Hello Everyone,
I'd like to make the case for an unlimited* unit cap option in ranked, custom games.
First off, why are unit caps implemented in games at all? The two main reasons that come to mind are first, to limit slow down and second, as an incentive to attack.
The probably most popular title using a unit cap for these exact purposes is, of course, Starcraft. The unit cap in Starcraft is 200 and, with a limit that low, fulfills it's purposes flawlessly.
The simulation speed in Starcraft never drops and players are not only incentivized to attack, but "supply" as it's called in that game plays an integral part of the game, not only when the unit cap is reached.
In fact, it is so essential, that the supply counter uses the same amount of UI space, as the other two main resources. As such, supply, and by extension the unit cap, is a vital part of Starcraft game design. Removing it, or even changing it slightly, would make Starcraft completely unrecognizable.
Compare this to FAF: Excluding campaign missions, essentially all games on FAF are already played as if there were no unit cap. Settings like 1.5k unit cap and "share unit cap at death to allies" are active in almost all team games, from noob to pro alike. The "supply counter" in FAF is a minuscule part of the score screen, tugged far away from our two main resources, mass and energy.
As it is so seldomly reached, our unit cap neither limits slow down, nor serves as an incentive to attack. Even worse, if it IS reached, you often don't even realize you have reached it, as the message telling you so doesn't pop up reliably.
So what does actually happen? You stop spending your mass for 20 seconds, before you realize what's wrong, and then you have to search around the map to ctrl+k superfluous units or give a part of your army to your ally. Both are decidedly not fun and, because hitting the unit cap happens irregularly, it will hit you by surprise every. frigging. time.
Don't even get me started on the times in which your teammate gets sniped late in a full-share game and his army gets transferred to two players, not one, because the guy with the highest score didn't have enough unit cap to spare..
As such, I'd propose an unlimited* unit cap option so that we can finally leave behind the vestiges of the past and, more importantly, further improve the already great game that FAF has become.
tl;dr: The unit cap in Supreme Commander serves no purpose anymore and hitting it results in bad game design. An unlimited* unit cap option would solve this.
*: I am aware that literally unlimited is not possible with current, finite, technology, but I'd gladly settle for 65535, or whatever the underlying software limit actually is.