Engineering Stations vs Engineers

[TheGoldenYeti]

The results are in for which is the most cost effective "source of assisting" Below is a table which may not appear like much but i put some thought into it.

Assist Type----------------Relative speed------------------Mass Cost------------ Energy Cost

Hive #1----------------------------3x---------------------------450--------------------2250
Hive #2----------------------------6x--------- running total---690--------------------3850
Hive #3----------------------------9x--------- running total---930--------------------5450

Kennel #1------------------------ 1x--------------------------- 550 --------------------2750
Kennel #2 ----------------------- 2x-------- running total -- 1050 ------------------ 5250
Kennels for 9x (4 x #2 + #1) - 9x ------------------------ 4750 ----------------- 23750


T1 engineer ---------------------- 1x --------------------------- 52 --------------------- 260
T1 engineer for 9x (9 t1 engs) -- 9x -------------------------- 468 ------------------- 2340

Please note that for the following is more for consistancy than reality there is no such thing as a half of an engineer.

T2 engineer------------------------2x ------------------------- 160 --------------------- 840
T2 engineer for 9x (4.5 T2 engs) 9x --------------------------720 -------------------- 3760
-
T3 engineer ----------------------- 3x ------------------------- 490-------------------- 3150
T3 engineer for 9x (3 T1 engs) ---9x ------------------------ 1470 ------------------- 9450


Now the reason that anyone would build hives and kennels is simply because of the convenience, but for cost effectiveness T1 engineers are the logical choice.


Please not that the costs do not reflect the building the factories, or the upgrading to the proper tech level, but those would be fixed costs, not variable costs as shown above.

On another note, the reason for all the dashes is because the embedded text program omits spaces and has no tabulate abilities.