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I think you shoudl aim for balanced 1v1 matches played on 4 player maps. That way, you leave 2v2 open as a possibility.
I like the concept with 3 basic units and the rest neutral. I also suggest something like Dawn of War's headquarter building with static defense from startup. That prevents rushing with your first basic units and encourages players to take neutral buildings before you attempt to end the game.
About the hidden units/passive XP gain. You could limit that feature to the basic units and let them up like 4 levels and have a deeper ability tree (most skills could be passives) than the other levelable units. You'd need some trade-off too .. or it will be totally given that both players must get all basic units as early as possible and then sit ducks with them as they level up. I think that fixed if at least two of the basic unit types are 'engineers' with that capture-neutral-structure ability. If that ability is limited to them, you'd recreate them if they die and you will have them out with your army(ies) and not in the back of your base, which I think would be standard otherwise. The third basic unit type could have that function though - a defensive support/ranged unit?
brainstorming is fun ^^
Edit: By engineer-units I mean what you mean by the support-units. I didnt realize on the first read of the wall of text that engineers woudl be spent as they capture. That's cool, but I bet they have anothe function also, why else level those up?
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I like the brainstorming too 
You mentioned the possibility of rushing with your first units, and also that players would keep a few units in the back of their base from the start. But these can´t happen at the same time. I think realistically none of the 2 options would be the most used, but rather the early units would be used to scout and fight for the neutral buildings / protect the leader unit. I´d want the possiblities to be many, and yes, turtling should be one also -with tradeoffs/risks of course.
At the moment, Engineers are trained at the neutral building. At rank 2 they can build turrets, and at rank 3 they can build a Starport, which produces victory points -"resource" that also counts for a victory condition- periodically, and can also act as a rally point for newly created units. So players have to decide whether to use the Engineers to capture a building or to level them up. I have designed quite a few units like this: a little less powerful at some ranks, but worth it if you make it to a higher rank. For instance the ability to sacrifice themselves at X rank, but at X+1 they get a better-than-average ability to make up for not using the ability at rank X.
There might be an issue if a player is pushed and cannot train Engineers from the neutral building, because he needs to capture buildings to have the chance of coming back into the game. I am thinking that there could be a technology to allow the training of Engineers at the headquarters of the player. Also, there could be a one-time ability at the headquarter to summon a couple Engineers, probably with some prerequisite to unlock it -ie. level 2 Headquarters.
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No, I said that I think rushing early game is something you should avoid by design, beacuse players only have the basic three unit types to use, and a limited amount of each. Most games played on the map will come down to whoever gets out the most amount of early attacking units first, or how well they micro them. The short story - making rushing viable is a worse player experience compared to a rts where it is not viable.
To prevent early rushing I suggested that you'll have some static defense on the 'main building' that has to be protected (asuming killing the main building of the enemy is a victroy condition). That way it becomes hard or even impossible to destroy early game. It might be an idea to have victory points protected by creep (hostile mobs) for the same reason (asuming one can instawin or win early by capturing all victory points on the map).
I would avoid having three distinct races in the first iteration of the game. Playttest and balance race A vs race A before you start on race B. I believe that makes the development and balancing much smoother.
And no, I don't think keeping a few units back in the base will be fun. I think a good design rule for this project is that those units that gain XP over time should be useful all the time out on the map. For isntance, as a support to the army, or be out capturing points. Perhaps even risking them for some ecffective harrassment?
If you don't have too much against micro as a valid skill in this game hit-and-run tactics should be something to encoruage with those auto-leveling units. For example - the support "leader" unit can fly (or cloak), can't attack, and the ability to temporary freeze units / disable buildings for a short period of time (like that overseer ability - neural parasite?).
See where I'm heading? That's a supprot unit for battles but also valid for harrassment (hit-and-run on workers, or similar).
I like the trade-off idea that engineers can either be saved for later as investment, or be traded for an early advantage. Sending one into battle is a gamble for the same thing (will my unit die in battle or survive to reach another level?), which I believe is even more fun.
Edit: btw,I think it will be cool if engineers can only be trained (hired?) at captured neutral buldings. IF players can train 'leaders' from theeir main building/s, right? Or there will be no unit that can capture the engineer-building if you loose all the engineers and leaders you start with.
