Response to henryv
  • I don't think any AI summons a dragon. The manual has some very specific wording when it comes to what is Strong or Weak against Dragons, it always says "Player Dragon". That suggests to me that there may never be any AI Dragons.
  • I agree that the AI when it comes to ships is terrible, they only seem to make transports, never any attack ships, and they use the transports mostly as attack ships, pretty much never as actual transports. The naval AI needs a lot of work.
  • I think 35 Recruits is already an exorbitant, too high price for spawning as a Dragon, and you think it should be even higher if you die?

    If you penalize the player even more for dying, you will force the players into always picking a skill loadout that includes self-healing and the shield or worse, discourage them from spawning as the Dragon at all, which would be a crime.

    Even worse is justifying it with appeals to "realism". It's a Dragon with a Jetpack! What part of that seems "realistic" to you? Arguments should be based on "how will this make the game more fun in general". Fun is a billion times more important than realism.


Balancing
- All three types of mines seem underpowered.
  • The upgrades that let you plant mines are more expensive than the ones which reveal them (and that upgrade has a secondary use of revealing cloaked units!)
  • They take 20 seconds between plantings - too long to sit around and wait, too short to do much with the rest of your army.
  • They require a lot of micro to plant effectively, and that's just for one very small area! The maps are huge. The game's pace is too fast to make planting mines worthwhile.
  • They don't even do much damage. Two direct hits on an unupgraded Imp fighter were not enough to kill it. Transports can hit one or two and keep going (and that's if they don't have the minesweeper upgrade to let them ignore them), and an entire army waltzing mindlessly through a carefully planted field will still be in good shape to fight at the end.