I do hate some maps, but bofore we get to the complex solutions, we could just have a new map pool for some of the leagues.
You don't have to counter an Orca Bomber on the bombing run. Spread your units and maintain some map presence. Players most likely can't do that, if they babysit a 2x harvester or if they took some major losses early on, but there are ways to hunt down an Orca Bomber. You could send a booster Pitbull after it, when reloading.
And you can also trick a bomber to drop bombs early so that it runs out of bomb before reaching you and bombing its friend on the way
There are a lot of good tips for dealing with different units but some of them, like tricking it to bomb early, is a lot easier said than done. A lot of this sounds good on paper, but it really doesn't work when going up against an experienced player. Personally, I would love to use Orca Bombers but I just haven't gotten the cards to do so. With the practice I have been able to get with them I can tell you that going up against a smart opponent with them makes a strategy like this useless.
But I don't want this to just be about one unit. The problem is that with the units that have been added you cannot have a truly good deck without seven slots. Again, I don't want an unbeatable deck, that would unequivocally be bad for the game. I just want to have enough flexibility to have a balanced deck that doesn't have critical weakpoints. In the current state of the game, no matter how well you try to build your deck there will always be at least one other deck that will absolutely crush you if your opponent is of at least similar skill.
You might think "but that's what balance is!", you'd be wrong. Balance is having good, fair competition. You can't have that with 6 unit decks and random maps. Luck is a deciding factor in Rivals; that's really, really, really bad for an RTS.
There has been talk about how this is supposed to be a competitive game. I would love nothing more than to see it actually become one. But right now, it is anything but competitive. The events with lower level caps and limited map pools help a lot. That in itself is proof that this game has a fundamental problem with randomness/luck. However, in the higher end of the events my experience has been that there is a very stiff, successful meta with little room for variation. It's not a symptom of unit balance, it's caused by a lack of options.
I'm an RTS veteran. I've been playing the C&C series since 1995 when it was first released on DOS. I've been a top 2% player in Company of Heroes back when it was popular. In Rivals, I got to the top 50 in Tib League before it got filled with P2W level 15 players and had unit access tied to medals. I know what I'm talking about. This is NOT a competitive game, but it has the potential to be a great one.
So, that's my rant. I'm just fed up with seeing so many RTS games come just a few steps away from AAAA greatness and falling short. I'll keep on hoping for Rivals to fix its flaws, but I'm not holding my breath.
