One race = perfect balance!

One Faction pigeon holds you to only a few strategies also. the ability to have a little variety is vastly appreciated and different factions suit peoples personalities. i dont think one faction is a killer to the game but i prefer many.

This is not true by itself.
There is gonna be different types of planets, terrain types, maybe different terrain specific factories like vehicles, hovers and bots so there is gonna be plenty of different strategies that you will have to master in order to be good at the game.
If there will be diverse strategical options in every setup is another question.

More factions doesn't necessarily mean more diverse strategical options in every matchup. Faction A vs faction B might still end up with unit spam X vs unit spam Y if the game isn't carefully balanced.

The point of doing only 1 faction(or as neutrino said one unit pool) is that it will be cheaper to make, allowing more time/money for balancing and making it a large unit pool with a great deal of variety, so saying it's going to force you into a small number of strategies is just shortsighted in the long run, and of course, like TA, plans are to expand the unit pool after release as well.

Mike

How you play the game is what defines your personality. The existence of factions has little relevance to this, and if anything, puts a hard limit on the number of different personalities.

If it was starcraft i would agree, but its not. Supcom wasent limited to "a few" strategies if both sides played the same faction, neither will PA (hopefully xD).

Offcourse i prefear multiple unit pools too, but i disagree that having one will limit your choices.

They've already said they're only doing one faction

*They've said "one unit pool" not one faction. (Yes i know your talking about technological factions, but still).

They could add factions with bonuses to different things for example, and still have one "unit pool".

Start with one race to don't have balance problem... Focus on the game... Then add more race!

One unit pool is technically one faction, unless they really different by hidden stats.

Chess has one faction, so winning strategies are the same, no matter if you play black or white.

If you have more factions and they are really different (has some advantages and some disadvantages), then winning strategies are not the same and, which is more important, they are dependent not only on faction you are playing, but also on faction you are playing against. And you are playing 20 vs. 20 game with 4 factions presented than there is no "winning strategy", actually. And that's perfect.

You can't achieve the same with single pool. Big pool will make a greater number of possible strategies, but it will not make them dependent over your opposition. So it's a nerd heaven.

But making few factions good is very complex and very expensive project involving a lot of play-testing. And that's the case when it's better to have one good faction rather then few bad.

First, I'll get this stupid pedantry that we're all doing with "factions" out of the way: Chess has two factions. If there was only one faction, they wouldn't be fighting each other.

Now, onto the meat of the argument. The number of available strategies isn't specifically dependent on the number of unit pools, it's dependent on the total number of unit roles. The thing about multiple pools is that it generally allows for a greater number of unit roles; as you can have "strong tank" for faction A, and a "fast tank" faction B, and they'll both get used, cause the player for the applicable faction has no choice.

With that said, PA can potentially still have "strong tank" and "fast tank" and let the player choose which one they would like to use for their specific situation. The issue becomes making "strong tank" and "fast tank" useful. This issue shouldn't be underestimated though. It's sort of like taking all the units in star craft, putting them in one unit pool and tweaking their stats to make them all useful. Obviously a difficult task.

WTF? No! One faction gives you ALL the strategies. Take Starcraft, mix all the units into one pool, and suddenly you can start with a zergling-rush, transfer into a meaty protoss push, and defend your base with siege tanks and bunkers. All kinds of variety and options!

Of course, Starcraft is a poor example, because its gameplay is built around paper-scissor-rock tactics rather than situational tactics, which TA did a lot better. But the point is that with one unified unit pool, you have many available options for how you can choose to play, and you can dynamically change that play style at any point. (Don't forget, the unified pool will have a LOT more units, so most players won't be building them all, just a subset that they feel like working with at the moment.)

And it will lost a lot of "Terran vs Zerg", "Terran vs Zern and Protoss", etc combinations.

Factions/unit pools are not only about advantages, but also about disadvantages. And there is no advantages if there is no disadvantages (obviously).

Also, multiple pools are simpler to master than one pool. In case of multiple pool you need to know strong and weak points of each pool. In case of one pool you need to know strong and weak points of each unit.

By enforcing single pool you just game like "you see heavy tanks incoming? Build fast tanks?"
"Enemy attacking with heavy navy battleships with heavy air support? Build submarines with AA".

Each unit, each combination has it's counter-unit/counter-combination. It's not anymore the game of strategy, it's game of memory, recon and fast-clicking (multi-tasking).

Multiple pools do not solve that, BTW, starcraft is the proof.

By multiple pools you enforce additional restrictions like "heavy navy of your opponent is more powerful than yours, but it's middle navy is weak. Rush early". Opponent knows the same, so he shall choose between fast-progressing with risk being rushed or defensive tactics. In one pool he always know that he has similar middle navy, so no choice.

You cannot compare Starcraft to Supreme Commander/TA.

They are fundamentally different games, that it would be a similar comparison of Doom to planetside 2.

Too many small details.

Well, don't forget that it's more ideal to balance units per situation rather than vs other units.

For example, those heavy tanks coming? Sure you could try to raid them with fast tanks, but you can also take advantage of their slow movement with artillery, or ambush them in a narrow chokepoint where they would take much more damage than a lighter, quicker force. Bombers also work wonders.

It all depends on the situation, and realizing that those tanks were made for a purpose. There is no real "hard" counter to the tanks, just situations where you have the advantage against them and situations where you do not. You want to choose to engage them in the situations you will win. (I think there was a book written about this once long ago. It was about war, or something . . .)

This topic is really a matter of taste. Perfect balance is kind of boring to me. If I want to play a perfectly balanced game, I can play chess (I like chess). This is kind of a war simulation and war isn't balanced. Every faction has its pro and cons. That is what makes it interesting and challenging. I fear that with one unit pool everybody will just stick to best units or best strategy. I don't need diversity like in star craft, but give me what i had with TA or SC. Seriously, perfect is just boring.

If there are only a few "best units" then it's not properly balanced. That's not a failing of the "one unit pool" concept.

that has nothing to do with the number of unit pools or factions and everything to do with poor balance.

Mike

And how about capturing? I loved it in TA. It was great when you had the chance to capture an enemy's factory and then built all the other stuff from them. With one unit pool... that option is gone.

What about it? It's never been a main gamplay feature of RTS games, just a neat gimmick.

Mike

Still it was an optional strategy that some people used in right situation. It wasn't a main feature but to me it was great and I would miss that feature