I kinda agree with thomas on the point that the game is pretty linear/predictable and there's not a lot of variation that you can do strategy wise. Nowhere near the lvl of other rts games that is anyway. I do not however think that making factions tech stages and/or units more balanced towards each other is something that negatively impacts that. I'm not saying here that all units should become similar to eachother. I'm saying each unit should have their own unique strength that's good in atleast 1 scenario.
If we would go back to old balance then there would be tons of units that would literally never be made and could simply be removed from the game. Aeon t2 stage was so bad you would always rush t3 land. I'm not saying the old t3 land rush power spike for aeon was a bad thing, but the lack of t2 certainly was.
In an ideal world we would have both together, and it is kinda true to some aspect that some of the strongest units were made weaker to be more balanced. Maybe too much, idk, it's hard to tell, but i still do think that some of them were more than justified considering their dominance.
I'm not sure what your (thomas) idea is for an sacu change that would make is less linear to fit in the tech paths that exist in the game. It kinda feels like an empty shout that everyone agrees with. Let's make these units special and unique so they're great to play with! Sure, how?
Personally my ideal future vision of the game is that it gets unit upgrades, armor types and weapon types all balanced to make the game a lot more complex and interesting. I wouldn't even mind adding new units. You can make snipers have special penetration dmg against heavy armored units like percies while making them tickle titans, you can add an expensive upgrade to give spearheads a homing ability, etc. The problem however with this together with other suggestions that were proposed in this topic is if people even want this and from the general understanding i have the answer tends to be no. It's to leave the base game as it is aside from some minor balance changes. This aside from the fact that making such things will cost a tremendous amount of time and manpower which faf in general doesn't have a lot of.
One remark to the OP: I honestly don't know why you even wrote this. Balance team members, both past and current, tend to be evolved in tons of different areas in the community. They make youtube content, cast for FAFlive on twitch (that was co created by a balance team member), make maps, are in the matchmaker team, are faf moderators, host tourneys (some donate their own money), you can continue. Most are in the faf association as well.
Now why do you think these people tend to be on the balance team. Do you think this is because they care about faf and want to help it in some way? Nah no way right. They're just evil dictators that want to change the balance in their favor to win some more games.
At the end of the day everyone spends their free time to try and help improve the game. Now you can disagree with the changes made, but instead of screaming like this maybe it would be more usefull to start a proper discussion where you use proper arguments instead of going full conspiracy theory.
