I thought you said merge them into support factories, would that not be a solution?
Allow Aeon and Seraphim engineers to "Garrison" into T2 and T3 (support) factories, just like with air transports. For example 16 T1 engineers into T2 factory and 32 T1 into T3 factory. (and offcourse T2 and T3 engineers to ratio)
All "Garrisoned" buildpower is made available to the Factory.
Ah, did you suggest that idea in the "Sacrifice modification" thread ? ^^ That would actually make some kind of sense.
Your idea Valki makes me think of another RTS (Empire Earth) where you can garrison permanantly your villagers in your town center to increase all productions rate around it.
@Valki that would also have the effect of meaning that you couldn't raid a factory's buildpower. At the moment you can do a runby and kill assisting engineers for relatively low dps, but if the BP was internal to the factory you'd need to do thousands of damage to affect their production capacity.
@Wainan said in Merge engineers into support engineers to circumvent pathing issues.:
@Valki that would also have the effect of meaning that you couldn't raid a factory's buildpower. At the moment you can do a runby and kill assisting engineers for relatively low dps, but if the BP was internal to the factory you'd need to do thousands of damage to affect their production capacity.
That is part of the point I believe, out of desperation they are about to add Engineering stations to Aeon and Seraphim. Engineering stations have 1000 HP and 3000 HP for UEF, while T3 engineers have 700 HP. Aeon T1 engineer has 120 HP.
They are immune to light splash attack, but you can lose them easier than the same BP in Engineering Stations - unless you are being hit by really large splash attacks. A percival will never have killed so many engineers in so little time if he snipes a loaded up factory 
Isn't that the reason to get T2 engis instead of T1 (and t3 instead of T2 etc)? From a mass efficiency point of view t1 Engis are best, but get too many of them and it'll be unwieldy, hence the incentive to get less efficient forms of build power, right up to getting hives/kennels. Being able to combine T1 engis into something just as mass efficient but taking up less space would then reduce the incentive to get the other forms of build power.
M27AI and M28AI developer; Devlogs and more general AI development guide:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/2373/ai-development-guide-and-m27ai-v71-devlog
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/5331/m28ai-devlog-v112
@maudlin27 But there would still be a significant reason to get T2 engineers, for the ability to make T2 structures.
I just don't see people making a brand new 3D model to add a new kind of engineer to the game. Re-using existing models would be bad too, because it would be harder to tell the engies apart.
Allowing multiple units to merge into a single unit would be a brand-new game mechanic which would require significant coding.
If Aeon gets an engineering station, you could just sacrifice your engineers into it. The system could even be rigged so that sacrificing engineers is an efficient way to make the engineering stations. That would encourage people to convert t1 engies into stations. It would also be a way to remind people about the sacrifice mechanic, which should encourage them to use it more often.
An alternative that might be less complicated and just as effective a fix, might be to just buff t2 and t3 engies so people have more incentive to build them for bp. Not sure exactly what buffs would be best to make them more popular, whether it be speed, acceleration, build range, build power, or reducing mass cost or build time.
I think by the time you have 50 t1 engis clumped up at some factory your mass income is so high that a few percent more or less in bp mass efficiency dont matter anymore. You can just control k and reclaim the t1 engis and make new ones. but that takes time and apm and this move wouldnt be apm efficient anymore. I think that's kinds a cool metric by the way: what kind of apm is most conducive towards victory. Acu play, macro or unit movement. Brb watching some zock POVs
Yes, I agree that a tiny difference in efficiency isn't going to be worth it if it costs important apm. I have no idea how popular an idea it is to buff higher tier engies to reduce t1 spam, but I definitely dislike the huge swarms of t1 engies, so I would prefer some sort of change that discourages that. We might see some positive changes simply from t2 and t3 engie buffs. If t2 engies are a bit more efficient, maybe you will send half of the 30 (or whatever) t1 engies assisting your hq that is upgrading to t3, up to the front on a suicide reclaim mission and replace that bp with some t2 engies you build out of a t2 support factory. So you could end up with fewer total units and better pathfinding. Maybe it will still always be better to just use factories at the front to get the reclaim asap, though. Or maybe people would just slightly adjust how they increase their build power, and making an extra t2 support factory or two to make bp later on ends up being slightly more optimal than making t1 engies a bit earlier, I'm not sure.
