How does excessive build power work?

Assuming the same priority everywhere, how is the metal spent when it is exceeded by built power?

I assume it provides fractions of metal proportionate to the build power of individual cons/com/caretakers.

So if, for instance, I have a factory supported by 3 caretakers on 37mps income and suddenly get control of an ally's units (resign, afk...) and they had 37mps on 7 caretakers, 24.7 mps goes to my factory and 49.3 mps goes to my ally's.

Is that how that works? Does transferred stuff get automatically set on lower priority?

If that's the case, I have a suggestion.

I see a lot of new payers either not build caretakers at all or build wayyyy too many of them. Maybe we could show on the caretaker how much of it's build power is effectively being used?

It's difficult to explain to new players why opening with 1 mex, 1 solar, 10 caretakers is a bad idea, but it would be easy to simply tell them to click on a caretaker and see that it's currently spending 1 metal of a potential of 10. Want to build faster? Get more metal.

Or maybe there could just be a build power potential next to the metal income where you just see if your build power (total sum) is much higher than your metal income. Maybe that could only count caretakers and factory since cons could be used to reclaim/repair...

EDIT: I bet that's already in the UI and I just didn't mouse over my metal income. I'll check tonight. Good laugh if it is.

https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/index.php?title=Economy_Guide

This could use re-wording and updating.

Edit: buildpower is in the ui. single unit has a bar indicating buildpower in use, a group of units has buildpower in a number next to HP values, metal values, burst damage income etc.

Edit 2: Think every second that all the builders stand in a bread line. Metal income gets added to storage. Builders ask for their buildpower value from the metal storage. When they get their metal they spend it, and return to the end of the line for the next second's metal. If you are going even or have storage, everyone gets their metal every second. If you are empty and a glutton of buildpower, they each get the same PERCENTAGE value of their buildpower every second.

High priority gets a premium line that goes before the normal line(they get to cut). Low priority has another line that only gets metal when normal has gone(they let everyone pass them). A reserve limit will act as 'empty storage' for everyone except high priority.

When you have metal above the reserve limit, everyone gets served. When you have metal below the reserve limit, only high priority gets served. If the buildpower of normal and high priority gets fufiled by income and metal is at/above reserve, low priority gets served.

quote: Because SC/WC popularized the idea that building faster means something costs more, I wouldn't be surprised if people new to ZK/TA think that building faster means wasting resources.

That's probable. I suspect new players have all kinds of misconceptions about how zk's economy works, which is a major weakness of the current campaign since it isn't really educational in any meaningful way.