I am playing my first bal. mod game in months, and I realize that (unless I forgot something) there is a powerful argument for marines that has never been made.
An argument for keeping them as is.
Since marines are treated as infantry on transports (they could have made them like non-infantry and that would have actually been reasonable), marines upgrade transports.
A transport can now take an artillery and a marine, a mech and a marine, or a 3/3 TANK AND A MARINE
Contrast that with transports in classic :lol: that cost 8 IPC’s and could transport only ONE TANK that was by the way 3/2, and NO INFANTRY with it (not that that’s relevant, just interesting comparison)
So transports can take marines to locations for cruisers or battleships or transports to pick up and take from there, and transports have the option of taking an infantry, AAA, mech, artillery, or tank along with, or 2 marines.
Marines would be overpowered if you lowered the cost or upgraded their capabilities in any way. They’re already awesome. Plus you have something (besides AAA) to buy for 5 (if you don’t understand the significance of this I’m not going to take the effort to try to explain it to you), so marines are pretty much perfect as is.
A MARINE AND A TANK on a single transport!! Holy cow
A marine that has the option of being picked up by a cruiser or a battleship, which can also bombard when unloading them. Jeez. They might be overpowered already. Maybe they should cost 6 :-D