In any case, if it is still not worth the apm to adjust your bp around, that would just mean that any buff to t2 and t3 engies just needs to be a bit larger to have any effect. I think the problem is all tiers are EQUALLY mass efficient (10.4 mass per buildpower for all engies), so there is zero benefit to building the higher tier engies FOR BP (so you only make a small number to access higher tech). The only exception I can think of is where you really need to concentrate tons of bp in a small location, perhaps to assist an smd or shields, where a huge mass of t1 will not all get close enough to assist.
Maybe changing the cost of t2 engies to 10.0 mass per build power, and 9.5 mass per build power for t3 would be a small change that makes them more viable, without making them too much better either. So t1 engies would be still 52 mass for 5 bp, t2 engies 125 mass for 12.5 bp (reduced from 130 mass), and t3 engies could be 285 mass for 30 bp (reduced from 312). That makes t2 engies less than 4% cheaper, and t3 engies less than 9% cheaper, so those are pretty small changes we could try very easily.
T1 engies are also more attractive to build because they don't impact your ability to build higher tier units.
@Wainan said in Merge engineers into support engineers to circumvent pathing issues.:
T1 engies are also more attractive to build because they don't impact your ability to build higher tier units.
Yeah, the opportunity cost incurred when producing T2 and T3 engineers is being overlooked.
Maybe allow T1 factries to produce T2 and T3 engineers when a T2 or T3 HQ is available?
The main problem is 1) shit pathfinding 2) small assist range.
It's same shit pathfinding and bad range at all tiers.
Kennels/hives fix both problems, kennels have worse bp but can fly anywhere.
Pathfiding is not fixable, but better range is changeable.
We need a way to contrate bp efficiently in specific area.
2 ways: better range or better bp with same/similar range.
Reuse sparky model and make either
You spam out t1 engies to get reclaim and might keep a dozen in base to help speed up fac upgrades/assist in t2/t3 construction with more flooding in once reclaim is sucked up. Anything talking about making t2 or t3 engies adjustments or some other sort of engie won’t change anything about the reason you have like 50-80 t1 engies on many maps.
I can spend like 200 mass and have a factory producing infinite engies to get thousands of e/mass in like a minute. There is no reason I’d ever get anything with more setup cost to do this unless it’s a specific circumstance like an ongoing battle where I need bp with more survivability (navy battles).
If you want a better way to concentrate bp, assist 1 engie to a fac and assist the rest to the engie. Now you have an infinite bp glob concentration near your factory that doesn’t even really block pathfinding much.
Making it possible to combine engies to quickly get t2 in areas doesn’t really attempt to deal with inevitable engie spam so it’s more viable. In fact it benefits from it. But it also has a lot of possible abuse opportunities that would need to be reviewed.
@techmind_ said in Merge engineers into support engineers to circumvent pathing issues.:
The main problem is 1) shit pathfinding 2) small assist range.
It's same shit pathfinding and bad range at all tiers.
Kennels/hives fix both problems, kennels have worse bp but can fly anywhere.Pathfiding is not fixable, but better range is changeable.
We need a way to contrate bp efficiently in specific area.
Deploy button on engineers
After deploy engineers cannot move and get double range effectively transforming into small hives
No pathfinding - no problem
@advena said in Merge engineers into support engineers to circumvent pathing issues.:
@techmind_ said in Merge engineers into support engineers to circumvent pathing issues.:
The main problem is 1) shit pathfinding 2) small assist range.
It's same shit pathfinding and bad range at all tiers.
Kennels/hives fix both problems, kennels have worse bp but can fly anywhere.Pathfiding is not fixable, but better range is changeable.
We need a way to contrate bp efficiently in specific area.Deploy button on engineers
After deploy engineers cannot move and get double range effectively transforming into small hivesNo pathfinding - no problem
Perfect for trapping ACU and other units.
If it is just for Aeon and Seraphim, let them hover a fair distance above the ground and disable their movement and more importantly collisions.
@Valki said in Merge engineers into support engineers to circumvent pathing issues.:
Perfect for trapping ACU and other units.
It's not really different than walking units into the acu to block it not sure why this would be an issue, sounds really hard to actually use this to block enemy acu especially with how fragile engineers are relatively speaking.
@Exselsior said in Merge engineers into support engineers to circumvent pathing issues.:
@Valki said in Merge engineers into support engineers to circumvent pathing issues.:
Perfect for trapping ACU and other units.
It's not really different than walking units into the acu to block it not sure why this would be an issue, sounds really hard to actually use this to block enemy acu especially with how fragile engineers are relatively speaking.
Normal units are kicked round in these cases. If they cannot move and don't pathfind I don't think they can be kicked.
Deployed units are really unmovable. I thought ACU would bump them on way out.
Looks like hard to use but still a problem.