Now that I've seen videos of PA game play I worry that battles will be won by who ever has more units involved and more long range units able to engage them, in other words by whoever has more fire power. Personally I would like there to be more strategy involved than "greater fire power=victory". In a battle there are many strategic variables that effect the outcome, such as; terrain, timing and formations, these factors are what allow a small force to destroy a larger one. Most battle strategy comes down to positioning your army so that it can inflict more damage on the enemy then the enemy can inflict on it. this is accomplished by surrounding the enemy or holding choke points or spreading out and evading and forcing the enemy to split his forces as well and then converging on these smaller armies one at a time, In other words their is no limit to the ways this can be done. the fact that most units in PA seem to be A.) fast moving, B.) long ranged, and C.) able to fire while on the move, makes it so that in a battle every unit in one army is able to attack every unit in the other army. this defeats the purpose of flanking, of splitting your forces and attacking from both sides, and of using the terrain to your advantage (not entirely). I think that in order to put more strategy into battles PA units in general should not be able to converge on each other, and should have shorter range. Also more units should do splash damage with the effected zone being a line rather than a circle in order to increase efficiency against enemies in enfilade, long range attacks should be blocked by high features in the terrain and range should be increased when a units elevation is higher than it's targets'. I don't care if any of these suggestions are implemented or not, I only hope that when PA comes out the battles are more strategic than what I've seen so far, which by the way is next to nothing. I know that It's too early to judge the game play but the lack of strategy I described is something that I've noticed in a lot of RTS games lately and seeing the early game play in PA just got me worrying about it.
Balance isn't final. Not all units are implemented yet. Air, Naval and Orbital not yet fully implemented yet. Multiple planets not yet implemented. Not all weapons Implemented yet. So on and so forth. Mike
Oh man, this stage is all about breaking balance. I fully plan to have games where I only use bots, or only use arty bots, or only gunships, and see if I can win the game using those avenues, which ideally I shouldn't. Balance is going to be raw at this point, and testing it will be very important. And fun to test
Also note that formations haven't been implemented yet. Those will no doubt make a big difference in the way the game is played.
Not only is the footage that has been shown pre-alpha, but the players are just messing around. It's not a serious game. They are just showing off what they've got done so far. I'm sure non-deathball strategies will work as well.
I share OP's concern insomuch as Forged Alliance had necessarily mixed unit roles that weren't that exciting. For example, your basic assault unit was usually your raiding unit and the skirmisher was usually also your artillery. To be fair PA will probably have less problems with the two tier system. This is good, with the right approach we may not even need that though. That is, instead of hap hazard stats with constant ad hoc units an approach similar to Zero-K's unit classes would give us a complete starting point.
The alpha isn't even out yet. As such, we cannot judge any gameplay videos yet (they are all pre-alpha stuff). Although your points are interesting.
I think that without the three-tier exponential economy of SupCom/FA, there is little reason that one player would get so massively ahead of the other that steamrolling is going to be the most common way to win. But yes, we will have to see.