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Thanks Meltage. Just to clarify a few points so the discussion can keep progressing -I have like 20 pages written of the design but I don´t think I should disclose all details at this time:
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- The "races" here are called Leaders. For the first released version of the game, I am aiming for 7 Leaders: 3 Terran, 2 Zerg, and 2 Protoss. For alpha testing I´ll only have 1 Leader ready.
Each Leader has:
a) a unique "leader unit". This can convert neutral buildings after channeling an ability for some 15 seconds, and revives automatically if killed after some 30 seconds. It cannot go up in ranks, and gives a small combat bonus to allies around it.
b) a unique Headquarters building, with access to 3 Unique Warriors -we´ve been calling them units but they are actually warriors-, and 1 unique technology.
c) 2 unique bonuses
- The player Headquarters has 3 levels, each giving access to 1 type of the Unique Warriors.
- There are 3 different simple tech trees for each race at the Headquarters. For instance, all Terran Leaders can opt between an "offensive" tree, a "turtling" tree, and a "utility" tree. Once the first tech of a tree has been chosen, then one more tech is unlocked at each level 2 and 3 of the Headquarters, but the other tech trees disappear. This makes it so the same Leader can be played with 3 slightly different playstyles.
- The warriors trainable at the Academy of War -neutral building- are called Neutral Warriors. Both Unique and Neutral warriors are the only types of units that can go up in ranks:
a) they start out at rank 1 with no abilities.
b) at rank 2 they have access to the first ability.
c) at rank 3 they have access to a second ability.
d) at rank 4 a few of them have acess to a third ability, but most just get a bonus to some stat.
e) at rank 5 they are able to convert buildings similar to Leader units, and also give a small combat bonus to allied units around it.
- The Academy of War can be upgraded 2 times, giving access to better Neutral Warriors. There are 4 types of tier 1 Neutral Warriors, 4 types of tier 2 Neutral Warriors, and 3 types of tier 3. There will be between 4 and 6 Academies of War spreaded on the map.
- At another neutral building called the Neutral Headquarters, players can hire Mercenaries, which cost some minerals up front, and then a few victory points per second they are fighting for you. They can be dismissed at any time.
- Headquarters and player-built buildings cannot be claimed by an enemy, only destroyed.
- Neutral buildings cannot be destroyed, only claimed -converted by leaders or captured by engineers.
-There will be a neutral building -the Training Camp- in which players can introduce warriors so they get experience faster -sort of an investment. These units can be called back to action at anytime.
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So Meltage basically I agree with you with regards to rushing and xp while being alive, although I am a bit more moderate. I think rushing should be possible but hard, this is, easier to defend from than to perform succesfully. It should be able to win if the defender does not take any measures against it.
About xp, it is clear that, given how controlling/stopping the enemy from controlling neutral buildings will be so important -not just for the explicit victory condition of control points-, "hiding" Warriors so they go up in rank will not be useful game in game out.If you really want them to level faster you´ll aim for controlling the Training Camp, but then the opponents knows what´s up. However, I think that having this off-chance option of keeping 1-2 units on the map that the enemy is unaware should be possible, and I can´t see it breaking the game. Besides, we could always tweak the amont of xp that is being given for free and that which is given for killing.
Say you save one of the starting Warriors you start with -even the Engineer!- to make sure it does not die. You might be aiming to have it reach rank 5 asap to have another unit that can convert neutral buildings, but until then it has not been of much help -curiously enough, the Engineer would be a good Warrior to try this with, although it would die fairly quickly even at rank 5 if caught out of position. I personally think this a fun option. Now, if something like this happened every game and was the optimal way to play, we would have a problem, but I don´t think we can tell at this point. It´s things like this -there will be a lot of "investment" type of decisions in the game- that I want to test and hopefully make some innovation that works.
Edit: note that "saving" -not talking about hiding or not, but about taking care of the unit so it does not die- for a rank 5 tier 1 Warrior such as the Engineer would have less impact on the player/be more feasible than doing the same with an expensive tier 3 Warrior: the tier 1 Warrior would level up faster than the tier 3 one -conscious design decision-, bringing great utility to the player if it gets to rank 5 while not being that much better on the battlefield than a low rank counterpart, whereas a rank 5 tier 3 Warrior would be a behemoth wherever it goes! This is the kind of dynamics I am looking for!
