Just some ideas:
If bombers had a second larger aoe ring, e.g. doing 75 damage, they'd be able to kill all engies in at most two passes. The inner circle ring size could also be nerfed try and keep balance vs large armies. Now, if a bomber drops 4 bombs, it either gets 2-4 kills instead of 0-4. It's more consistent but not 100% predictable.

Another change, instead of increasing second ring size, is to shrink the inner aoe size and adding partial tracking to bombs, so they always hit with at least the weak aoe against engies. Bombers would be a bit worse against groups from the smaller inner ring, but hit more consistently.

One of these could also be combined with engies having larger turning circles to be worse at dodging, then maybe aoe wouldn't need to be changed to hit.

Keeping an inner damage ring with the same damage as current bombers would help to maintain current balance against larger, stationary, or unmicroed targets.

Map gen with unrevealed terrain. I mean I want to see people play it. Do another show match or something, but a ranked que could be interesting as well.

@Pearl12 think it was just for faction diversity (yep there it is again). I think at first, it was changed, as @Nari said, to be a short range mavor. It was half price, ~110k mass, and had about 8-10km range. Since no other faction had a 'cheap game ender', cybran had an uncontested win condition on 10km maps. It also overlapped with t3 arty at ~70k mass and outperformed. It was also useless on 20km maps, due to said short range, giving cybran no game ender on it.

But anyway, cybran needed a game ender different from mavor, and since scathis is a rapid fire artillery, they exaggerated what made it different to make it even more different, i.e. loads more aoe, very low accuracy, very low damage per shot (compared to mavor); this matched the style of cybrans other arties, treb and disruptor. I think the volley idea was just something someone came up with and it stuck.

I personally think it looks dumb for the canon to spin so fast. If they shot cluster projectiles instead, like how their bomber shoots 6 bombs, then it would look way less stupid and not like a modded unit. This change would even keep it's shot per volley the same. Also, it would split early unlike the aoen rapid fire.

I think a tourney only elo system could help solve this. I'm also curious what rating some people would have when only including super tryhard games.

I'm on the realism side for this. It's also counter intuitive to casual players. I'd like for subs to be balanced around killing things - high alpha with long reload and higher dps for example. It gives them some stopping power against frigs snowballing. Lower sub speed could also slow down navy. A radar decrease on frigs seems reasonable. At t1 it's a bit excessive, and at t2 air scouts, static sonar, and cruisers can do the job.

Trying to diversify frigs into an intel unit and a damage unit seems like a band-aid solution from only having two units. From a spam perspective, it's like making moles and mantis different units. The gameplay is still spammy as heck. Really there should be more units, but It seems like the game's fun is back loaded after the t1 stage, but then you also get stuck at t1 due to how expensive it is. With only two units (one unit) to balance things around, there isn't much choice but to spam.

The boring t1 stage and slow start are probably the worst things about FA, and maybe all rts too. I find I tend to play other games that get into the action quicker than fa, and when I do engage with fa, I'd rather watch a stream so I can skip the boring part.

Land also has terrain, pd, and the acu, not to mention t1 navy is resistant to air. Imagine t1 land without the acu or pd on an open map? Maybe trying to balance sub groups to focus navy interactions, like how acus do, and having unscouted subs slow down enemy forces, like pds, could help give more varied unit interactions and strategies. The interaction could be like othuums and snipers, but more about water vision than range. Frig diversity in jamming and torp defence also effects navy a lot more.

Trying to have both range bots and tanks be viable front line units seems hard to balance. They are much faster giving them raiding potential. T3 uef has titans and percies, but they have a large cost difference. You could try making them more expendable and cheaper to help with micro mistakes, as well as allowing less mass donation during raids.

On the topic of paper armour, did you know the ravager has the same hp/mass as a mongoose?

Trying to have both range bots and tanks be viable front line units seems hard to balance. They are much faster giving them raiding potential. T3 uef has titans and percies, but they have a large cost difference. You could try making them more expendable and cheaper to help with micro mistakes, as well as allowing less mass donation during raids.

On the topic of paper armour, did you know the ravager has the same hp/mass as a mongoose?

I think they aren't as important in games where you don't have a lot to manage since you aren't being pressured on multi tasking as much. Building tmd in your one and only base is mostly just habit. When both players have a lot to manage it rewards the one with better coordination from raiding the tmd and setting up the build power for the tml.

I think it can also help the mass donation problem since you only need to kill the tmd in a base rather than all the mexs. You wouldn't even need to send tanks into the enemy base if you used snipers or arty to kill them.

@angelofd347h
Differences are mostly in rate of fire. Sera shoots almost 4 in the time aeon shoots 3. Uef is about half way between them. For completion, cybran shoots 4 in the time sera shoots 3. You can see the cost increases as the rate of fire does.

I'm on the realism side for this. It's also counter intuitive to casual players. I'd like for subs to be balanced around killing things - high alpha with long reload and higher dps for example. It gives them some stopping power against frigs snowballing. Lower sub speed could also slow down navy. A radar decrease on frigs seems reasonable. At t1 it's a bit excessive, and at t2 air scouts, static sonar, and cruisers can do the job.

Trying to diversify frigs into an intel unit and a damage unit seems like a band-aid solution from only having two units. From a spam perspective, it's like making moles and mantis different units. The gameplay is still spammy as heck. Really there should be more units, but It seems like the game's fun is back loaded after the t1 stage, but then you also get stuck at t1 due to how expensive it is. With only two units (one unit) to balance things around, there isn't much choice but to spam.

