Thanks for your support Brutus, it's really appreciated, mod developping is a hard work and any support from the community give motivation, which is the main work fuel
The required apm for this must be incredible high. Please keep that in mind, if you add even more content. Maybe the game is better playable with a lower unit count? Maybe increase build times?
You are totaly right. Although my goal is to not break all the current game mechanics. So the first 5 minutes gameplay should be kept unchanged from actual. So all the time the players invested in their gameplay skills will be still as precious as before. I think it's about respect for the time they spend on developping their skills. It's respect too for the game creators to build on what their did and not funding a new statement.
So the goal : keep all that is good on this game, and open doors. It doesn't mean that we will enter this door, but we will have an option.
The biggest problem you are talking about is what i m thinking since one year : how can players will be able to micro their unit progression and at the same time keeping their original strategies ? You gave the key and i'm happy that you are coming to the same conclusion : we can do it by changing some rigidity about numbers...
I spend a lot of time watching top players replays (i must have seen about 30+ replays from 1600+ players on seton clush map). I see that players are building a huge numbers of Tech 1 engineers, because it worth for the win. I think that we can have upgrades, technologies, skills to increase build rate in factories so all this time micro management and CPU consuming power can be save. It does not mean necessary that because we have an upgrade available, it must be so easy to do it. Maybe we can spend a part of the factory building rate in increasing its level. So we can acheive the same result of the tech 1 engineer strategy, at the same timing, without the negative counterparts of having 500+ tech 1 engineers burning our CPU power and connection speed.
The same strategy can be done with making 200+ highair aircrafts strikes. We can spend the same amount of mass needed in building 200+ aircrafts forces in making a high skilled small squad aircraft force. Investing the same amount of mass in training pilots in an aircraft school. We may say, is it possible ? yes, it's possible and not so hard to do.
One of the main reproach that have been done to supreme commander is the lack of of charism and a certain amount of coldness (Starcraft 2 has this charism). It's because we build huge amount of units and send then to death with no affective. We can add charism and humanity with mod.
I'm totaly open minded on what we can do. I think that FA with the creative lua potential given to modding and the CPU power available has the potentiel to be the deepest tactical and strategy game of this generation.