More variety to end game

One of the hard things to get right in RTS games is that balance between allowing room for comebacks, and letting the player who has attained the upper hand win. In good RTS design, two evenly skilled players should have to work really hard to try and gain an upper hand over each other, but once one player pulls ahead enough to give them a decisive advantage, the focus then shifts to allowing the already decided game to end as quickly as possible.

This is one of the reasons assassination is such a good game mode, because once one player has attained the desicive move against the enemy commander, the game ends. It is still tricky to successfully give players the tools to carry out this quick victory, without also giving them units that feel cheap and cheesy (like SXX snipes).

Ultimately though, if I had to choose between a game that had a cheesy late-game snipe unit, or a game that was super prone to falling into stalemate, i'd choose the game with the cheese unit every time. Nothing worse than being in a game that's obviously lost/won, and having to wait sometimes in excess of an hour to play out the formality of actually finishing the game.

This option does not replace what the Vanguards do on the current patch. Which is basically the equivalent of a late game ground unit eco raiding. The trick here is that it's useful, and adds variety to the end game, even though it only does so by shifting some of the variety away from the single planet end game. Orbital units are not a replacement to that. Though I would be a fan of both of your suggestions. If they worked together nicely, then that would make ground remain valid, but it would only add validity on the defending side. Where it would require the offensive side to go even more orbital without a valid planet side option to attack with as well.

So the question would still remain: what would replace the Vanguard without being exactly as broken as the Vanguard currently is?

One of the other main issues for an attacker against a planet is how to deal with the defender advantage of total air dominance. adding an orbit-to-air unit could potentially be tricky, since if it's too effective, then air itself becomes invalidated by the now superior orbital layer. At the moment, the only options we have are anchors spammed all over a drop point, or taking a looooooot of spinners in your initial teleporter push.

If we're attacking a truly locked down planet, anchors and patrolling avengers and all. it's hard enough to get even a teleporter down in the first place, let alone anchors, and spinners are ok, but often can't really stop the air snipe of the gate, especially if the defender has hornets.

Some sorta T2 flak tank might be good to stop those huge bumblebee blobs. I gues for now, sniper bots can sorta negate some of the hornets, but really, i feel we need some faster moving ground AA to actually take down hornets, rather than only being able to try and tank as much as you can with sniper bots.

End game is very dull

That's just it, it's boring have 'one unit' that can kill the enemy commander, or having a nuke war which is basically just an eco contest. It would be much better if the latter stages of the game could be played out like the opening stages, where land grabbing and winning small skirmishes is the way to win.

The problem with this game and SupCom2 is that when you get past a certain point, it becomes more beneficial to store up your army for one last attack than it does to pick at your opponent slowly. This is made worse by the fact that it's difficult to travel between planets.