The boring t1 stage and slow start are probably the worst things about FA, and maybe all rts too. I find I tend to play other games that get into the action quicker than fa, and when I do engage with fa, I'd rather watch a stream so I can skip the boring part.

Land also has terrain, pd, and the acu, not to mention t1 navy is resistant to air. Imagine t1 land without the acu or pd on an open map? Maybe trying to balance sub groups to focus navy interactions, like how acus do, and having unscouted subs slow down enemy forces, like pds, could help give more varied unit interactions and strategies. The interaction could be like othuums and snipers, but more about water vision than range. Frig diversity in jamming and torp defence also effects navy a lot more.

@Pearl12 think it was just for faction diversity (yep there it is again). I think at first, it was changed, as @Nari said, to be a short range mavor. It was half price, ~110k mass, and had about 8-10km range. Since no other faction had a 'cheap game ender', cybran had an uncontested win condition on 10km maps. It also overlapped with t3 arty at ~70k mass and outperformed. It was also useless on 20km maps, due to said short range, giving cybran no game ender on it.

But anyway, cybran needed a game ender different from mavor, and since scathis is a rapid fire artillery, they exaggerated what made it different to make it even more different, i.e. loads more aoe, very low accuracy, very low damage per shot (compared to mavor); this matched the style of cybrans other arties, treb and disruptor. I think the volley idea was just something someone came up with and it stuck.

I personally think it looks dumb for the canon to spin so fast. If they shot cluster projectiles instead, like how their bomber shoots 6 bombs, then it would look way less stupid and not like a modded unit. This change would even keep it's shot per volley the same. Also, it would split early unlike the aoen rapid fire.

A seat in the faf association

Just some ideas:
If bombers had a second larger aoe ring, e.g. doing 75 damage, they'd be able to kill all engies in at most two passes. The inner circle ring size could also be nerfed try and keep balance vs large armies. Now, if a bomber drops 4 bombs, it either gets 2-4 kills instead of 0-4. It's more consistent but not 100% predictable.

Another change, instead of increasing second ring size, is to shrink the inner aoe size and adding partial tracking to bombs, so they always hit with at least the weak aoe against engies. Bombers would be a bit worse against groups from the smaller inner ring, but hit more consistently.

One of these could also be combined with engies having larger turning circles to be worse at dodging, then maybe aoe wouldn't need to be changed to hit.

Keeping an inner damage ring with the same damage as current bombers would help to maintain current balance against larger, stationary, or unmicroed targets.

Map gen with unrevealed terrain. I mean I want to see people play it. Do another show match or something, but a ranked que could be interesting as well.

Command C&C3 Kanes Wrath

Strategic faction diversity, i.e. this faction is better at raiding or this one is better at defence, is bad for map diversity. As a result, maps need to balance the factions rather than the factions balancing against themselves. An example is any map that gets too big not being balanced because the raiding faction's strength is over expressed. Each map needs to allow each faction to express it's strengths equally by allowing it's strategies to work or the map isn't balanced. In a way it prevents stupid map designs from being playable but I don't think raising the mapping skill floor makes map makers better.
Starcraft is another example where map variety is limited. A map with more than one entrance to the base is not even considered. Starting resources are also always the same. Even the dead area behind a base needs to be balanced so air units can't hide in it too well. This was around HOTS btw in case it's somehow radically changed since but I doubt it.

FA doesn't have much problem since the factions copy each other a lot but it's a reasonable thing to remember. Diversity is different ways to do the same thing not one faction doing something another can't or doing it much better than the others because 'it's the attacking faction'. I'm not saying all the factions should be clones, but when they are different other factions should have a means to compete in a 'balanced enough' way.
One example I personally dislike in FA is T1 hover asymmetry since it prevents a lot of 5x5 map designs from being viable that could otherwise work. I'd prefer if all or no factions had T1 hover. Even just hover labs for uef/cyb could help ease the pain of hover on 5x5. I know this stuff is more suited for a mod, it's just an example of the idea.

Someone mentioned global skills like artillery strikes. C&C3 KW has these and they are awful. Faction with the best 'one clicks' (since they win the game in one click) also has the fastest units. If you spread your army you get picked off, if you clump all they all die to the kill button. The game also has other cancer like making a group of units invincible but they can't shoot but units can crush others in this game, so you just have some stupid invincible units driving around your base like a bunch of drunks that you can't kill for however long the ability lasts trying to crash into everything. Also there's an aoe skill for 'cybran' that gives all units in it's range stealth/cloak permanently, and this game has something of an equivalent to T4s. You have to use game audio to hear T4s driving around your base so they don't drive over all your units and crush them. You can probably guess I don't play this game anymore.

The FA campaign did have some extra abilities that added some fun like unit reinforcements, a nuke, the princesses eye spy thing. Maybe galactic war could have these support powers. UEF could summon a novax for 30 seconds every 5 mins with an ACU upgrade. 8v8 could then be 8 novax appearing over you and killing you instantly for being so stupid as to invade the defence faction on their home turf. Cybran could have Brackman hack the other players computer preventing them from playing for 10s as well as resetting their hotkeys. And aeon could drop an acu anywhere on the field that instantly blows up for 2.5k damage like a mercy but an acu instead since they are the terrorist faction.

I think a tourney only elo system could help solve this. I'm also curious what rating some people would have when only including super tryhard games.