How to prevent a Galactic Bore

The drops aren't completely random, but the way they are weighted, as far as I can tell, is by distance from your starting position, and most of the cards are done weirdly (I'm always getting T2 naval tech because all the factories are weighted the same grr). I imagine the randomness is one of those "first pass we just made it up as we went along" things that will eventually improve with default GW.

Another upgrade card would be to change out the flame thrower on the Inferno for something longer ranged- maybe a light artillery shell or something?

One thing that I would love to see is map type affecting the way that games are played a lot more than it currently does. E.g Moon and or metal planets with no air units? Smaller and much larger planets, more asteroids in non boss fights and more interplanetary action in general (cmon, it's planetary annihilation). I know planet size might be limited by performance atm as not all machines could run with a larger planet and it would screw them over in the random gen Galactic War setting, but at the moment, there is no difference between moons lava earth and metal planets on MY gameplay at least.

There are a lot of ways I would change the cards themselves even if the system was not changed. My biggest problem is that I'll pick up 5 or 6 enhancement or T2 cards long before I can get the basic card to use them... some times I never get the basic card.

I have an Orbital Commander that picked up 3 sub commanders , super weapon tech, advanced air, artillery tech, advanced defenses, and advanced vehicles before his first fight... He never picked up ANY basic factories. The sub commanders were useless without any factory types. I managed to win my first 3 matches by spamming anchors, but none of those matches ever game me a factory. I finally just abandoned the war and started a new one.


With that in mind...

• Advanced Tech Cards should have alternate versions that grant the basic tech as well, however they should be more rare. Just found my first one. These are already in game.
• Unit enhancing cards should grant the units.
• Superweapons tech (Haleys, Nukes, Laser Sats) need to be available as 3 separate cards.

Also, perk cards should have drawbacks

• 40% gain in metal rate but extractors cost 40% more
• (unit) gets 50% more armor but move at 30% reduced speed.
• (unit) gets 100% more damage but have 70% reduced armor.
• (unit) gets 50% reduced cost but have 15% each reduced health, armor, and speed.
• (unit) gets 50% more damage but 50% more cost.
• Nukes build twice as fast and at half cost, but they have reduced 50% AoE and 50% reduced damage.
• Catapults can target aircraft and orbital, but cost 150% more.
• Holkins fire twice as fast but cost 50% more but inflict 50% reduced damage.
• Commanders can build advanced factories (for unlocked techs) but 50% less energy efficient.

Even more extreme, some cards should prevent certain units from being built. These restrictions would have to trump units granted by cards.

• 100% increase in power generation, but commander power storage is halved and energy storage are not allowed.
• 60% faster vehicles but Infernos and vanguards not allowed.
• Anchors can move, but Avengers are not allowed.
• T1 and T2 interceptors can target ground units, but cost 100% more with bombers and gunships are not allowed.
• Units have double line of sight range, but no radar is allowed.
• All Units costs reduced 50% but base defenses are not allowed.
• Naval units have 100% more range, but Air units not allowed.

The problem with perks (+x/-y), is that it is awful to balance.

You'll tell me : who care about Balance ? This is Single Player !

Answer : Uber wanted to have one roster of units to simplify balance (for pvp, or against the IA also).
Add perks and a new world is created :
- IA must be updated to use/react to the perks
- pvp could be impacted also (this perk make this combo too powerful, but we can't removed or modify it because we already worked so much on the rest, so we need to change more strongly this unit etc).

And GW is not SP only : it is planed to be used in the future for MP also, so making it too specific would add a lot of work to Uber, that could maybe not be able to handle it...

All good points; there are more complications than it would seem at first. However, the basic formula for Galactic War still desperately needs a serious kick in the ***. The basic premise is flawed: having techs that mostly only bring *back* functionality found in the standard game plus a few broad bonuses is a recipe for mind-numbing gameplay. I realize the more inventive stuff I suggested in the OP could create a lot of daunting balance challenges, but if the premise of GW is to strip you down to just a couple of units, you're going to need mechanics that make those few units much more interesting, and quickly. How we do that, I don't know. I still like my original suggestions.