Balance Suggestion: Make ACUs TA style; mass-effectively counterable in the early game by units other than themselves, but much more useful as builders. 33% HP nerf, 1.5x build speed buff.
FA is a game with perhaps the largest number of strategic and tactical options available to you. For every unit and unit combination, there are several different ways to efficiently kill it, and several ways to efficiently kill those counters. And so on and so forth. This works really well for the vast majority of the game; it's relatively balanced, with few true "I win" button units or tactics.
The exception to this rule is the ACU. There is no cost-efficient counter to an ACU other than another ACU. In my opinion, this is a flawed design - the ACU is, in chess terms, both your king and queen for the large majority of most 1v1s. On smaller and even midsized maps, sending your ACU into combat is such a dominant strategy that it is almost mandatory. This is partially evidenced by the dearth of submissions to the "do not use your ACU offensively on a 5x5km map" challenge.
I propose modifying the ACU's purpose to maintain offensive ACU use as a viable tactic, but one that can now be countered by other tactics. This will greatly increase strategic diversity, ultimately providing more interesting and varied gameplay.
I totally agree with him on his analysis of ACU impact on gameplay and I would like to suggest another possibility to address it :
Give all T1 units:
110 hp rise
+5 mass cost
+50 nrj cost
except scouts = hp x2 no cost increase
Advantages:
- T1 more useful late in game
- ACU still difficult to kill but can't turn the game by itself.
I would also suggest :
Increase in T3 upgrade time and costs.
Advantages:
- Give T2 (and T1) more breathing space
- Increase need to expand territorially
- Slows Expe race.
