Nothing like rolling up in an APC with 12 people in voice chat on the tip of the spear, or coordinating an entire battery of MAXs keeping the skies clear. Some of the best gaming in general I've ever experienced. Gradually, though, pay to win mechanics pushed me away, and I've not played since 2014.
The gameplay is sustainable for a little bit in terms of randoms joining servers but all that's left of NS1 and 2 are extremely niche competitive scenes that don't reach the scale of what you want and Nuclear Dawn has no playerbase. It's a nice idea and NS1 produced some of the best competitive FPS players for a few games (Quake 3/CPMA/Live, Team Fortress 2) but ultimately it lacks the fun factor needed to keep a substantial amount of people playing.
Even after 40 or so hours I was still getting absolutely destroyed, chasing the high of kill streaks I'd gotten early on (against other new players).
Is it still active? Part of me wants to give it another try, though I know only pain and suffering awaits.
A good lerk can soften up marines forever and a good fade has little reason to die while continually getting kills everytime it leaves the hive.
A good shotgun or rifle marine can cancel out 2-3 alien skulk players every wave. The skilled dominate midgame.
The end-game onos stomp and xeno ganeplay versus exo and jetpacks levels out the skill required across players and becomes more enjoyable for everyone. Though games rarely get there without demoralizing everyone midgame.
It's strange to me that the skill required peaks midgame and endgame is full of stunlock mechanics, tanky units and suicide tactics.
I would put the highest skill mechanics on display in the end game so everyone has a good time before the domination of skill kicks in.
It's still active, 4-5 servers in the US full every night and a bunch of UK, Euro and chinese servers. One aussie server.
Plus Unknown Worlds has moved on to Subnautica, so all updates are Community Driven now. Which is pretty neat tbh.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/624970/Battlezone_Combat_...
https://store.steampowered.com/app/301650/Battlezone_98_Redu...
I think the overview position would need complicating factors to make it hard - otherwise they would just be frustrated at the grunt soldiers not taking objectives.
But does anyone else remember the Sourcemod Empires?
FPS/RTS with TANKS! And a Tech Tree!
Unfortunately the Source Engine really doesn't like tank physics.
It can be quite satisfying with an organized group, or frustrating if you're just playing with randoms.
RO2 is fairly old now but I imagine the newer games (Rising Storm/RS2) have similar mechanics.
Natural Selection worked much better in that regard. About 6v6 was the sweet spot, but it worked alright on lower player counts and was absolute fun chaos at higher counts. It was a fixture at our LANs for many years!
One the best parts of these games though is that new players are always incentivized to contribute and aren't a net drag (in casual play). Sure you might be terrible, but your death still meant less damage on your teammates, and there was always something helpful to do whether it was helping build or repair things or scouting and harassing the enemy.
I haven’t thought deeply about how much RTS complexity would be appropriate - but you would want to keep the action symmetrical so nobody is ‘waiting’ around for decisions to be made.