Is the Workshop worth it? XCOM 2

I’m wondering. Because I don’t see it.

• It requires very strict base layout, since you need a WS in the middle and 4 Engineer-using facilities around it. Which can mess up your plans for what you need to build now.
• It costs 225 Supplies to build and upgrade and uses 3 power [I’ve never actually upgraded it myself, taking these numbers from the wiki, so if they’re wrong I’m sorry]
• It seems to cost 40 or 75 supplies for the upgraded one per month (I’m not sure which)
• It uses up a valuable spot on the Avenger, which I could have filled with something else without excavating the 3rd/4th level first.

In return I get:

• two bonus Engineers (well 4 gremlins but it needs 2 actual engineers, so +2)

Of those two bonus engineers, 1 is most likely staffing a Power Relay, giving +5 (but since the WS uses up 3 already, you only really get 40% of it). So effectively you only get 1.4 engineers.

Now, I don’t know if recruiting costs change later in the game (I didn’t get too far yet), but when I visited my Rebel HQ, I was offered an Engineer for around 180 supplies. 1.4 of those would be 252, which seems to be less than I spend for building the Workshop and maintaining it for 1 month.

So, am I making a mistake somewhere?

• do recruitment costs for engineers skyrocket the more you have?
• Is there a max number of engineers you can have/get your hands on, so the +2 are actually useful?
• Does the Workshop have any other function than provide gremlins? Because I don’t see that anywhere
• something else?

Original Link – Continuation of discussion