In the current state the only issue which makes me NOT play the game is the ranges. Tanks cant utilize their guns properly turning them into med-range units, or spary'n'pray units. Thats why you see that in most lobbies entire alien team is decimated by a couple of marksmen, who, unlike the tank, can see their target. So yes. Thats what brakes it for humans. For aliens - seems very logical. Kinda good in numbers in med range, outright BAD at long range, and devastating in close range. Very balanced, i think Your guys aliens are better then NS2s. Real problems right now are:
1.Optimisation :
12 player limit is not a fix, you can spam npcs, lags everything out too.
2.TankZoom:
Makes Hoomans just stupid to play.
3.No integrated squads and VC.
If enabled would make for some great teamwork gameplay (look at Starship Troopers:Extermination, which is pretty much Silica PVE on a smaller scale, done right.
- Hard to see where players are as RTS commander: and since there is usually a ton of stuff to manage, I just ignore them. Finding them and giving orders is a hassle, making you write stuff like "north base under attack" in chat, (why have RTS mode at all then?) No real choice but to do so.
5: Projectiles are very slow, from both sides.
Makes shooting very demanding as humans and bug can just squiggle around. Same for bugs.
5:Hard Melee, weird hitboxes.
Very annoying to be unable to kill a marine with a goliath when model 100% hits the player model 3 times in a row, but player just ignores it. And you are animation locked as a goliath. Same for most things.
If you want to not go down the route of most of the games of this genre, focus on these issues first to gain good foundation and build a solid playerbase, not go down the route of Executive assault who treated FPS combat as a placeholder, and the gem, despite the potential, was abandoned by both players and devs. Both sides of the game are equally important, For RTS commander it is the ability to do things and easily move to units and areas of interest, and communicate issues to the players. For FPS it is general Common sense, grit and feeling. You should be able to kill hordes of bugs with a well- coordinated player team, you should be able to decimate bugs from range. But make a mistake, and get swarmed, since as soon as bugs get in close, you die.
Game is amazing already, i just want it to be better. Everything mentioned is my humble opinion, and you the genius people behind the keyboard writing them know better how to do it. Im here to share my experience. I just played SST:extermination, got struck by similarities, but Silica just doesn't feel right right now, and i cant play it for long. But it want it to become way better then SST. It has a potential to be bigger then Planetside2, since it is basically Planetside 2 Meets NS2, minus the persistent world warfare and the idea is AWESOME.
Best Regards.
Val.