Yes, the Acid vs. ESG scenario there is totally true... if you're not keeping the enemy acid tiger moving (which is total fail with ESG)! If you keep the enemy moving across your mines, which is what the mechanics of the weapon demands you do, you'll notice it magically doesn't suck so much anymore. Making an argument based on a scenario involving massive failure on the Plymouth player's end tells me you're trying too hard grasping at straws to justify that Eden = overpowered, and EMP missiles are fine.
The only 2 situations where you willingly go through a ESG field is to break a strategically important point (Read bottleneck or just outside base), or if you are in pursuit of a damaged enemy (in which case it makes more sense to flank).
Once the Plymouth player cannot retreat or otherwise force the opponent to move, he will then either have to sustain heavy losses or avoid attacking, which would be the scenario if Plymouth is attacking Eden, Eden is attacking Plymouth base (where Plymouth cannot retreat any further) or if Plymouth is in pursuit of Eden units.
Also once two armies clash head on (As in a base battle or fight for a strategically important point) vehicles will all take instant damage from ESG mines instead of rolling over them - which means Acids will have the upper hand again.
Most of us know ESG works best when the enemy goes straight through a mine field, thus when the roles are reversed we know it's generally a bad idea to go straight at some ESG's even worse to pursue them head on. Hence a Plymouth defending must stay ahead of his opponent and block his every way forward. (With humans this is often quite hard, and you often end up yielding ground) Eden on the other hand, must offensively dodge ESG's. Defensively it's better to stand your ground (preferably dig in with GP's) and trade losses with Plymouth or to use Thor/Acid to make a slow retreat same way Plymouth would.
I do believe a Plymouth without missiles faces an overpowering Eden yes. As mentioned before I also believe missiles in themselves are fine, it's more of the way we play today that makes them abuse able. Then again I don't think I have ever opposed any attempts at making this game more balanced ?
Also, more cheaply produced lasers are going to be more effective than acid cloud at taking down structures (and with the bonus of being one of the best weapons for taking down walls; something acid cloud can't do at all). Again, they're not a very good weapon for that task.
As I have been trying to explain all along, it's not about the effectiveness of Acid vs buildings, it's the fact that Acid does damage buildings. It means you can wipe away defenses on a base/mining outpost and proceed to destroy the base afterwards without involving any lasers/rail's etc. At also means you have to react to the acids wherever they are or risk losing buildings.
Also, I don't see how GPs work for just Eden just because of acid cloud. They don't. I also don't see any reason why Plymouth couldn't just build a line of EMP/ESG GPs. I've tried GPs, they're pointless. Just get tigers.
Perhaps I was a bit confusing earlier. It's is not because of Acid cloud in itself - that is just my preferred turret type.
GP's work for Eden because Plymouth are not effective in killing GP's as Eden are. Thor's will easily ravage walls and Plymouth GP's, making a Plymouth GP line of defense very weak against quick hit and runs - thus you must tie up more tigers in the defense of your base. Or you can use Acid's to destroy GP's (and leave wall intact for later breach) - GP's take time to replace.
Plymouth on the other hand cannot get close enough to GP's without taking damage to the units. If you have some extra units beside the GP's, Plymouth cannot even touch the walls without suffering damage.
The point of GP's is to slow down armies, stop minor attacks and most importantly free up Tigers for offense instead of having them as defense. If you cannot see the value of having more firepower in your army than your opponent - well, then I guess there is no point continuing this discussion about GP's.
Edit: As another test, I pitted a fully upgraded rail gun tiger against an unupgraded RPG tiger. Guess what? The RPG tiger came out the victor. Now imagine how big the gap between the two is when the RPG gets upgraded. On top of that, an unupgraded RPG lynx vs. a rail gun lynx with a fully upgraded turret will end in a draw, or the RPG lynx just barely managing to win (depends on if the turret happens to be facing the rail gun lynx when the fight starts); though the RPG would win after getting some upgrades as you might imagine.
As I originally were saying: Rail and RPG is just about an even match in strength or more or less equal.
It seems like I must modify this to: RPG is slightly stronger than Rail.
Setting fully upgrades weapons against each other 10 times each, here is the results:
Tiger: Mutual destruction: (3/10), RPG Wins: (7:10), with the average RPG tiger surviving with 66 HP
Lynx: Railgun wins: (3/10), Mutual Destruction: (2/10), RPG wins (5/10), with the average RPG lynx surviving with 37 HP.
Damage seems to variate due to where the projectiles hit.
More research will of course be needed if you want more detailed numbers, yet it seems that statements such as "Rail Gun is extremely inferior to RPG" would be stretching the truth quite a bit ?
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