Possible to prevent engies blocking construction?

Hi all, just a half-baked thought for a QoL improvement, may or may not be feasible:

In the late game, sometimes you want to build e.g. a T3 pgen next to an air factory, but it takes 20 seconds for all the bumbling T1 engies to get out of the way first.

Would it be possible to just build over the engies? As in, change some setting so they no longer are treated as physical objects capable of blocking construction whenever they’re sitting on a place where a friendly unit intends to build something?

I know from an immersion perspective it might be odd if they can move out from under a new building, but I find it annoying when you lose time babysitting engies just so you can build.

We already improved the situation by making sure that gameplay-wise meaningless props do not block the construction site. That prevents a lot of engineers from going up to the construction site. See also:

• https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/5197

I'm not sure if we need to go further. There's also the aspect of playing the game the way it likes to be played - just like other games have certain limitations and being able to play around those is what makes one player better then another.

May I ask for a replay or two, just to see the problem? I personally did not perceive it anymore after the mentioned pull request .

You are not supposed to have 100 T1 engies building in your base. I usually just delete them once I have enough higher tier engies in my base.

@melanol thank you for your input, but unfortunately you are wrong

One way or the other, engi management is just a part of this game

arent t1 engies still the most mass efficient build power?
microing and babysitting them is part off the game i guess. but indeed sometimes its nasty, when its busy and you come back a min later to your base and the t1 engies are still driving all across where your t3 pgen should be halfway done.

All engies are the same mass efficiency.

Appears to not be the case.

uel0105/Engineer
build rate/mass cost: 0.09615384615384616

uel0208/Engineer
build rate/mass cost: 0.1

uel0309/Engineer
build rate/mass cost: 0.10416666666666667

Academically I'm interested in why you should have 100 t1 engineers building in your base.

@ftxcommando Higher tech engineers got buffed in January this year, the one that also buffed Sparkies a bit.

You have 100 t1 engineers because you made t1 engineers to reclaim and scale up, now that they’re done they assist factories in building things or get used on the frontline to reclaim new battlefields.

Okay okay, so it's a "because they are there", not a "because they are better".

To zoom back out to the main topic, is there an issue with the current choice being:

1. Manage/live with an excessive number of t1 engineers
2. Reclaim the t1 engineers and replace them with something more compact

@slicknixon I don't think there's an issue, no.
What is it about this situation that you suspect might be an issue?

Thread title. Wanted to establish if the problem is or isn't actually problem before any wacky adventures to prevent it from happening (like being able to build over t1 engineers) are embarked on.

That will never be a solution for the sheer fact you make any 1 tank raid on engies obsolete since they will just build a factory on top of themselves.

@ftxcommando Damn, you smart.

The only issue I have is that it still seems to take ages before engies (or other units) that are blocking a build site start to move, or they don't move far enough. Air units are also horrible about this and love to just repeatedly hover and land on a build site. I'm guessing this is just in-engine behavior though.

@redx There's a small trick you can do here if there's still a delay after the engies seem to be out of the way. Hold shift, click the icon of the building they're supposed to be building and drag it slightly like you're going to move it, but just put it back right where it was. Even without ever actually moving the building it resets their build order and they'll build right away if there's actually space.

That + manually moving units out of the way is how you make this better.

@redx I always just remind myself that engineering stations exist for the sole purpose of avoiding the clumsy nature of engineers!

With that in mind, I treat engineer micro with the same respect a player would treat combat micro. Mastering badass engineer micro for macro wins!