Quick Custom Armies

[Kitsune_UK]

Subject:
Just thought up a rapid system for making custom armies that accounts for balance and prevents powergaming.

Description:
When creating an armies, you will have 5 points (Though this can be altered on skirmish matches). These points can be spent on the following.
Troops (Limit 3)
Vehicles (Limit 3)
Aircraft (Limit 3)
Powers (Limit 3)
Buiildings (Limit 3)
All start at 1

Details
Troops Level 1 - Machine Gunners, Missile Troops and Engineers
Troops Level 2 - Can build a faction specific unit, plus minor upgrades
Troops Level 3 - All troops have bonus training when built, plus access to a hero

Vehicles Level 1 - AA/Missile Tank, Light Tank and Harvesters
Vehicles Level 2 - Can build faction specific units, plus access to minor upgrades
Vehicles Level 3 - All tanks have extra armour and firepower, plus access to a superheavy 'hero' tank

Aircraft Level 1 - Scouts (Unarmed drones that reveal map/explore fog of war). Can auto-explore.
Aircraft Level 2 - Light bombers and air to air planes. Minor upgrades
Aircraft Level 3 - Heavy bombers, training and more upgrades

Powers Level 1 - Access to low level powers like field repairs for tanks, scan area, or protect building from engineers.
Powers Level 2 - Faction powers like reinforcements, deploy stealth field, make a friendly unit explode on death.
Powers Level 3 - Can build nuclear weapons, ion cannons etc

Buildings Level 1 - Power plants, basic defences, vehicle yard, barracks and airport.
Buildings Level 2 - Advanced power plants, special defences like light obilisk of light and a faction specific building such as improved ore refinery. Able to build MCV at vehicle yard
Buildings Level 3 - Buildings get bonuses such as stealth for NOD, shields for GDI. Plus the ability to garrison units in the base buildings.

Positive Effect:
This system can be used to quickly make an army to your style. Just choose a faction and spend your 5 points.
I'd probably go for NOD, Troops 3, Vehicles 1, Aircraft 1, Powers 2 and Buildings 3.

Negative Effect:
None that I can think of. This limits the min/max problems with a fully customisable army.

[RedShocktrooper]

Change the "changeable to skirmishes" to "changeable in skirmish and unranked". Other than that, I would say this would work in a C&C4-ish style game with an emphesis on unit combat - I could easily see this building up for a Codename Panzers (or S.W.I.N.E.)-like take on the C&C Franchise.

[Kitsune_UK]

Been doing some more thinking on this one.
Instead of powers being a 3 level effect, instead replace that part of the system where you can pick powersets for one point.

Some ideas:

Espionage - Target a non-hero trooper. It turns to your side, but remains in disguise as a spy, with all the powers that grants.
Field Supplies - All units slowly regenerate when stood still. Additional power: Target a group of units and repair 50% of the damage
Bombardment - Delivery system varies according to faction, but target a location and damage everything in it. Airstrikes etc
EMP - Shuts down all tanks and buildings in an area
Intelligence - Grants an area scan. Also, many units gain detect stealth. Improved scout drones (See Aircraft Level 1)
Re-Deploy - Varies according to faction. Move units from one part of the map to another. Tunnels for NOD, Chronosphere for Allies etc
Hackers - Engineers get stealth and can capture buildings and tanks from a distance, but it takes a few seconds and enemy gets a warning message
Heavy Troops - All troops gain armour, but have their costs increased slightly
Advanced Architecture - All buildings regenerate, have additional hit points and cost slightly less
Battle Harvesters - All your harvesters and refineries have gun turrets, armour and health
Reinforcements - Deploys by tunnel or airdrop depending on faction. Gain additional units (Varies according to level of troops/vehicles)

Superweapons in my opinion should be special locations on the map that need capturing. It makes more sense for your scanners to pick up the activation of a dormant nuclear silo, or a heavy amount of communication coming out of an old space cannon controller. Plus I always found that to get to a superweapon deployed in a base, you pretty much had to wipe out the base first to get to it.

My choice of army now would be NOD, Troops 3, Vehicles 1, Aircraft 1, Buildings 3 and Advanced Architecture (5 Points)