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I just think it leaves too much to chance.

For example - no matter how good your spotting you can`t see how much energy a grey unit has, so it makes plotting orders to attack it very difficult. This is especially true with guardians and saucers. Saucers are so fast that hit and run tactics are tricky, they tend to recover any energy they lose before you can hit them again whereas you`re more likely to lose an attacking unit.

Every other unit in the game reveals approximately how much hurting is required to kill it when spotted.

You also cannot see the guardian shield which passes through walls. You can plot a large amount of fire against a grey unit where you have no realistic chance of killing it because it will be shielded, and you typically have no realistic chance of spotting behind the wall to determine this. You have to guess.

Grenades against guardians are very tricky. You don`t know if the shield will be on or off, and whether the guardian will flee or charge you. Often you have to take a the risk that you will damage your own guys.

The ability to fire around corners and through walls of WGs and Psykers give greys a huge range advantage on maps with cover.

When plotting orders against enemy units we have red, yellow and purple lines, and halt, continue and retreat on sighting modes. 4 out of 6 control options are rendered ineffective by the greys invisibility, either because of the guardian shield, or because your unit has been blinded by a psyker, so it`s a double whammy, and before you`re even hit by it you have to deal with incoming warp balls and psykes from unseen locations where you have no possibility of returning fire.

Within the game there is laser fire, and then a number of more special abilities ... fast units, high hitpoint units, scanning units, explosive attack units, no LOS attack units, shielding units, healing units, auto ammo regenerating units, etc. The greys are the only faction to have almost all of these abilities.

The balance is good because they greys are flimsy. This they have to be because they are so flexible.

Lets talk about balance in terms of balance of ability. In the old days there were marines and machina. The speed of the marines proved an elegant counterpoint to the toughness of machina. You had scanners seeing through walls, compensated for by marine grenadiers bouncing shots around corners. Hunters, Grenadiers and Missile Tanks were all powerful units, but all relying on an HQ supply which gave them an achillies heel. IMO this resulted in much better game play.

The spawn messed this up initially because they were way overpowered to try and compensate for their melee nature. Nowadays all they tend to do is choke the first few turns of a game as you cannot charge the map until you know you`re not going to get eaten. Assume a defensive position and spawn fall apart more often then not.

The greys detract from the game because there is no balance of ability.

I`ve no objection to them doing wierd stuff, but I feel there should be more balance in the abilities of both spawn and greys which fits with the elegance of marines and machina, and I feel their abilities which negate more then half of the basic unit contols should be reconsidered.

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Also that they have somewhat limited wall-breaking options, less vision range potential than Marines and Machina ... they really have no "fast" units, etc etc.

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I disagree. The saucer is effectively very fast because it can fly. No other high hit point unit is anywhere near this fast. I`m not sure with the current balance but certainly in the past I`ve been able to run a saucer up to a MT or AI and kill it point blank before esacaping with no energy to recharge. Psykers are often effectively very fast because they can fire from cover and run away and the attacking units need to cover a lot more distance to go around the terrain.

Greys have 2 wall breakers, as do machina. Spawn and marines have 3 (I think drones can eat walls). I think this is fairly well balanced ability wise, but marines do have an advantage here.

Greys do have less vision, but the invisibility effect allows them to move much closer unseen. Which compensates for this, and the scanning ability of psykers gives a huge advantage.

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So sure - change, modify abilities but make them tougher. But it seems to me like it could easily be just making them more "marine-like" or "machina-like" and change the feel of them completely.

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There is an element of this in what I`m saying for sure, but personally I feel marines and machine have distinct personalities of their own and if the greys specialities were limited they would still feel unique, and you would still play them differently to the other factions.

I wouldn`t propose to change the greys massively. I think if there was any oppourtunity to alter them it should be done step by step. Some suggestions to try would be:

1. Energy is shown instead of or in addition to health to enemies. Ideally in addition to health. I think the information is there in the turn files anyway - if you test orders you can get an idea how many shots it`ll take to kill a saucer you can see (for example). Might as well show this.

2. Grenades explode on contact with guardian shields, or pass through them. (Units can pass through them, why not grenades/goo balls?). Or maybe nothing can pass through a guardian shield when it is on. Or maybe things can only pass from inside the shield to outside.

3. Guardian shields are visible, even if they conceal what is under them.

4. Guardian shields are clipped by walls. Metal walls at least.

5. Psykers require any grey unit to have LOS on the target in order to initiate an attack.