What would happen if... The techs your enemy owns, would actually be "downsides" of the techs you own yourself? The first time you get a specific tech, the corresponding counters techs are permanently unlocked for your opponents as well. You get air, they get anti-air. You get orbital, they get anti-orbital. You get Infernos, they get walls. Or to put it more general: You get defensive tech, they get an offense tech on the target layer. You get an offensive tech, they get an defensive tech against the same layer. You get an auxillary/eco tech, they get one too. Your get a game ender tech, they get the same one. They can not own a tech which you haven't encountered the corresponding counter piece for yet. However once you have encountered a tech (even if discarded), you must be prepared for the corresponding counter being used against you. This should actually slay all 3 issues of Galactic War at once: You can not be steamrolled by a tech you can not counter. You can not steamroll an enemy just because he lacks the counter. There is no useless tech. Et voilĂ , suddenly Galactiv War actually works like the campaign of any other game you encountered so far. Tech progressively unlocks in a fashion were the tech you are newly introduced to, is guaranteed to be of relevance.
What's not covered yet, is progression in difficulty as you close in on enemy system bosses. But I think I already know how to cover that as well: For each "downside" of a tech, annotate a difficulty value of that specific counter tech. The closer you get to a faction boss, the more downsides are "unlocked", even though it's still the ones which you are guaranteed to be able to beat. So if you happen to unlock T1 anti air, an enemy near the start may only gain access to air scouts by that, while a faction boss gets all of T2 air unlocked - by the same tech.
Yeah greaaaaat. This forum is dead since the release of PA:Titans. @cola_colin would you mind moving it over to the PA:T balancing forums please? After all, the topic is still relevant even with the add-on in place.