Well some more impressions of mine:
Bugs & Issues:
- The Federation's Experimental Lab has a typo and says "Experemental". I'd also recheck the unit descriptions in general to make them more uniform (e.g. capitalization which is totally lacking for some units).
- Zeon Sniper needs the Limit:6 comment now
- The squad spawning gadget should be checked: When you give the Factory move orders and then apply a patrol route the mechs that get additionally spawned are given an additional patrol point right at the factories exit. Quite annoying as you can't really do patrol routes right from the factory as half your squad will start walking back and forth in your base instead of patrolling where they should.
- When finishing fighting the "chicken AI" the last Lua stuff that stops unit spawning works but spits an error message.
- While talking about "chickens": Make the GAW stronger and especially give some control over the AI's strength as especially the Federation is impossible to beat in a 1v1 (I never made it past the 2nd or 3rd wave with Guntanks). Getting the same number of Zakus or RX79Plus simply isn't the same...
- Rename the "refineries". Things like "Machine Shop" make you think of it being a factory for units rather than - well a "refinery". Especially the research lab is a very bad choice as you might think (I did in the beginning) you'd need it in order to research the higher tech levels.
- Do something about the max number of machine shops. When having 20 of em you actually get a -10 rate in basic ressources so well dunno - either increase the basic gain rate, reduce to a max number of 19 or do whatever else you come up with. Currently that 20 unit limit is a bit misleading imo...
- Strange Issue: I quite often have a problem when being later in the game and giving queued build orders like e.g. walls (what is ordered doesn't matter though): Things won't really get built anymore - i.e. the first point in your lists gets build but then things are stuck. I have the impression that it still works but at an extremely slow rate.
- Extremely strange issue: I can't really reproduce it and it only appears rarely although I've had it for quite some times now: While having some buildorders near to your HQ it at some strange occasions just reclaims itself and disappears. No idea what exactly causes this and when but in some situations when I had build queues next to it it suddently turned into thin air and disappeared - my guess is that it got reclaimed.
Gameplay & Balance:
While I'm not too much into this yet I still have some questions, dubieties and critics:
Watch towers:
Seriously - why are they ingame anyway? Well okay they give you some sight range but that's it. Radar range is totally insignificant and well that's pretty much of whatever use it might be. In addition to that the Federation has a quite huge disadvantage on this as the footprint is amazingly big in contrast to Zeon's one. I'd prefer if you'd make this a stealthy / cloakable radar with some nice sight range so you can "sneak in" a constructor and build some of these on hills and something like that so you can track the enemy when approaching.
Popup-Turrets:
First I'd say speed up the Fed's unfolding animation - it takes rather long. That's a huge advantage when looking at the following critique on those fellows. I find them rather useless: You get the same amount of HP with standard turrets while having it sucking away like 2.5 times the energy. I'm also not too impressed by neither its range (which is just 50 bigger than standard turrets and thus insignificantly higher) nor its damage output. I don't want it to make the game ultra-porcy but imo there's no reason for this being a T2 building and is in no outstanding way better than the standard turrets - it may even be worse due to power sucking. So imo you at least should buff the range to something like 900 and buff the damage output. Maybe make it a bit more expensive and additionally stronger to but it really should differ in a significant way from four standard turrets...
Artillery:
I don't really like the mech artillery and I'm yet a bit sceptical about your entire arty concept. The mech artillery actually just are units with a range around 1000 and thus a bit less than the snipers with high inaccuracy, some AoE damage and rather low damage output. Actually the range increase in contrast to standard combat units is so low I'd not really call it an artillery. The range of suckiness differs a bit. While you might find the Guncannons at least a bit decent those Feddie zookers fail (although being accurate afaik). Well it's just a big plain "No!" as they're useless imo. Zeon then in fact has no real artillery as it imo is just a Gelgoog with additional rocket launcher. Well it actually is pretty much just that as a matter of fact...
