Remove the engineers from the game

Well i like engineers because they can support factories making units faster and its a mobile unit.

I think the main issue is how slow they are making them painfull to use.

Leave the engineers, but give them different tiers and possibilities (repairing) and building-tiers.  

@atmorell Like Andre said, engineers add the ability to repair structures and speed up production so removing them would actually hurt more than help. They really just need a movement speed buff right now. I mean they could allow construction on reactive nodes and regions other than the seed starting area, but to balance it out it would have to be expensive and slow building. 

@No_Menace They already have 2 tiers of engineers in the game, with the T2 being able to build the Advanced Factory. The foundation is there for all these features so it's just a matter of time before they are fully implemented.

Wait really? I ever only noticed one type of engineer and it could always make the advanced factory.

What? im sure there is only tier 1 engineers right?

After you have captured like your first 1-2 computronium regions giving enough power and having some reactives available you can make an advanced factory with the first tier engineer.

Friggen forums keep bugging.  "The reply that you tried to make got all jumbled on the way to our server. Please wait a moment and try again."

Anyway, the post I keep trying to make is that engineers add tactics and game element options, and removing them would be to dumb down the game.

I do have to say that I prefer the SupCom approach to engineers.

I guess it would be possible to use the power generators as a sort of "hub" buildings can be built around, but that's making everything a bit too complicated.

In SupCom engineers cold reclaim junk and steal enemy structures too, and that was cool. This is not a SupCom clone so I'm not saying do that too, I'm saying making engineers able to do extra stuff does add fun. Now how do you make it happen without adding too much micro?

Apparently I am losing my mind with the T2 engineers. I guess I am so used to seeing the T2 option when building with factories instead of the command center. Forgive me for that.  

I am actually happy about this because it means I don't need to build each tier of engineer to build the corresponding buildings.

Engineers are a pretty basic functionality, but they are one you pretty much do need to have. They are how you go build resources.

Allowing players to build directly on any resources in a captured sector is not a good idea because it doesn't cost any resources and cannot be denied. You can raid an enemy's engineers to limit their ability to expand and build, and costing them resources.

In a broader sense, what this game needs is more soft targets, not less. Almost everything on the map is a hard target. There's almost nothing to destroy that will hurt the enemy except troops. There's Logistics Arrays and Research Matrixes, but because they can be built anywhere they will always build them in their home base, or otherwise in the most defensible location, leaving only one really sensitive area.

Engineers could be changed to "Combat Engineers" that would only be used for repairs, reclaiming and capturing. Imagine playing the game and placing buildings and defenses without the old school Engineers driving around the map. Nothing would change besides letting the player focus on resources, expanding, defending, attacking etc. - fun stuff. Keeping track of engineers is really annoying on bigger maps. You could still raid your opponents base by destroying production facilities and stores. The combat engineers would need to reclaim the destroyed buildings before the spots could be reused. 

What if the power generators spawned an engineer upon capture? That would leave the engineers as "soft targets" like ledarsi stated and enable the engineers to basically work in a defined area around a particular power generator. This way the player would have access to an engineer once the hub was theirs. In Sins the planet you had would spawn more engineers based on the population of the planet, but having the ability to build engineers from the power generator might work too (as long as an engineer cap was set based on the area e.g. the seed would have a 3 engineer cap, but an area with only two resources would only have a 1 engineer cap.

I obviously don't speak for everyone, but I really enjoy the base building aspect of games like this. The engineers are the lifeblood of building a base and add a lot of tactical gameplay in the long run. Just being able to plop a building down anywhere causes a lot of balance issues since you have to add in more features to control how far out the player can build. At that point you also need to add in a structure or beacon of sorts that allows expansion. Also, with the unit bar on the left keeping track of engineers is just a click away. You don't have to hunt them down or anything. Just click the icon, then build whatever you want. 

How about the possibility to build some kind of "road" (makes no sense with hoovercrafts), so that t1 stuff can move faster to the frontline? (makes just sense with large maps)? 

Or some kind of "powerlines". How further away the mines, less amount of metal/radio. arrives in the base. With powerlines this effect could be minimized? 

Maybe a very bad idea. 

I think the better solution to having both HUGE maps and positional play is to have transports be a staple of gameplay.

Transports such as flying transports can potentially be much, much faster than land units, and also gives players a very compelling reason to control the skies. Air superiority actually makes your units more mobile by allowing friendly transports to operate safely, and reduces enemy mobility by destroying enemy transports or preventing them from entering the area.

Transports are also a very valuable asset that is not, by itself, a direct combat asset. They don't directly attack the enemy, although they do convey a tremendous advantage to your other forces.

