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oh, of course! thanks to the various ways the macro is simplified (repeat queue, B hotkey, etc), the tech tree can and should be more complex I've seen the various testers and the players who have checked the debut mission out so far take wildly varied approaches to the macro game. I anticipate you'll see those problem areas I described while the tech tree is in its unfinished state when you eventually get the chance to give this debut mission a shot, but it's hopefully also much more interesting than vanilla d2k's handling of upgrades and teching up, even at this juncture eh, that's not too difficult, if ya ask me... if a mission is meant to spotlight a certain kind of unit, and those units are already balanced with certain roles in mind, then we already know where that role shines. the mission just needs adjustment to emphasize that role. frankly, the tougher part is getting a player to realize "this unit is imba on this mission" because everybody just spams Troopers, Quads and Combat Tanks. xD before yelling at me for locking Rocket Turrets behind T3 because they're OP and very much desired on hard mode. ...maybe with a new faction in play we'll see players pick up what I'm laying down more often, ya know? lol not that I want to make that unit the only viable answer on its associated mission or whatever. that's the other tough part. Starcraft 2 leaned a bit too heavily into that, in some places. some very one-note missions that wind up feeling like a glorified tutorial. I get the sentiment that campaigns may be meant to lead the player onto the ladder or something, but for those who want only to enjoy the campaign, I've gotta take special care in gearing a mission towards a certain kind of unit so all the other stuff the player has been picking up still applies. better experience that way regarding the multiplayer thing: that's unfortunately nothing more than theory until they get access to the new features we've got in single-player that make stuff like this new faction's units possible. I hear they're making good progress on it, but who knows when they'll formally wrap that up. the theory can be important for making a satisfying balance in single-player, but it ultimately only applies to single-player even if we do wind up with some overpowered stuff though, uhh... I mean, RA2 is unbalanced as hell and still very popular just cuz its wacky roster of units is so much fun. so, while balance is absolutely a consideration as you can see from... all of the above, and all to follow, it does actually take a backseat to fun factor and rule-of-cool. cool / fun new thing comes first, attempt to balance cool / fun thing comes second that's a good approach. I went a bit of a different direction with maps like S02V1 back in SS... that was balanced as a 'skillgate mission,' a tougher mission that appears early on just to ask the player, "hey, are you comfortable with the difficulty level? if not, turn it down. if so, carry on." that sort of thing takes players off-guard, but helps shape their experience in the rest of the campaign in a more positive light. or so that's the intent. it worked out well for a lot of players who, after butting heads with S02V1, started experimenting more on the later maps and discovering subtleties to the submods that really helped them survive in ways they may not have found if not for S02V1 frontloading some pain in their faces I had spotlighty missions too. like, S06V2 very much so encourages the use of stuff like Siege Tanks or Duelist Tanks. it was more about missions like S02V1 though, strategically raising or lowering the difficulty level to gauge or tamper with the player's expectations, or for story reasons doing things a bit more traditionally in some respects this time around, I don't think there will be maps like that where the enemy has high/end tech early on, like on S02V1. specifically because it involves a new faction and players are 100% not going to be familiar with it from vanilla. I'll thus probably be doing it that way, spotlighting units as they become available through subtle mission design tricks to encourage the player to try them out in favorable conditions and understand those favorable conditions. smoother difficulty curve. strategically-placed difficulty spikes can do a campaign favors, but they're not for every campaign