So this is more of a question about sparky in general because I kind of always assumed it "made obvious sense" and never looked too deeply into it, but what is the actual rationale for Sparky not being able to build half the stuff in the game?
Like, the biggest thing is they cant build radar so taking them to the front can be a problem. This isn't that big of a deal because you usually have tons of t1 engies around your pushes anyway which can carry the radar load, but if it isn't that big of an issue why not just add it to sparkies?
The biggest thing is that you can't build a radar with a sparky drop, which can be particularly annoying as it means you need to bring engies with you. Why? Because they can't build factories!
Not building factories just seems weird as well. Is it to stop proxy bases with sparky drops? Why? Does that make sparky drops OP? It doesn't really do anything that brutal at frontline bases. You can set up reclaim factories and forward lobo spam bases quicker than with t2 engies because they are faster, but you can already do that with t1 engie spam that exists.
Finally pgens and mexes. The thing here seems to be about making t2 engies irrelevant. But my argument here is that t2 engies are more efficient than sparkies. A sparky is 2x the cost of a t2 engie for 1.5x the bp. If you want to just get the quick tech access for cheap, you make a t2 engie. This is what tons of people do as they only make 1 or 2 t2 engies and then move on to t3.
So what's the problem if someone makes the heavy and survival yet inefficient sparky in their main base for constructions? It fits UEF style to keep things compact and encourages slightly different playstyle since sparky will predispose people to doing more t2 aggression compared to other factions.
It just seems like a random balance decision done by GPG that no one else really ever bothered to look into tbh.
Even just nerfing the cost so it costs 2.5x the cost of a t2 engie but gets the abilities of a t2 engie is still fine and offers an interesting choice.