One race = perfect balance!

I feel that the room for macro in starcraft 2 is a bit limited, there isn't enough viable strategic options in a specific situation. Some strategies like the 2 base sentry/immortal push or the brood/infestor turtle become too common and make the game a bit repetitive to watch. Maybe that's the reason the micro become much more important in high level play besides the UI/unit AI is not powerful.
BW is better in this aspect, but still not enough for my taste.

Although I know little about Starcraft 2, I've learned that there is in fact a shifting meta-game.

The word "balancing" is often used when it concerns the subtle adjustment of the units' characteristics. To balance something in such a context it is necessary to have small imbalances in the first place. The dynamic nature of the game follows from the game designer's periodical adjustments. So when people say Starcraft 2 is a well-balanced game, I have to understand it as a continuous effort by the game's overseers to vary the inherent imbalances once the meta-game grows stagnant.

Go is balanced in part because of its insurmountable complexity. Although Go has a meta-game, there is no need for any adjustments to its mechanics to keep the game alive. Starcraft 2's balance is clearly a very different kind of balance compared to Go's. The word "balance" has now been established as ambiguous.

What about the hypothetically truly random game of Rock, Paper, Scissors? One of which the win-rate cannot be influenced. It would be completely balanced, but deprived of any meaningful interaction, let alone skill, also utterly futile. When porting similar mechanics over to a more complex game, padded with a layer of illusory influence, such futility can be not readily apparent to the players. Winning the game would come down to luck: a chance to win more than losing in a limited number of games. The danger comes when mistaking such a game of chance, of gambling, for a game of skill.

The point here is that a perfectly balanced game does not imply nor exclude, fun nor skill testing.

Often the most balanced and fun games are ones that are purposefully unbalanced enough that it in turn balances out.

1 Tanks kills all enemy tanks? That's fine, 1 Gunship kills that tank.

Except you wasted dev time building useless tanks.

No, you built tanks to force your opponnent to build a different kind of tank so that you could kill it with your gunship. Just because something dies without damaging anything directly doesn't mean it was a waste of anything.

I will argue that you can have a "perfectly" balanced game where you still can buff or nerf units/strategies and still maintain the "perfection".

Say you have a rock, paper, scissors game where you are awarded different points according to which type you win with like this:
Rock: 30 points
Paper: 20 points
Scissors: 10 points
Draw: 0 points
Now you play a set of say... 10 games and the winner is the one with the most points.
Is this a perfectly balanced game? I would say so.
Will there still be an optimal way to play this game? I don't know. Maybe you should just choose each different type randomly but choose Rock more than the others. I haven't done the math.

Unit balance and strategies can work the same way in a game.
You have units A>B>C>A where A counters B by 150% while B counters C by 100% and C counters A only by 50%.
Strategies A>B>C>A where each strategy has different efficiency.
Even though the relation between the strategies change the game can still be "perfectly" balanced.

The illusion of balance is paramount for competitive games. If you loose because the other guy used a strategy that always win you won`t fill fulfilled even if you are a good sport. That have direct impact on how much fun you have playing against other people. Games are about choices, and if you can only choose one option to win, that can be a issue for many people.

And balance changes in Starcraft 2 are reactions to metagame changes that creates a unbeatable strategy. No intentional change is made to change the metagame into that condition just for the sake of shaking things up. That would piss off most pro players.

Sorry but your example is imbalanced. I may be wrong but scissors would be too weak and probably almost never used (-30/10 compared to -20/30 and -10/20 is very weak). Therefore makes no sense to use rock (you will never win with rock since there`s no scissors) and people would end up playing just paper, getting draws until the end of the match.

By that logic I can play Scissors once and win by just playing Paper the rest of the game. But then the opponent needs to play Scissors once to come back. Maybe I can score a Rock when he tries to go paper putting him even more behind.

Just playing Scissors sounds like a bad strategy unless you can prove it is with math.

What the hell are you guys discussing spr and sc2 for. TA & FA alliance balance strategy couldn't be further from those examples.

My fault. I brought Starcraft 2 on this topic as an example to illustrate balance and how simply having a single unit pool will not mean automatically balance. Don`t get me wrong: a single unit pool is easier to balance and to make many viable strategies and I would like to see it in PA.

I am fine with only one Unitpool. But it would be cool if we could customize them but i think that would go over the budget
Like the Army Painter but a bit deeper with decals ect, to give your personal "faction" the personal touch.

Beside that i wouldnt be suprised with a deep mod ablity for the game that we get enaugh factions from the mod community

I did the math before posting. The net loss from scissors is -6,6; The net loss from the other plays is -3,3. Minus mean that the opponent win points. The risk of playing scissors is not worth the potential win. With scissors out of the table the only way to get points is putting paper, so why would I risk put rock to give points to my opponent?

From a common sense perspective, if somebody have put out paper for 210 turns, you know there is a very very high chance he will put out paper again in the 211th turn, the risk of playing scissors would be worth the potential win in this case, it is same for a 10 turns RPS game if you have played the game with the same opponent for 21 times.

Oops. My mistake. This is what I wanted to say:

Just playing Paper sounds like a bad strategy unless you can prove it is a good strategy with math.

Turns out only paper is not the best strategy. Now I did the math for most cases and here`s the result: In an average match RP wins from everything except P. Maybe later I can calculate if there`s any chance RPS or PS win in random matches. But yeah... Scissors is pretty bad.

I went pretty far back in this thread. Could not find where it turned into this talk.

Back on topic, I just think it would be boring to just have one race and set of units, unless something in-game is available to flavor up your units on the fly. If it were available for both teams, it would be balanced.

Like having units change depending on what planet they were built on?

I like the concept of robots and technology starting from the same commander being relatively the same "faction" every game. Both teams having that same start.

I do, however, like the concept of being able to choose to build units that focus on having more of some features in trade for less of others. Different technology upgrades, different factories, different units, same units with different attachments to the units... whatever it may be to give them a "theme".

I know a lot of you seem to be all for the idea of only having one visual unit per faction but I thought I would at least post to see if I can't change anyone's mind lol

In TA (as you all know) you had the Arm and the Core, I understand the hole aspect of that all the best technology is now being used by both sides, that I feel is a fine aspect.

However I do feel that having them both the same is not true to the Lore of TA personally.
This is because the Core & the Arm hate each other, with a passion & as the introduction says "What began as conflict over the 'transfer of consciousnesses of flesh to machines' into a war which has decimated a million worlds" you can see that the Machines are not just that, they have a living consciousnesses if you will (or at least the commander does)

My point is the Arm & the Core have different styles for a reason, they hate everything about the other, they wouldn't want to look the same (robots you could say wouldn't care about that, but they do have a consciousness - or at least the commanders do & I doubt they'd want their army's the same as the others either)

All I guess I'm trying to say here is that having the unit Pool is a good idea, I just think that both sides should look different visually just as TA was, the Peewee & A.K. were effectively the same unit just textured different, except small differences for balancing reasons

If the Devs ever had chance to make the Factions more different Visually I'd love that
Even the Intimidator & Big Bertha were effectively the same unit, but the variation of the sides made things much more interesting

So far that is my only worry about the game, It looks amazing & I really look forward to playing it!

-Hayd

Well it was only a 1000 year war, who knows how long PA has been going on.