Ideas for balance. As you can see in this video the balance is quite out.

What's to stop your opponent from doing the exact same thing to you?

1. The early game engineer node capture is not an exploit, it is a design decision. That the AI doesn't currently employ that tactic is a matter of AI coding, not balance. Your human opponent can do the same, but didn't.

2. I think an incursion might stop that pretty handily. Even a single smarty might be able to handle that.

3. Neutral anti-air is probably the wrong solution. That would make scouting very difficult.

I'm not saying you are wrong or that your rush strategy is flawed. I just think it may be counterable by an opponent who is ready for it. The "meta" for this game is in its infancy, Molokow.

Why not just have it there without defenders, you are going to take it anyways. I am thinking about people who are new to the game. Unless you knew this.. then well.

scouts should not shoot. It seems ridiculous having to spam anti air everywhere.

You want the game to be fair where you can buid differently each time.

As it stands, the other person can spam air/scouts and there is nothing you can do about it. your smarties are not good enough.

new people will get frustrated, and to be honest at the moment it is a spam fight.

Someone can just spam t1 units and over run you. Lots of  t1 will over take a bunch of t2.

So basically all you need to do is just keep spamming.

With substrate, you have to build a quantum generator first, which takes too long. Even when you do their first tier plane is not match in a air fight with phc.

Inexperienced players are always going to be at a disadvantage to experienced players. No amount of tampering with units will magically resolve this.

If you play on reasonable sized maps, this minor potential issue is solved.

I agree. But with substrate you cant defend yourself fast enough.

All maps should be valid to play 1 vs 1