Then there's the rest which I'd call the only "true" artillery and that's the Guntanks and Xamels. I'm not too sure if your concept is a good idea here: With 1500 range the Guntank has a really good range and its only downside would be the long buildtime. Still it actually is the only real artillery besides the Xamel and imo it gives the Federation a bit too much of an advantage. Being faced with spam (AoE ftw and inacurracy gets less important) and usually rather slow Mechs (your enemy probably wont run his Doms into your RX79 Plus and covering Guntanks against Char & Co should be possible too - also add in the decent and soon to reach Snipers) together with the okayish damage output it's rather unfair (add this to the Zeon "artillery" mech range). Then there is the Xamel - at this point things turn imo: While the Federation has an advantage for like the entire game, once reaching the last tech level (which imo won't happen too often) things turn around for 180┬░ with the Xamel. The range is just awesome and it's also fast like hell. When looking at the feddies mechs which in most cases are rather slow this might even be a bit unfair as killing Xamels barraging your base can be near to impossible as the Feds fast standard mechs are quite bad and you don't have too much fast "hero units"...
Federation Lite GM:
While I made my comment about your buildlist a while ago I just want to place this as another part of the bad order as it appears as the very first thing. My criticism now is about the way the unit is: It's a joke imo: The HP of 1500 is laughable, it's restricted to 6 units (for whatever reason) and the costs are 300r 20e afaik. The only "advantage" is speed, range and the damage output also is pretty good. Still nothing of this is exceptionally good to justify the heavy duty downsides. A Lite GM imo even falls to simple T1 - T0 Mechs and so you'll want to build like the Feds basic MG / Rocket Launcher Squads instead of a Lite GM.
General Balance:
I more and more get the impression that the idea behind the balance really works out. I don't really know where to start - you've got some interesting approaches like Zeon being dependant on mass productions just as micro at the same time. Still some things don't seem to work properly imo. There e.g. is the principle of mgs being good against units while rls are good on buildings. I don't really share that impression when playing. To be honest this only is a real topic for Zeon as the Fed has the RX79Plus with the best of both worlds as one of their main forces. Imo the range advantage rls have (which is 50% mg range iirc) is way more important than the damage output. As the Zakus and Fed Mechs usually are rather slow their higher dps isn't of a really big importance. Imo they don't stand a chance against rls as they get owned while approaching and when starting to fire at max range they miss a lot (especially when you need them to continue moving and not hold ground). Especially when looking at the Zeon vs Federation situation it doesn't get better as the Fed has quite some nice long range units. Guncannons, RX79 with beam rifle and Guntanks being some of them eat amount of ressources for their production while the enemy has just reached firing range. With some RX79 Plus there then even is no real close combat advantage left. Add this to the arsenal of Zeon heros and mediocre fast guys like Gelgoogs or the Gelgoog "artillery". So in the end I don' really agree with what is said in the guides. Only the Zaku II is a MG gunner I'd call halfway decent but at that tech level the 500 range get outranged by pretty much everything. Still it's the only Zeon unit that can get at least a bit of a pounding with its 6000 health...
That's also where some of my other balance critiques go to:
When e.g. talking about Zeon I'm still experimenting but I find the two amphibic units together with the Gelgoog to be the safest bet. The standard Zakus don't stand a chance against anything the Federation shows up with (beam rifle guys, Snipers, Guntanks, Guncannons etc). The Goufs also are kinda lame. While Ramba Ral is worth a thought the other ones just are more expensive Zakus with additional paralyzer which in fact is good once being in range. In the series Goufs are described as faster and stronger mechs so imo you should revise them a bit as they currently pretty much exactly are Zakus with additional HeatRod. To come back to my inital comment on this: I tend to like the Acguy for the okayish range, multiple weapons, movement speed (okayish too) and HP which is pretty much on par with that of the Zakus. The Z'gok then is like the next step although the Gelgoog still fights with it in terms of being the better choice. The Z'Goks advantage certainly is the range. The Gelgoog is better in terms of HP and iirc also in price and maybe in dps. I'd still think of the Z'Gok of being one of Zeon's best standard units with an additional amphibic feature "for free". I don't know if a situation like that is the best solution...
For the Federation imo the RX79Plus is a bit too much of a good allrounder. Together with the fine beam rifle version and the snipers you have some nice & heavy HP tanks (& even AA) and extremely decent long range support. Especially the latter is what really lacks for Zeon imo and even a Char can't really compensate that...
I'll stop at this point to prevent things from getting too long...
Edit:
Added some points to the issue list...
