i still have a question though, aerohank. what do you think about higher population cost for the tiger ace? or do you still think it needs to be changed in the mp/fuel cost departement? just interested, since i engaged in more arguing then i at first intended to... i was going to post my opinion and be done with it. but here i am still arguing
Increasing the pop cap will only fix part of the problem. An even game between two aggressive players hovering around the 50-60 pop cap will still end the game in the Germans favor once the ace is called in. The unit just has too much front loaded power. Finding a proper solution is going to be a bit tricky.
Just giving it a mp/fuel cost like other heavy tanks (and remove resource block) is problematic seeing as how powerful the tank is. It's currently twice as durable as a normal tiger (.45 damage modifier), does double the damage, has more range, and starts with vet. Considering a normal tiger is 720(700?)mp/200fuel, the ace would come close to double of that. This would make the tiger so expensive that the German player will likely get pushed of the field by a horde of T34/76s before even getting close to calling in the ace. To prevent this from happening the German will need a lot of PAK40s, which leads to a rather passive, boring, game. We already see this in 1v1 when a soviet goes for the ISU-152, and it will be even worse for the tiger ace.
A possible solution would be to make the ace more affordable at the expense of some of its stats. If it only had a .75 damage modifier and and 1.5x damage, extra range and blitz, then it could come out for somewhere around the price of an ISU-152. Maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less.
Or perhaps some middle ground can be found, where the ace has an initial cost, and only reduces income by X%. Or halts income until the ace dies. This will require a lot of tinkering until proper balance is achieved though. Making it too cheap to acquire will result in base rushes (as we have now), making it too cheap in upkeep will make acquiring it too difficult as its initial price will go up.
I think the best way to balance the tiger ace is by doing all of the above: nerf some of its stats, give it an initial cost to acquire, and only reduce income by X% until it dies, so that capping territory will still be important for the German player and the unit is not only used for baserushing.