Power deficit on construction effects

Here's a topic i've never really understood. Namely, the effect of power stalling on construction.

Eg I am building a T3 PGen (or any other building) and i don't have enough energy in storage to build it completely. As i start construction I realise I need it urgently and assign every single engineer I own to assist construction.

Once they are all assisting, I can see my energy bar is showing - 500. Will having this -500 deficit cause the building to complete slower than if i removed some of the engineers (so for eg the deficit was -100) or if I removed enough engineers so that the energy bar was showing a slight positive.

Hope that makes sense!

Mexes require energy to run. Stalling e causes your total mass to stall. Add a billion bp onto the construction and the ratio of e going to the bp found in your mexes will be so low they functionally will produce 0 mass.

Beyond that aspect, putting more bp on a project you’re already stalling on just means a higher proportion of your mass/energy is going to that project overall. Buildpower always sums to 1 as a total across your whole base.

@just_norm said in Power deficit on construction effects:

Once they are all assisting, I can see my energy bar is showing - 500. Will having this -500 deficit cause the building to complete slower than if i removed some of the engineers (so for eg the deficit was -100) or if I removed enough engineers so that the energy bar was showing a slight positive.

Except for the mex probem mentioned by @FtXCommando , the answer is no (if you still have an acceptable mass income or storage). More engineers should always either make no difference or increase the speed of building.

However, it is usually vastly easier to increase the speed of a project by pausing other energy consumers in your base than to just increase the build power ratio of the project by putting more engineers on it while stalling.

And you usually want to do the pausing anyway to not stall shields or radar.