How to make factions more unique/gameplay more sharp

Dear Community,

even though I don't have the time playing anymore, I read the forums from time to time. Reading the balance discussion, I found sentiments like this (I picked two posts, feel free to see more in the thread):

@zeldafanboy said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Almost everything in this patch is moving toward homogenization. Most of the navy and torp bomber stuff is good, but increasing vision range, lowering the variance of structure HP (although its good SAMs are getting nerfed they were crazy tanky for no reason), making the Cybran com tanky, reducing hoverbombing yet again, removing GC omni, lowering laser DPS... eh.

@blodir said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

I mean I honestly agree with the sentiment. It isn't just the uniqueness of the factions, but nerfing things that have strong powerspikes dulls the game as a whole. Some changes in beta (like decreasing the hp of mex/storage, mass cost of strats, and so on) hopefully counteract this effect by making the game a bit sharper. Hopefully in future balance patches we get to look more at creating greater factional differences where it really creates interesting gameplay (unlike mex hp differences) and perhaps new powerspikes.

To be honest, I think powerspikes are a rather poor way of introducing unique gameplay. If your only answer to "how do I make units interesting?" is "make them op", you probably have a problem in design.

Thinking about this, I got some ideas. They are mostly brainstormed and my play experience is limited so I dunno how feasible they are. Please just take them as injection of creativity from the outside, I have no idea how to actually put numbers to it.

How about nerfing scouting? It seems relatively cheap and easy to get a good, accurate impression of the battlefield. Maybe there could be more room in the existing systems to create distinct play styles for factions using the cloak, stealth, jamming and speed. While one faction needs to rely on just being faster (e.g. Titans), another might be slower but stealthy. A third faction might have fewer tricks but better scouting.
If you rework radar, visual and omni, maybe you can find more active gameplay for cloak, stealth, jamming and speed.

The second Idea is somewhat interlocked with the first. Maybe we can make hidden firebases a little more viable? ACU drops and firebases in unusual places certainly make for sharp and exciting gameplay. I'm not sure how to achieve that, a nerf to scouting would probably help. Maybe a wider divide in speed for raiding units and main frontline units? Maybe even some changes to the roles of static defense buildings, but that rabbit hole is way too deep for me.

Take this for what it is. A brainstorm of someone who is not actively playing. I have no idea how to put numbers to this, I just had some ideas and wanted to share them. Maybe something useful will come of it.

Regards,
Chief

From a technical point you don't want to reduce intel too much, of any type. The reason is that intel works in a grid-like fashion, even though all range rings are rendered as perfect circles. I recall there was an image by @Hdt80bro to illustrate this perfectly, I'll update this post when I find it

With credits to Hdt80bro:

The chunk of red walls is copied on the right, but then with intel taken into account. There's a deceiver (stealth field) in the center of the right 'chunk' of walls. There's a few interesting observations to make:

• Intel is grid-based
• The cells of vision intel is 2x2
• The cells of other intel is 4x4

And separately, intel is updated every 3 seconds or so. That is why fast moving units (such as scout planes) do not 'immediately' see the units, but they appear 'below' the scout as it moves over previously unknown structures