More Engies Vs. More Factories

[BURNem]

Hello People,

i need some advice in a part of FA I never really understood:

When is it in gerneral more useful to build a new factory (or seven) to produce Unit A instead of assisting the Factory which is Building Unit A with more Engineers. Im aware that this might be highly dependent on the situation, but maybe someone can explain the math behind that.

[Kryo]

with t1 factories, unit build times are pretty short. If you have a lot of engies, units will take longer to drive out than being built

[FunkOff]

Everything posted above is true... with some caveats:

T1 Engineers cost 52 mass for 5 build power. That's 10.5 mass per build power.
T1 factories have 20 build power for 210/240/300 mass, so that's 10.5/12/15 mass per build power.
T2 factories have 40 build power for ~840/1000/1300 mass, so that's more like 40/45/50 ish mass per build power.
T3 factories have 60 build power for around 4500/5000/6000 mass, and that's near 100/110/120 mass per build power.

Air units take 0 time to "roll off" the factory, land units take a short time, and ships can take a little longer.

With these numbers in mind, T1 engineers are always at least as efficient as their factories, but with T1 factories (land and sea) the roll of time can reduce the effectiveness of engineer assist to where you really don't need to worry about it. With T2 and T3 factories, however, without having at LEAST 10 engineers assisting, you're really not getting your money's worth in terms of the technology access you paid for. With T3 factories, it's not uncommon to see 100 engineers assisting the T3 factory.

[Gowerly]

How much does adjacency change that?
If you get 4 land facs around a t1 mex, does it make it worth more facs?
T1 land fac spam is generally better, anyway (for t1 units) as if you're making the engineers to speed up the facs, you're nto making the tanks IN the facs.

[FunkOff]

How much does adjacency change that?
If you get 4 land facs around a t1 mex, does it make it worth more facs?
T1 land fac spam is generally better, anyway (for t1 units) as if you're making the engineers to speed up the facs, you're nto making the tanks IN the facs.

Adjacency is nearly useless. It's almost always better to put a storage rather than a factory around a mex.

[Raging_Squirrel]

How much does adjacency change that?
If you get 4 land facs around a t1 mex, does it make it worth more facs?

it will save you 0.4 mass income, 0.1 per fac