Building a large number of transports consumes resources which might have been spent on more combat forces. However, having many transports makes your forces more mobile on a strategic level. A large army with relatively few transports is undoubtedly very powerful, but has limited ability to project that power over significant distance, and must move very slowly.

This also creates an interesting decision regarding the strategic movement of units which is different from their tactical movement when they are driving around on the ground. Deploying units using transports can potentially move units great distances quickly. However it occupies a limited resource (transport time) which could alternatively be used somewhere else. Perhaps to transport other units to somewhere else, for example.

Fast transports also allows for practical movement over enormous maps. Those very slow land units will just depend on hitching a ride on a transport in order to cross the entire map. It's fine if the unit would take an impractical amount of time to drive the entire distance by itself.

They make perfect sense in this game and we can not have an engineer with equal power to a tank, but use some engeniers with some attack units that have to build in any part of field its what make the strategy to other leval ..

They are vital for this type of game .

I think for more involvement in the game has a bonus to your fights , engineer  showld reclaim all resources left by kill units, that will be awsome .

 Engineer tech 1 showld only build tech 1

 Engineer tech 2 showld only build tech 2 so on so on.

Im not see this game without them its like dont have a game,if we have transports you will see the big diference they can make in the battle  if we have the right options in the game.

Just want remenber this RTS got all to become the best rts this last years,so let it give all power and options that only Supreeme commander have ,no other game have so many options that you can use to all kind situations in early or late game its a unike game that forever will be remenber and for that reason players still play after 8 years and every day more want to try in FAForever its a real fact no one cant denied .

Then lets make this happend again with help this fantastic team ,no matter the time will take but its time to the magic happend again.

Alternative the the T2 Engineers could have some sort of limited flight. You eliminate the slow moving around, but speed up player decisions while still having them as targets.

I would rather stick with 1 tier of engineer. If they want advanced ones then I would rather see them upgradable. I hated having mutiple tiers in other games because it made the T1 and T2 variants useless once you got to T3. If you make them where each tier of engineer can only build the corresponding tier of building it will become a convoluted mess. You think they are hard to keep track of now, try using that system and you will want to commit suicide. Let's just keep a single tier engineer, with no combat ability, can build all structures once upgrades are researched, can repair structures, can assist in building, can destroy unwanted structures, and is potentially upgradable. That type of unit gives the best utility while also being functional.

I agree.I really don't want multiple engineers running around trying to figure out which ones can build certain buildings. I would like buildings to have the ability to destroy themselves though.

My problem with the unit bar is that it currently doesn't split units up by location. If I need an engineer I can click on the side bar (assuming scrolling is enabled) and then I still have to figure out where that engineer is and whether or not they have tasks already assigned to them (maybe add a task bar for the engineer?). Splitting up the unit bar based on which power generator section it's in could help a lot for this problem.

If you double click an engineer in the unit panel on the left it immediately snaps to it. I use it all the time while playing because I have engineers at my base, the front, and areas in between. It allows me to snap to their location instantly, and without the need to search for them. I would imagine the unit panel will include a scroll option here soon. Not only that but I think engineers should stay at the top of the unit panel at all times. This way you don't have to scroll through it in order to build something. 

Good to know, thanks for that. I agree with having the engineers at the top of the list for the same reason mentioned above and, currently, to bypass the scrolling issue. I still think splitting up by area would be nice so you don't have to double click on each one to find the one you're looking for though.

No problem at all. Splitting them up could work, I'm just not sure the best way to handle it to be honest. If it was split by region the larger maps could get very interesting, very fast.

A really basic way to do it would be to allow players to issue construction orders without any engineers selected. Any engineers in the region that are not building something else would make sure it happens.

This would mean you don't need an exhaustive list of every engineer you own- you would have a list of regions and a number indicating the size of the constructor team in that region.

Good idea This could also work for unit building! Keep the unit bar at the bottom of the screen and place unit blueprints directly on the ground. Nearest factory would build it and send the unit to the location. This would make building units and keeping track of construction projects much easier. I don't see this as OP, as all players would get this advantage.

I don't believe the current C&C construction style will scale very well with gigantic maps and thousands of units.

No kidding. With thousands of units, if you have to manually queue up each and every one, it's practically all the player would ever do all game.

I think it is also worth pointing out that a separate UI list would be a very ineffective way to represent a region list of constructor teams. It would make more sense to display this on the actual map within the geographical region, such as if you zoom out. You could have similar icons for each region's factory complex and other groups. Adding more factories wouldn't add more icons, just change the icon symbol (potentially just a number) to indicate its size.

A region that the player has dedicated mainly to industry would have large groups for engineers and factories, rather than a sea of little icons with one for each unit or structure.

Zooming out further might simplify the icons to just one icon per region, with different icons for a base, an army, and an air wing.