Yes or no? Why? My response: Yes. Each team has a set of advantages that players can learn to exploit, and the opposing team has a set of disadvantages that can also be exploited. That seems more fun to me than two teams that are exactly the same (except for uniforms).
assymetrical just takes forever to balance- but 100% symetrical teams are only possible if its just swapped out textures as reflective armor demonstrates perfectly
There's a reason most RTSes are balanced that way. It's more fun, and we had it pretty good in 2.12. Exactly.
It's more interesting. Even CSS has different weapons, lol. It adds a lot to playability, and brings players closer to the particular teams and team features. It also means you could have different playstyles that may fit the player better.
If both teams were equal we could nearly close this forum. Asymmetric balance is more interesting and leads to more discussions. I like it although we never reach the level of starcraft 1.
Asymmetric balance is very good but it's hard to do. The thing to remember is that how many players test games that are made by Developers? Probably a lot more then mods like Empires.
You're kind of missing the point... Let's say there are four things that a team can do, all equally valuable. If team 1 receives bonuses to things 1 and 2, and team 2 receives bonuses to things 3 and 4. Is that balanced? Not exactly. Is it fair? Most likely, yes.
OF course asymmetrical balance is better. Jebus it's like asking which is tastier, bread or chillies. Sure not everyone likes chillies but at least it's more interesting than fuckin bread.
starcraft also has blizzard and a robust playing community. asymmetrical balance works when the difference is negligible. see insurgency, cs. where players are pretty fragile making skirmishes relatively quick. empires is kind of beyond the point of no return, but if I played another game of this nature, I would want both teams to have the same capabilities. i'm trying to think of other long-round team based games with fundamentally different teams. if anything, in empires, forced asymmetry (faction alignment with cannons/missiles) only pigeonholes teams into getting pretty much the same research every other round.
Or see Natural Selection Balance (forced to 6v6 in NS1, claims it is scalable in NS2). Or Savage balance. Or Command & Conquer balance. Or any THQ/Relic RTS game, or SupComm, or.... Yeah, it's totally doable even in the extremes. You just have to have solid concepts behind your balance mechanics and the ability to smash the game against hardcore exploiting jerks who know the game inside and out (i.e. time and organized high-level player base). Empires, imo, doesn't fit either criteria.
I consider myself to be a champion of asymmetry in empires. Some of my latest concepts encompass even more aggressive differences, possibly even resulting in divergent research paths. One of the other scripters seem to be vehemently opposed to the idea of asymmetrical balance when we talked about it on the scripters forum, even resorting to namecalling to try to get his point across, but I shall, as ever, remain the common man's champion.