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A great read, thanks! However, I feel we are leaving the field of high level design decisions, so it's your call if you want to go on discussing details.
By unique leaders, I supose you mean unique per race? You don't mention how they are unique. I'm asuming different stats and abilities. Great call to keep races down to 1 for alpha.
3 unique warriors, also unique per race? I don't know what you mean by warrior in opose to unit. A unit for me is one zealot, one marine, one brood lord, etc. Perhaps you use the term as it is used in military, rather. One unit is a 'grup' of soldiers/warriors?
Great idea with tech trees and hard choices. Will choices in the tech tree lead to different leader abilities and those general bonouses you've mentioned? I picture one of those as "extra mineral income per minute" and bonouses that applies to all leaders or units, etc.
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You have thought this over and know what you are pursuing and I'm just nodding along as I read. The investment options and the mechanic that low tier units level up faster are interresting takes, although I have no idea at this point how it wil work out  I like to hunt for possible exploits and unwanted dynamics by predicting from the design, before there is an alpha build but my picture of the game now is more complex and it's harder to do so.
Except for one race only, what limititations do you have in mind for a first testable build? Also, do you have clear design guidelines/goals written down? I'm asking for keeping discussion on a high level and I mean guidelines such as "high dynamic army building - both wc3 style and sc style" and "higher level desicions have great impact, micro not as much as sc2".
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Unique leaders and warriors are unique to a Leader. Terminology could be changed for the better perhaps, but basically race = Terran, and Leaders = Arcturus Mengsk, Raynor, etc. Leader units might have slightly different stats, but their main difference comes from each having a different ability -apart from Convert Building.
By unit I mean a single leader unit, warrior, mercenary, etc. The general term. I call them Warriors to differentiate them from other units. Warriors are the only units that can be trained.
Let me copy-paste the tech tree for the 3 Terran Leaders so you get a better picture:
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Offensive tree
- Sniper shot ability added to leader units. (lvl 1 HQs)
- +2 armor and +6 damage vs buildings for Mules/SCVs/MCVs -depending on Leader- and Engineers, and they build structures 25% faster. (lvl 2 HQs)
- +15% damage to explosions. (lvl 3 HQs)
Turtling tree
- Can use minerals to slowly repair buildings. (SCV´s, MCV´s, and Mules cannot repair buildings).
- +10% HP for all buildings and units.
- Buildings cost half victory points.
Utility tree
- Allows SCVs, MCVs, and Mules to build Barracks. Barracks can train neutral Warriors with bonus starting xp if the player controls an Academy of War.
- Produces an SCV/MCV/Mule -depending on the Leader-, a Marine, and a Berserker/Ghost/Vulture instantly at the desired point on the map.
- +2 unit-type limit to Marines, and a rank 2 Marine can be summoned instantly at each Supply Depot for increased cost -does not require control of an Academy of War.
Note: Marines are a tier 1 Neutral Warrior.
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For the first testable build I am looking to have the terrain and all neutral buildings ready, even if I only include the tier 1 Neutral Warriors at first. I also plan to have the tech tree for the included Leader -such as the tech tree above for Terran Leaders.
Design guidelines are, more or less in order of importance:
1) Extremely dynamic: units stats change constantly, aiming for different victory conditions on the fly, fast-paced, investments, comebacks possible, individual unit upgrades through ranking system, etc.
2) Replayable: core of the game -neutral buildings, strategies with Neutral Warriors / Mercenaries- deep and with many options available, to which Leaders can be plugged in easily during the lifetime of the game.
3) Especial focus on the early-game gameplay options so as to discourage using set "build orders" of sorts. "Fast start". This point is tied to 2). Players should feel like playing another round of the game just to try a new start.
4) Players really caring about (some of) their units, creating a sentimental link that will heigthen the player experience.
5) High-level decisions should be as important as micromanagement.
6) Engrossing 2vs2 experience, possibly the desired format for the game.
7) Balance, only when all of the above has been achieved.
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EPT
