Please explain engie assist to me

[Darth_Google]

What does it have to do with efficiency, how does one use it and how to calculate what engies you need and how much?

Goes for Kennels and Hives too.

[biass]

everything builds using a term called buildpower, the more you have, the faster you build

As for calculating how much to use, don't, just build one thing at a time if possible and try not to have a huge mass stall for 30 minutes.

T1 engineers are considered a good form of buildpower but higher tech engies have less pathfinding issues and ofc, can build better tech, kennels and hives are not considered very efficient because of their cost.

Hope this helps.

[LtSurge]

Engineers, among plenty of other units, have the ability to Assist other units and structures.

Normally, having an Engineer selected and hovering over another unit or structure will have a yellow icon appear. This is the icon for Assist command.

Right-clicking will have the selected Engineer assist the Right-clicked unit or structure until ordered otherwise.

When selected, units and structures can be manually ordered to assist others by Left-clicking the Assist Command (yellow icon) and then Left-clicking the desired unit/structure.



Assisting will mean different things for different structures and units. However, for Engineers, they will stay within range of any unit or structure they are assisting and will perform repairs when they are damaged, increase building and/or upgrading speed for other builder-units or structures, and help Shield Generators recharge. This comes at the cost of Energy and Mass, of course.

[Darth_Google]

I was asking about using the thing on practice.

For example, people say that using any engineers for assist but T1 is a waste and is really inefficient.

Or that you never assist a nuke or antinuke since that will drain your resources but wont really add a speed.

So when, why do i use engie assist, how critical is it and how do i check beforehand if my economy can deal with increased resource drain? How at all do i calculate that drain?

[CookieNoob]

as biass explained buildpower is the critical thing. A t1 engy has 5 build power, a t1 factory 20. So assisting the factory with 4 t1 engies will effectively double the production speed. If you want to calculate how much mass/power is needed for assisting you can just compute it from the unit stats:

Ressourcecost / s = (buildpowerT1*Number_of_T1engy+buildpowerT2*Number_of_T2engy+...) / Buildtime_of_Unit *Resourcecost_of_unit

If assisting is efficient or not can be calculated by dividing the buildpower of a unit by its masscost. T1 engies are the most efficient assisting unit (support factories are similarly efficient), hives are also quite efficient, kennels are really inefficient (2x the masscost per buildpower compared to t1)

Assisting a nuke (15000 mass, 1080 buildpower) with 216 t1 engies (~11000 mass) will double the speed with which the nuke is loaded. The problem with assisting a nuke is that you need a lot of buildpower to make a noticeable difference.

higher tier engies are quite useful also for assisting, they are not as efficient but they have less pathfinding problems (less units with the same amount of buildpower) and have a higher buildpower density, so if you need to get some buildings fast (emergency t1 pd) this is quite useful. The higher tech also allows to build shields or t2 pd...

[Darth_Google]

Thank you, it finally makes some sense to me.

And the correlation is linear, so if i double the buildpower i get half the buildtime and there are no hidden stacking penalties or something?

[Vanguard]

Thank you, it finally makes some sense to me.

And the correlation is linear, so if i double the buildpower i get half the buildtime and there are no hidden stacking penalties or something?

Yes, exactly that. The only kind of penalty would be that having 216 T1 engineers assisting in your base means, if you parked your ACU somewhere in there you will NEVER GET OUT! NEEEVVVEEERRR!

[tallian2]

Didn't the last patch make all engies equally efficient?

[Vanguard]

Didn't the last patch make all engies equally efficient?

Going by the Unit Database, which I think is still accurate when it comes to engineers:

Engineers Amounf of Mass per Unit of Buildpower ( M/BP )
T1 52 mass / 5 builpower = 10.4 M/BP
T2 140 / 12.5 = 11.2 M/BP
T3 440 / 30 = 14.6 M/BP

So, theoretically T1 engineers have the best Buildpower per Mass Ration.

As to spamming the most amount of buildpower in the shortest amount of time ( without factory rolloff time )

Engineers Buildpower per factory output - Time to construct 1 Unit Engineer on factory Buildpower ( E/FBP )
260 / 20 = 13
700 / 40 = 17.5
2200 / 90 = 24.4444

So T1 Engineers rule supreme . AFAI understood the balance: Higher level engineers allow you to be more flexible and have less clutter in your base, while T1 supply the most amount of buildpower with the drawback of not being able to navigate your own base anymore. Hives ( at least the unupgraded version, don´t have the costs of higher upgraded versions ) are somewhat in the area of T3 engineers with 14 M/BP.

[TheKoopa]

Database has actually not been updated for a while iirc and there's a lot of stuff wrong.

Either that or engi buff hasn't been patched into faf yet