This idea came to me during a late/end-game where my territory is pretty significantly spread. What I'm finding is that I have factories in areas very far from action producing drillers that are very difficult to get to the fight.

I'd love the option to be able to toggle specific factories to be disabled. This wouldn't result in their production moving elsewhere, just lost, but the benefit would be that I'm not hitting capacity as soon and could keep factories closer to the line producing for longer.

Implementation-wise, there would be a new Disable/Enable Production button on factory outposts, similar to shields. When disabled, a factory would appear as it does when at capacity, with the red light blinking. Re-enabling a factory would cause the production timer to reset.

I think this makes sense logically in how a real world leader would manage their production when nearing capacity, and there's no inherent bonus to doing it as the leader loses momentary production in favor of localized production. That trade-off seems to fit with a lot of the other trade-offs that the game makes you consider.

Thoughts?

we had considered that a long time ago, and are aware of the usefulness. it has two main problems though:
1. it makes factory production unpredictable. i won't be able to know for sure how many drillers your factory will have 12 hours from now because i have no idea if you will hit your electrical capacity or not.
2. it forces players to play a micromanagement game with their factories that isn't particularly interesting, and could also result in accidental mistakes. "oops, i forgot to turn that factory back on!"

Interesting, thanks for the background. A few thoughts on your points...

1)
I had assumed that this is something that would be known through the fog of war, just like we can know how many of each outpost a player has without actually seeing them. So as soon as I disable one, you'd be able to see when I hit my capacity. In terms of planning, it doesn't seem significantly different from the impact of me capturing or losing a factory outside of your sonar range.

2)
Maybe it's just me, but I find the added layer of strategy interesting, particularly in the late game when things seem to become a slugfest or a race. On the oops aspect, couldn't we argue it's the same with disabling shields?

I won't belabour the point since you've already discussed and declined the idea, just wanted to share my thoughts. Thanks!