...and that's another question, folded in. Which skillsets do you want to reward?
- simple twitch?
- complex twitch? (same thing, but involves mastering a strange/complex/unintuitive interface)
- on-the-fly tactics?
- Strategy?
- cooperation at the squad level?
- cooperation and organization at the larger unit level? (anything where the situation is large and complex enough to demand dedicated leadership/coordination people, to the point that their ability to organize the battle is more important than their ability to fight directly)
- Individual mech design? (but remember the internet)
- cooperative mech design?
- intelligence analysis, misdirection and mindgames?
Many of these are allied. (Simple twitch and on-the-fly tactics, for example, mesh with each other naturally to the point that they can be difficult to seperate.) Some are obligatory to a certain level for any self-respecting mecha game. Still... which of these do you want to reward people for having? Which of these do you want to penalize people for *not* having? (If you have a highly effective missile system that uses laser painting, that lets you take advantage of your high skills in stealth/misdirection and twitch. If it can be fired and painted by two different people, that lets you fold in some cooperation as well. If this laser painting thing is the *only* way to reliably get a missile on target, across all available missile systems, suddenly stealth/misdirect/twitch goes a little further into the "if you don't have this, that's going to cost you" column.) There are a ton of subtle tweaks to bring each of these skills to a greater or lesser degree of importance.
- simple twitch?
- complex twitch? (same thing, but involves mastering a strange/complex/unintuitive interface)
- on-the-fly tactics?
- Strategy?
- cooperation at the squad level?
- cooperation and organization at the larger unit level? (anything where the situation is large and complex enough to demand dedicated leadership/coordination people, to the point that their ability to organize the battle is more important than their ability to fight directly)
- Individual mech design? (but remember the internet)
- cooperative mech design?
- intelligence analysis, misdirection and mindgames?
Many of these are allied. (Simple twitch and on-the-fly tactics, for example, mesh with each other naturally to the point that they can be difficult to seperate.) Some are obligatory to a certain level for any self-respecting mecha game. Still... which of these do you want to reward people for having? Which of these do you want to penalize people for *not* having? (If you have a highly effective missile system that uses laser painting, that lets you take advantage of your high skills in stealth/misdirection and twitch. If it can be fired and painted by two different people, that lets you fold in some cooperation as well. If this laser painting thing is the *only* way to reliably get a missile on target, across all available missile systems, suddenly stealth/misdirect/twitch goes a little further into the "if you don't have this, that's going to cost you" column.) There are a ton of subtle tweaks to bring each of these skills to a greater or lesser degree of importance.