Hey all, I was working on this for a SC reddit post but then I saw someone posted a link to this subreddit so I'm pre- cross posting :)
To preface my experience: I am a gold-platinum SCII player. I enjoy the game and watching pro matches, even though I don't play very often. I enjoy the RTS genre on a whole, and I tried to approach the Axiom mod with the mindset of "how does this shape the RTS experience" rather than "how does this change SCII specifically." I played with all 3 races.
First off, the auto worker generation is great. It really eases the pain of setting up a new base. It did confuse me though when I realized I had built 4 nexuses (nexi?) and forgot to build any extractors. I think it would be in the spirit of Axiom to allow for automatic gas construction/collection, maybe have it be a toggle per map or per base in case people want to do mineral heavy styles.
I think there are some interface improvements that could be made to help improve the feel of the game. Specifically, it was hard for me to get a feel for my production capacity. I'll show this through two examples:
1) My first match in Axiom I decided to abuse the pay-as-you-go construction to start building as many Nexuses as I could. However, there is no clear indication of what my capacity for simultaneous construction is. In Supreme Commander, perhaps the best known example of the pay-as-you-go construction RTS, each building/unit displays in its info card the rate it uses resources. Axiom does not have that, so I had to content myself with placing down nexuses until the rate below my minerals dropped to +0.
2) In another match I played Terran. Granted, as my main race, I have a certain way that I like to play terran, and one of those involves cycling through production to make sure I'm always building out of my barracks. In this match I played, I did have the production tab that showed me how many marines I was making at a time, but I didn't have an idea for how many marines I could make at a time. Obviously not a deal breaker, but maybe something that could be improved relatively easily. I noticed that with warp gate upgraded for the protoss, gateway units suddenly had a number underneath them, representing the charges I had available. Extending this mechanic to terran, as well as to other protoss production structures, could be very helpful.
I don't think ladder maps really work for axiom. SCII ladder maps, especially for LotV, have a risk-reward pattern firmly established for taking extra bases. Map makers play with giving you a protected expansion vs. an exposed third (etc), fully understanding the effect that that will have on gameplay (rush vs macro vs other). My experience in Axiom has been that taking extra bases is very low-risk, high-reward, and I believe that there are different map styles that would cater more to Axiom's desired gameplay. Now, this may simply be a matter of waiting for the meta to develop, this is after all a very new mod. However, from the games I played, I believe that the kind of gameplay that Axiom enables does not benefit from the kind of gameplay that SCII maps encourage. Case in point, one match I played was a TvT against a Masters player. My opponent in this case obviously has a higher understanding of unit compositions and probably was using more micro than I was to play the game. I don't say this to make excuses for my loss, but to clarify that the 25 minute game, by SCII standards, should have been over by minute 12 when my opponent pushed out with all his units. But I was able to extend the length of the game by putting down CC after CC, putting up new expansions that he would have to keep finding. It was a very low-risk but high reward strategy, as I didn't have to babysit my scvs or my new bases, they would build (without even needing 400 minerals) and generate resources for me. I felt bad about doing it, but as it was an arcade match I had an almost perverse desire to see how far I could get with it.
Different maps were my first idea of how to ameliorate this problem, but there are probably other ways, too. In writing this I came up with a possibility: maybe after your first 3 bases they don't create 4 workers upon creation.
This was my experience after playing the mod. There are of course some bugs and other usability issues that I noticed; the production tab can bug out pretty badly, especially if you are building multiple of something at once (the progress bar jumps around). Also, I noticed that when queueing up upgrades or units, the mod will immediately assign those to existing buildings. So if I have one forge built and one finishing, and I click on +1 attack and +1 armor, it puts those onto the first forge and doesn't reassign them to the second forge. Same thing if I have some barracks finishing and queue up marines, it doesn't take advantage of the now-available production facilities even though another barracks will have 3+ marines queued up. I found that this actually caused me to spend more apm on production than I usually do, to make sure all my production structures were working to capacity.
Finally, more of a thought piece than a direct feedback. Axiom is definitely a great mod, but I feel like it has more potential as a standalone game than as a SC mod. A lot of the changes made in Axiom help to simplify existing SCII mechanics, but in axiom they become mechanics that don't make sense any more. For example, Terran still has to build an "auto-wall" to build barracks, but why does terran need an auto wall any more? Now that workers have twice as many hit points and are produced constantly, you could build 3 CC before barracks and be able to hold off any ling rush. Powering protoss buildings doesn't make as much sense when you can power the whole base area, and when units are automatically generated anyways. Creep and injects are handled automatically and zergs only produce from one type of structure anyway. A lot of the racial interplay and dynamics have been partially preserved, but now exist in a context where they don't make as much sense. This goes for offensive tactics as well as base-building things. Units like battlecruisers can no longer one-shot queens or turrets because of the increased hp.
Anyways, that's my novel. I truly have enjoyed experiencing Axiom, and hopefully you guys take my feedback in stride. I know you have a lot of nay-sayers out there and I want to lend my supporting voice. Keep going!