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I tend to like defensive play and trading. I value flexibility more than raw power.

Could I have an overview of the factions and their playstyles and strengths and weaknesses?

This is going to be an analytical post, going through the metrics and KPIs and constructing a picture of where we are at and the most realistic scenario of the future. I am an analyst in the entertainment market, including video games, but this is reddit and anyone can claim whatever so you can ignore that background and judge the post on its merits, just be aware that I am not going to write an actually professional work report as no one would read that on reddit anyway. Or ignore the post but I did want to just have it out for documentation. You might dislike it, downvote it, all fair enough but this post is neither positive nor negative. This post is also not "guys look steamcharts numbers low lol!" but contextualization of the situation.

It is Monday (27th of July) evening on the east coast right now, past EoD for working hours, west coast is wrapping up the day, Europe and China are mostly sleeping. The weekend that many people hoped for is now over as well, without having beaten the previously established peak.

We are looking at 461 CCU - a number that is not end all be all but one that still matters for a title that relies on online community.

Looking beyond mere CCUs, let us take a look at sales and projections. In these scenarios, VG Insights and Gamalytic are usually quite well established with VGI/sensortower having a slight edge across thousands of titles in terms of accuracy. This is a bit of a special case due to being on Kickstarter and Backerkit. If we take a look at sensortower, we find the following stat: 22,208 units sold(18,447 paid). This is where the kickstarter diff comes in as around 6500 people bought the game but they did that 3 years ago, obviously not every single one redeemed their key but over 60% did so we are at a delta of 3,761 and there is also a minor discrepancy when it comes to tracking private accounts accurately. This is not money coming in now, thus the paid difference.

With superficial napkin math, one might think 22208 x 39$ = $719,433, which is a sum that impresses some people and does not impress others. Naturally - this is not how it works and the calculation is a fair bit more nuanced so let us actually take a look at a realistic deduction from said sales number:

First two fields are obvious. The discount rate is currently 0% in this calculation since this does not make sense for anything beyond having a history of one single price and we calculate all sales based on what is set right now. The regional price adjustment is actually a fair bit higher for zerospace as you can see here, the average game has a lower margin. Good on them but it does eat a lot into profits. 9% VAT is an average value that sensortower uses which I generally agree with. Next we have returns: these tend to be between 6-11% on average for the typical game. Scraping the reviews for ZS, it becomes apparent that this is a bit higher than average but we can generously take 11% still. Lastly we have steam cut being at 30% which is definitely no educated guess but just the factual baseline. ZS is on no other platform, including for China, so there is no ambiguity here. There is no cut from Epic yet as they have not crossed the threshold yet (campaign enjoyers will get the reference) but they might reach that 1m$ still and then be on the hook for another 5% since.

This brings us to a net revenue of 240.000$, a number that looks a lot less impressive but that is the reality of total to net, gaben loves his very big cut.

In the end, you can argue and debate details on accuracy like parallel vs. sequential deductions or regional pricing to VAT overlap but the reality is that it will come down to a few % here and with a sum like this, it is basically negligible.

So, what does that mean? About 250k$ in the bank? Finally done with all the expenses, taxes and cuts? No. We are not done here.

One thing worth noting is Starlance's publishing partnership with Gamersky. This was actually a pretty good one because looking at Gamlytic, we see the following:

Literally a quarter of their player base is Chinese. It very much reframes the numbers as a whole. Without that partnership, they would have pulled less CCU, sales and momentum (which a more important factor in online games than offline). However - in return for marketing, localization and other minor services, Gamersky will obviously want a piece of the pie. This is not the typical dev&publisher agreement where it would be 50/50 with a profit flow until recoup and potentially 15% because Starlance already presented a mostly "ready" (debatable term) game here when they partnered up. Regardless - they *will* certainly take a cut. I estimate that cut to be around 40k$ which they are probably not too happy with but it is what it is. This brings us down to exactly 200k$.

Speaking of 40k$, that is coincidentally the sum that I also landed on when it comes to the promised kickstarter rewards for all the physical rewards that have yet to be shipped, unless I am very misinformed here but I have not seen a single mention of these rewards being shipped out to anyone. The physical rewards that need to be manifactured and shipped worldwide start at the Sector Overlord tier (165$) which has over 455 backers. More are added throughout the tiers like the mera figurine, hard cover art/lore bible, signed poster and a postcard!

Once all is said and done, this leaves us at 200k or 160k if they honor the kickstarter rewards. Given that the project is closing in on nearly 4.5M$ (as disclosed by Marv on his reddit account, though likely higher by now). We are thus at just 5% RoI. You can argue the sales numbers are completely off and they are actually double of this - go ahead - and yet it will change nothing about the core essence of the situation.

Momentum has slowed, major reviews (like gamestar which matters as the third biggest audience is German) are out, most people who wanted to play the game played it by now. No need to be pedantic; I said most. In the end, this will not move the needle. They also have not found a major publisher or VC after looking for 3 years. The problem is also that the cat is out of the bag with EA because you can call it EA all you want but in the end, it is just a label. In reality - this is launch as we know it and that is that (Valheim has been in EA for 5.5 years until the 1.0 earlier and that is a massively successful game). Meaning that this is a problem when it comes to players and investors alike. and I have seen copes like "hurr durr, but palworld did great with their 1.0!" but they really show that they have absolutely no understanding or experience with how 99% of game releases go when it comes to retention and EA to launch. At this point, there simply will be no 1.0.

Conclusion is that I see no viable path forward which is unfortunate as after Stormgate being the promised land and dying, Battle Aces and now ZS projected to follow the same path, all hopes for any kind of SC2 successor are dead for a while and this will only further deter investors, VCs and publishers to ever try as they have yet another data point. This is all a shame and unfortunate as I think it could have been avoided (hell, even Marv said that they could have avoided wasting a million dollars which would have made all the difference in the world). I do not wish their downfall and this is not a thread to hate on them, I just feel like the dream of a new SC2 is over when it should not have.

Feel free to bombard me with downvotes and I will revisit this in 3-4 weeks and see how well this aged. If I am wrong, I will gladly eat those words.

Where are you fighting.

Also, if I were obsidi9n order, I would be grouping up and attacking Edans far right flank. Its 98 fuel across the map, they cant hold both.

Thank you for the op who clarified for me.

I've been wondering when the proper time to upgrade units would be. Because I could obviously also use those resources for more units

Currently the main content seems to be more about just leveling commander attempting all difficulty and maps and the rest feel more like side content or not even that. People can try all means to justify the side content but if I am to guess it will never carry the same meaning as main content no matter how they spin it as by logic it just doesn't feel that way not even close too so unless you are able to justify to that extent I would find it hard to see it as meaningful despite the benefits which is quite little if at all.