Starting Units

The standard TA and SC setup was to have just the Commander spawn and you build an army from there. However, FA had a mode where you'd start with your four mexes and a couple power generators (land factory too?) and SC2 had all commanders spawn in with 2 engineers by default.

Given that commanders aren't "gating in" anymore AFAIK, the multiworld nature of the game, and that just the commander being there often leads to a boring first couple of minutes where you're issuing from an optimal build order, I think it would be nice to see some sort of standard spawn complement other than "heres the commander, have fun".

In skirmish, I would make it an option raging from commander only, to engineer support to possibly even getting some TA style bodyguards and then finally a basic base.

As for galactic war, could make a good package deal for assaulting the harder systems.

The lander the commander uses. Could it be some sort of egg?

Filled with juicy yoke?

I like the idea of having varying levels of a "starting bonus", but the default should be just the commander.

Mike

Agreed^

So an egg slider in the lobby? Good idea.

Small, medium, large or XXL yolk?

Also an option for brown or white!

Mike

it would be cool to have a game mode where you start with only one engineer, hence no commander

Another problem I have for the beginning of the game is that it's also a tedious exercise of APM. There is one or a few ideal build orders, but you have to follow it as fast as possible to not be left behind.

What I'd like to see is that before the game unpauses, players can queue orders. Ideally, the buildtime of the first buildings (say, the first X mexes and generators, and the first T1 factory) would be null (as seen in SupCom 2 or Zero-K, for example), and possibly a way to record a few templates .
This way, it should not only avoid the boring few minutes, but also the initial unnecessary APM-race.

Actually, I like starting with an ACU from scratch...

Especially early in game if you use a good build-order you gain certain advantages against lazy players. ^^
Since we have bases to build it belongs in the game to start from scratch... but an option (like in FA) would be nice for certain players.

Some time's its nice to start with a leg up, gets the game going faster and can be very good for new players to have something to defend them selves with.

Perhaps the lander-bot thing the commander lands in could break up on re-entry, dropping chunks of metal, the size of which are dependent on your "Extra starting mass" setting for the game?

Would save map (sorry, planet) designers having to put rocks everywhere, and give the economy a little jump start.
Of course, for hardcore TA/SC style, that value would be set to 0, so the commander only has what's in his backpack

Commander starts are only boring if the initial setup phase offers no interesting decisions and boils down to a few optimum build orders which become rote. Warzone 2100 NTW games demonstrate how awful this can get.

^this

So I was thinking, what if you were able to build packed structures? That is, some truck/van-like unit that can do one thing which is convert itself into a specific structure at a high rate of speed and no cost. Then you could give players a variable number of "points" tied to egg size which they could spend on a limited selection of packed structures to pre-deploy (maybe... cheap/weak PD, energy generation solutions, mass generation solutions, and the weakest kind of each factory?). If nothing else, this vastly speeds up the rote best build because you just pick the best combo of packed units and deploy them en mass. Ideally there would be work done to prevent that though.

The concept as a whole would need spinning off into its own thread, but I'd only do that if there was interest in discussion.

Considering that the planets will be procedurally generated it could be possible that you play on a new planet in every game:
When should the player have enough time to look at the planet he started on and the surrounding planets?
If you do it like thorneel suggested the players could perhaps have time to queue build orders before the match starts and still have some time to access the strategical implications of the terrain.
However if setting up the base takes a while and isn't too micro heavy you could also have spare time there to look around.

Pretty sure this was touched on in one of the recent livestreams.
IIRC the general sentiment was there's no stopping the player-base finding optimal starts but the goal is to make as many options viable as possible.

Y'know, I was thinking the idea would eat up a fair bit of time with regards to developing the UI and giving players the option to lay out their base in the lobby and so on.. and then I remembered that it's going to be an HTML interface, which means that the person hosting the server would be able to offer it as a mod really easily.

Imagine joining the server and seeing the planets as they rotate, and you can immediately select a landing zone and lay out the first few steps of your base - when the game starts your commander drops in and your first few orders are already running.

Note for Neutrino - please let us see / interact with the map from the lobby

I think varied terrain and locale plays into this as well.

Not so sure this is a good idea myself.

You'd have to place pretty strict limits on it to not disadvantage the last person to join the lobby.
Which means it essentially becomes a separate pre-planning phase that you might as well roll back in to the game proper.

What might be better is the ability to pre-configure your initial build orders and have it auto-start.
The game would need to guarantee a minimum amount of free space (say equal to a Comm's build radius) around you landing site.