Gameplay and Balance

So, I've always LOVED the idea of the Combat Commander gameplay seen in Battlezone, Battlezone II, and now M.A.D. It's unique, original, entertaining, and limitless. However, it is also much harder to perfect.

What I call "Combat Commander" games (yah, I just stole that from BZ2, but it fits well) are combination of First Person Shooter and Real Time Strategy games. You guys know this. But because of this, it inherits not only the positives of each side, but the negatives. Combined, these negatives are even greater and much harder to tame.

With the FPS side, you have your typical player running around, shooting at every bad guy in site. This is great... but only in theory. FPS games require a large variety of gameplay options, from sneak, to snipe, to running in guns blazing. Weapons must balance so that there isn't a pwn-all weapon, but so that each weapon is most effective against a specific unit. Each unit or role must have a strength and a weakness. Also, when combined with RTS, the player cannot be overpowered, but still be a key part. Every underhanded assault tactic for a player must be taken account for so that the RTS side of the game is not ignored.

Health and ammunition are also factors with FPS. How are you going to re-heal? Will you have shields that automatically regenerate after an extended time without combat, or will you have a special item or structure to repair with? Will ammo be collected from destroyed enemies, replenished at the base, or will it be unlimited (with overheating added in)?

On the RTS side, you are extremely concerned with a few areas: income, tech tree, unit balance, faction balance, and production. A few major problems with Battlezone II (IMO) included the slow startup to strategy games, the simple tech tree that left little multitasking, economic issues, and the complete unbalance between units and factions (eg: the Thunderbolt and Avenger were pretty much left in the dust in exchange for Sabres, APCs, and whatnot). There must be a variety of tactics and strategies available to commanders, and the RTS side must be immersive, but still give way to actual fighting FPS style.

Different options should be available, such as the choice to use ground or air, the choice to turtle or rush, the choice to do whatever. Choices to these options should also balance out.

The list of things to consider with gameplay is endless.

Now, I'm just kinda going on about nothing... but I want to know how you guys intend to fix these sorts of things in M.A.D. How will it run? All we've seen so far are three units, each with one weapon, a factory, a turret, and a little repair crane-thing. What about the rest of it?

BZ2 was a great game, but how will this game make up for where it messed up?