So, yesterday or the day before I played a game that actually saw naval units get some use (random planet generator herped a derp and gave us a Terran that was literally half water; as in, one whole hemisphere was a giant ocean). I noticed that the ships seemed incredibly fragile. Destroyers were getting one-shotted by T1 bombers, and that giant battleship thingy - Leviathan? - took maybe four or five hits. Maybe it's just an adjustment I need to make, but ships just seem too fragile for their cost. I'm used to Supreme Commander, where naval assets are expensive and take forever to build, but can soak up significant firepower.
Pretty much Alpha, just think of the current balance stuff to be more about creating a semi-reasonable play experience to keep the 'Players' busy while Uber and the 'Testers' get stuff working. Given how balance is so incredibly interconnected between everything it'd be silly to put a huge amount of effort into balancing when a goodly chunk of the gameplay(Orbital and Interplanetary play) aren't even available yet you know? Mike
Something else I just reminded myself of, even once we have the Orbital and Interplanetary stuff, we'll prolly be waiting until Beta before we start getting a properly fleshed out Unit list, and while you don't need the full unit list to start on balance, I would imagine that you need more than have we have so far in the Alpha. Mike
We want a lobby wherewe can customize our units, like that one in Spore!!! It's pretty much impossible, right? ~evolve
I wouldn't say it's impossible, but I get eh feeling you don't quite grasp all the worked needed for such a system and what it means for gameplay, it's been covered before multiple times before, a Search should bring it up. Mike
That's like saying you can start balancing Starcraft before Marines are implemented. Of course game design is a very iterative process. Problems with a unit can be solved by working the current roster just as much as by adding to it.