I don't think reclaim is the problem. If you want to push bases at little or no risk you just build megalith or shielded mobile artillery. People that complain about mass gifts are those who look at poor late game decision making and then say its bad.
The number one reason T4 units die on push is because of 0 air control and getting bombed.
The number one reason T3 Spam dies on push is that they walk into shielded T4.
As it stands for a defensive base the only broken thing is the T2 artillery as that counters mobile artillery significantly. T2 artillery is already very expensive though.
I'd suggest decreasing T2 artillery fire rate, increasing its dmg so the dps is the same, and making it more accurate. That way T2 artillery is still useful, as a firebase unit and defense against fatty, but its not so broken as to render Mobile artillery useless.
Buffing t2 mobile shields would also greatly assisting sieges.
Also if you are truly spamming t3 armies then why is it so hard to send t1 engi at the back of it to pick up the reclaim?
What happens is people (especially high rated players) are complaining cause they'rein a team game where some random unknown 1000 builds monkeys and feeds 20k mass at a time. The reason they want to remove reclaim is so they don't have to deal with unknown randomers making their life hard.
It has nothing to do with balance.
Reclaim massively rewards aggression as it means you get to reclaim some of the mass you spent on units to win an area, therefore recouping the investment cost. Without it, then to take map control is significantly more costly than it otherwise would be, and this actually favours turtling.
Could not agree with this more. This seems like an idea for a change in response to bad play. You should easily be able to be sending engies while you're on offense to pick up reclaim along the way. People not doing that is just a weird mistake/oversight.
People also shouldn't just faceplant their T4s directly into the enemy, which you see all the time, at least in ratings 1200-1900. Using T4s badly isn't a reason to nerf reclaim, it's a reason to use them better. It's also more interesting if T4s actually stay involved around the map for a while rather than being suicide attackers.
Lastly, the premise that t3/t4 reclaim is fundamentally different than t1 seems flawed to me. If t1 reclaim is healthy, then I'd argue it's the same basic situation. On t1 if you faceplant your whole army into your opponents base and fail at an assault, leaving him all of the reclaim, you likely just lost the game on that play as well. It may be more blatant and feel worse on t4, but 2-3k mass at t1 is just as important as 20k mass on t3/t4.
I think this is an idea to fix a problem that doesn't exist.