An engineering game, as I'd define it, is a game where a primary gameplay element is designing machines for some purpose, weighing conflicting needs such as cost, versatility, and performance. I've only played a handful of these games, and I really wish I could find more. Here are some of the ones I've enjoyed:
Kerbal Space Program: I'd call this a definitive example of an engineering game, and one I have hundreds of hours in. I absolutely love designing rockets, figuring out what I'll need for each mission, experimenting with different staging mechanisms to maximize fuel efficiency, pushing my available tools to the absolute limit to land on far-off celestial bodies, etc.
Automation: The Car Company Tycoon Game: Yes, I know, fuck cars, but I'm having fun with this one. There are a lot of different niches you can cater to, and I enjoy specializing in affordable, reliable, fuel-efficient sedans and compact cars against the trend of turning everything into a gas-guzzling behemoth.
Master of Orion: Yes, a DOS game from 1994, and primarily a 4x, but its ship designer has some of the best balance between simplicity and depth I've ever seen. Ships have a limited hull capacity, but no fixed number of weapon hardpoints, and they can only fit a handful of special modules, but there are dozens to choose from, with widely varying capabilities. The number of actual choices to make is small, but they involve balancing so many things - durability, damage reduction, damage output, armor penetration, weapon range, maneuverability - and the turn-based combat gives enough control to let you really appreciate the impact your designs have.
Avorion: A space flight sim with highly customizable ships built out of blocks, with fine-grained control over things like engine power, maneuver thrusters, and armor thickness, and cargo bay sizes. I wanted to like this one, but it's way too grindy for me (building up your reputation with factions takes forever, and they won't let you buy better ship equipment until you do).
Robocraft: A game where you design a robot and then pit it against other players' creations in online team battles. My best creations were a spider bot that could scuttle up and over hills and ambush enemies with a massive plasma burst, and an air defense bot with bigass twin AAGs and a shitload of top armor. I had a lot of fun with this one back in the day, but nowadays it's so deserted that most of the players are bots.
Rimworld, especially with tech/automation mods.
There's also a game which is interesting as a case study. It's called Eco, and the premise is basically "minecraft but you have to solve global warming with market-based solutions." The neat thing is that if you just don't engage with the market mechanics at all and instead be climate Stalin it's extremely easy to beat the game and fix global warming.
Just checked both of those out. Eco looks like it might be what I was looking for! Watched a video where a guy joined a server of "red team" and "blue team", and the reds/socialists way out produced the blues. I think the multiplayer aspect is what intrigues me, as long as it doesn't allow wreckers to ruin everything.
RimWorld also looks interesting, the randomness mechanic I think is really good for a single player game.
The way simply doing socialist production trivializes Eco reminds me of Vicky 3 players saying that communism is overpowered.
RimWorld is fantastic. People meme about it being a war crimes simulator but I always build postscarcity utopias.
Rimworld players I’ve watched annoy the shit out of me for this. They’ll mod the game to max out difficulty cause they’re hardcore, but then their strat tends to be the cheesiest most boring schlock imaginable.
Absolutely agree. A weird one for me is embrasures. I always mod them in because A. They are a real world extremely effective and dead simple construction for defending fortresses, and B. Club beating rifle because of the way accuracy and distance scaling work in RimWorld is stupid.
But many RimWorld players see them as inherently OP, while preferring goofy ass killboxes that exploit the enemy pathing.