Experienced flight players: how do you manage the energy to support ratio?

This was my first run in Beta 3, and I had a ton of fun with it. My last few weekly seeds (I don't even think I posted about them) have been super short and disappointing, as I keep getting killed in the prox. caves post zion due to low core. This run, I promised myself, was going to be different! I decided to stick to the survival tips from the manual, legged propulsion with two propulsion slots as my first upgrade and things were going swimmingly. I made it to storageand got through without any issues at all. While there, I decided to switch to flight. It's been a long time since I've tried a serious flight build, but they were good units (with extras).Things were going great! (mostly) I'm pretty inexperienced with flight units, so immediately after getting them I decided to evolve an extra propulsion and power slot to handle flying without going negative on energy usage. That backfired. I had 2 power, 5 propulsion, 2 utility, and 2 weapon slots, so I didn't even have the utility slots to help out. I ended up only using 4 of my propulsion slots for flight units, and put a beefy treads in the last one to soak up damage (which it did nicely).Even after that hullaballoo, I managed pretty well. (Cue dramatic and foreboding music).At -4/Factory, I decided I needed a parts upgrade. I hadn't picked up much on previous floors and was feeling a bit outclassed. Thus, I tried really hard to keep from being spotted. Alas, inexperience and carelessness reigned supreme and a watcher saw me and called for help. I ran for it, right into a group of enemies. In the ruckus, I spotted a chute trap and my ridiculous brain thought, "I'll just drop through the chute trap and out run the crushers to get a fresh start at this level nbd." I leapt for the trap, taking heavy fire as more enemies swarmed in. 2 tiles to go. 1 tile to go. I got it! And nothing happened.Standing on a non-activated chute trap (with my flight units) I panicked, I waited, I turned of my flight units. In the meantime, my power sources were destroyed. Finally, I moved off the tile and back on to trigger the trap, but the damage was done. I had no power, and there were crushers waiting for me. I managed to outrun most of them (somehow) and find the exit, but now I was back on -4/Factory in even worse shape than the first time.My trusty melee weapons helped me scrounge up enough parts to get a decent tread build going, but I kept getting ambushed in places where the enemies could swarm. That or I equipped my BIG GUNS (aka cannons) and gave my enemies more ways to swarm me. I put up a good fight, but it wasn't enough.Scoresheet - http://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/scores/171009/nuzcraft-171018-165407-0-7655.txt As always, this run will be uploaded to my Youtube channel . I try to get Cogmind vids up every M, W, Fri and this one will probably start coming out in a couple weeks.