounts of mass and energy and others where they weren't. It seems that there should be upper limits on just how much mass and energy could be expressed by any given engineer, and implicitly, by factories as well. The other inconsistency was that engineers were generally getting to use far more mass and energy than factories - which is rather backwards - and this is the main contributor to the whole engineer-spam effect -- often leading to 'turtling' effects since building static defense was often more expedient than building units. Again, to me, this seems wrong, as purpose-built factories should be more effective than any mobile builder.

Now in practice we weren't quite able to make the buildpower relationship between factories and engineer exactly equal. We had a massive gap to close between the two - it's a LOT closer than it was - but the idea is sound - and we were able to achieve consistent economy flow for both factories and engineers. The relationship between the two comes in at a ratio of about 1 to 2.2.

What does this mod do to the game?

This mod turns most of that problem on it's head. Just by definition, when we talk about 'buildpower', a value of 1 for a factory should have consistency with a value of 1 for an engineer -- AND -- more importantly, it should mean something in terms of how much mass and energy it should be able to express on any given build. When you have that, you can then predict your economic usage by your build power knowing that when a factory or engineer is building, it will impact your economy to a specific degree. For example - your engineer has 5 buildpower, you should expect him to use a consistent amount of mass and/or energy whenever he's building or assisting. You should expect likewise from your factories.

This doesn't mean that everything an engineer builds will always consume the same; it's just an upper limit. This allows the individual unit blueprints to still have more energy or mass intensive values, but the upper limit will be predictable. When you apply this to factories, the impact and the value is clear -- now you can easily predict just how many factories, of what tier, you can run with a given amount of economy.

As you might expect, a Tech 3 factory has considerably more buildpower than any mobile engineer (or even any SACU) and as such, the impact of assisting by engineers is greatly reduced. It's still possible, but not the best use of an engineer. The factory, not the engineer, becomes the focal point of your construction efforts; not only is it more efficient, but it greatly reduces the value of spamming engineers.

What to expect?

Firstly, you'll be able to build a lot more units from factories without resorting to assisting, and you'll be able to predict your economy by the number of factories you have. You won't need quite as many factories either. While you can still assist your factories, you'll have to build far more engineers to get the same effect. In fact, it's more cost effective to build another factory rather than assisting an existing one.

Secondly, if you want to build a lot of static defenses and other structures, you'll need more engineers that you did before to do it in the same time. The cost hasn't changed, just the amount of time it takes - and you can easily predict just how much your economy will be impacted when you add engineers to a task.

Personally, I like the results a great deal. It brings mobility back to the forefront of the game, and for new players, it makes economic management more predictable -- always a good thing for any player new to the game.

Here's the short form.

For engineers and subcommanders, expect an engineer to use 1 point of mass OR 10 units of energy for each point it has of build power:

• T1 Engineer: 5 buildpower - will use up to 5 mass or 50 energy per tick when building.
• T2 Engineer: 10 buildpower - will use up to 10 mass or 100 energy per tick.
• T3 Engy: 15 buildpower - will use up to 15 mass or 150 energy per tick.
• SACU: 60 buildpower before upgrade - will use up to 60 mass or 600 energy per tick.

For factories, the energy maximum scales up with tier as follows:

• T1 - the energy ratio is 20:1.
• T2 - the energy ratio is 30:1.
• T3 - the energy ratio is 45:1.

With this mod the rates are as follows;

• T1 factory uses up to 8 mass or 160 energy per tick (based upon 40 build power).
• T2 factory uses up to 14 mass or 420 energy per tick (based upon 70 build power).
• T3 factory uses up to 20 mass or 900 energy per tick (based upon 100 build power).
• Quantum Gates uses the same as a T3 factory.