heres a list of ideas on how to make a good HW2.
1.custom armies- you can customise your units and team. of course there are default teams but a slot either side for your unique team.this includes units upgrades,powers,ecobonus.
2.intorduce territory-this makes fight for land very competive.split up map into squares,red is enemy,green is allied,white is neutral.to capture remove all enemy STRUCTURES not troops and build an outpost inside.
3.fixed bases - get rid of them,they ruin it ,start with an outpost that makes engineers and mongooses.free build would be much better.
4.leader powers- cut covi leader powers,replace with support powers. makes the game more even.eg - mega turret barrage or a blast from covi ship.
5.more leader powers- UNSC-carpet bomb,mac, cyro,napame bomb(leathal vs air, infantry and light vehicles)emp bomb ( no effect on infantry ,stuns air and vehicles for twice the time of cyro)for covi= ship blast of some sort,plasma bomb(= to nabame bomb) mega turret barrage.
6. 5 tech levels-why? it adds more upgrades, it spreads the units better(tech 0- just marines,engineers,tech1-scouts,marines,anti infantry units,engineers,tech2-more adv infantry, light vehicles.tech3 - only difference is all infantry and scorps and hornets avalible.tech4- more adv vehicles and air.tech 5 - everything.
6 long reactor builds- by this i mean,first reactor = 2 mins,second = 5 mins more,third= 7 mins, forth= 10mins,fifth=12mins to build.this encourages early war ,rushes and discourages turtles.
7.pop limit- every sector captured adds pop,start off at 100. massive wars, yes.
8.unit pop-infantry very low(1-2) light vehicles(2-4),air (6-8) heavy vehicles(6-8), uber units (15-20),why, makes infantry very appealing to use.gets rid of full pop vehicles or air.but vehicles and air must be made unbelievablely powerful so they seem worth it.and uber units have to kill an army by itself.
9.rock paper scissors- didn't work in HW, dont try again.
10.new game types- some infestion one where the first team to get to a certain forerunner building turns into a flood team that never runs out of men and all enemy are limited to tech3 and last one to survive wins.(not including flood)also king of the hill would be great and a free for all.
11. equality- make unsc and covi equal its stupid having covi weak.
thats all i can think of for now, i will draw up a set of equal teams for covi and unsc later.(it would be brill if somone from robot comments on these ideas,if they used these ideas HW2 is destined for sucsess) if you disagree with anything please say, the more we fine tune these ideas the better they become.