Engineers are kittens that work in your factories to craft resources for you. They consume and produce the same amount of resources as if you were to click the craft button yourself.
You unlock the job with Technologies, allocate kittens as normal in the village panel, but you cannot have more engineers than you have factories. After you've made some engineers you have to go to the workshop tab and assign them tasks in the craft panel.
The following concepts are essential for understanding the details of engineer crafting.
The table below lists all craftable resources, their difficulty tiers, and their progress handicaps
| Resource | tier | progress handicap |
|---|---|---|
| Wood | 1 | 1 |
| Wooden Beam | 1 | 1 |
| Stone Slab | 1 | 1 |
| Concrete | 4 | 9 |
| Metal Plate | 1 | 4 |
| Steel | 2 | 4 |
| Gear | 3 | 5 |
| Alloy | 4 | 7 |
| Eludium | 5 | 300 |
| Scaffold | 2 | 2 |
| Trade Ship | 3 | 20 |
| Oil Tanker | 5 | 20 |
| Kerosene | 2 | 5 |
| Parchment | 1 | 1 |
| Manuscript | 2 | 2 |
| Compendium | 3 | 5 |
| Blueprint | 3 | 10 |
| Thorium | 3 | 5 |
| Megalith | 3 | 5 |
Engineers expertise can be improved with the following upgrades.
| Upgrade | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | Level 4 | Level 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Factory Optimization | 10 |
2 |
|||
| Factory Robotics | 10 |
5 |
2 |
||
| Space Engineers | 2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
|
| AI Engineers | 10 |
5 |
5 |
2 |
2 |
| Chrono Engineers | 2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
| Affected Materials | wood | steel | gear | concrete | eludium |
| beam | scaffold | ship | alloy | tanker | |
| slab | kerosene | compendium | |||
| plate | manuscript | blueprint | |||
| parchment | thorium | ||||
| megalith |
As an example, acquiring the AI Engineer upgrade increases the level 5 know-how from 0 to 2, giving a displayed craft rate bonus of 100%, doubling the craft rate of Eludium. Further acquiring Chrono Engineers increases know-how from 2 to 4, giving a 300% craft rate bonus, and so doubling the craft rate of Eludium again.
The Neural Networks upgrade permanently doubles Engineer craft rate. It does not change the know-how value for any level.
The Antimatter Fission upgrade permanently increases Engineer Eludium production (increasing eludium crafting speed) by 25%, also without changing any know-how value.
Note: On web, the total crafting speed for each resource can be seen as hover text in the resource panel. On mobile, this is shown in the workshop tab as seconds per craft, rounded to the nearest whole number. Assigning more engineers will increases crafting speed, but it might not be visible in the UI due to rounding.