I would like this not to be the case. The whole "expensive and strong vs. cheap and many" is a very generic and over used balancing tool. I want something more unique.

There's way more interesting ways to balance than 'heavy, medium, light', as Kyogre says.

Even [earlier] Command and Conquer games do good by mixing it up:

Nod/Allies with dirt cheap spam units and awesome tech toys and sneaky tactics.

China having at the same time the weakest and toughest units in it's game. GLA in general.

But the real winner for interesting asymmetrical balance is Universe at War.

Novus is cheap... and you'll lose in a stand-up fight every time. Instead they have a stealth network that allows them to move many times faster across the map than the others.

The Hierarchy's main base consists of giant combat walkers reminiscent of War of the Worlds.

The Masari can switch their entire faction between modes that give various benefits to each unit.

And each faction has secondary unique game mechanics, too.

So yeah. The whole point of the rambling post is that balance is perfectly achievable with non-symmetric sides.

I wold like to see the Vassari Rebels get inhabited low firepower starbases as an option that can be built relatively cheaply in asteroid or star wells, but cost much more if built in good planet wells.

The Rebels would start with one of these starbases as their home planet, and it would cost more for them to research planetary technologies. However the inhabited starbase would improve the quality of low end wells economically and materially.

I never use non Vasari forces, so that's all I got It already makes different planet types more valuable for rebels, it makes them make a decision whether to build a military or inhabited starbase in a well (later on), and gives them a different "feel"

I agree that the High quality versus Horde balancing system is already used in the game (and many others), and using it to balance Rebel versus loyalist would not add to the game one bit, it would in fact be a lazy design decision.

Maybe rebels could get along with the pirates much easier and get a lot of assistance from them. Maybe the pirates could get a lot of assistance from the rebels too making them stronger also.

And as far as Diplomacy goes perhaps rebel factions could relatively easily form strong alliances with each other, whereas Royalists find forming an alliance with any other faction much more difficult and costly.

I like the idea of each individual faction having its own unique characteristics a lot better than just the strong expensive verse's many weak. I'm sure there will be more to it. In any case will just have to wait and see.  

Yeah, Rebels need to work primarily based upon the idea of well, being rebels.  That said, are these rebels like the South in the American Civil War or are they just a bunch of random people on random planets that aren't coordinated?  That makes a huge difference.

I also agree the simple cheap/expensive would be a terrible thing to implement on a faction wide scale. Ideally some Loyalist ships will be upgraded to be more powerful and more expensive than the Rebel ships, but the Rebels may have others kinds of ships that they improve on (and would thus be more expensive). To go along with the analogy, the CSA did this quite a lot with the CSS Virginia and the like. Just because they are Rebels doesn't mean they don't have the funds to develop more expensive weapons.

I would like to see Rebels be a faction that can also spawn during a game if a faction doesn't have a high enough culture level somewhere far from the homeworld.

Of course this wouldn't be the only way to start them as people would want to play them from the beginning also, but it would be a cool option. Large empires with low culture (or a new game option, happiness, similiar to Civilization 5's happiness with related structures and technologies)

The benefit to this is htat a large empire might spawn multiple rebel factions at it's edges, some might get shits in the area, others might be as weak as milities at first. They would first try to capture worlds in the spawning faction, then start operating as regular factions later on. They might also have large diplomacy benefits towards other rebel factions from the same empire, with the ability to merge.

This coudl be a lot of fun. Post start spawning Rebel factions would keep large empires on their toes, needing to spend more money on keeping the people  citizens happy. It would make smaller empires more flexible, and give them the chance of coming back if they supported rebel factions in their enemies.

Just having Rebels as different techs isn't really making them rebels, Make them actually rebel.

Other things they should do, their Diplomacy ships should be able to start rebellions in other planets. I like the idea of getting along better with Pirates. How about being able to masquerade as pirates and hit your own friends without starting a war? (something you could do in Civilization 4 IIRC) Take their stuff and say "it was the Pirates not me!" (but with the chance of being found out also.

How about being able to start pirate bases similiar to colonizing a planet, you get a portion of the loot, and they never hit you? Or perhaps a Rebel Spy can attempt to blow up a starbase or sabotage planetary facilities, successful missions result in that spy gaining experience (each Faction can build only a limited number of spys based on their spy technology and the spy academies they've built) Related to this, Fleet leaders can be trained and gain skills as they win battles. Planetary governors can also do the same thing(giving bonuses to planets and their wells), But the higher level governors might be more likely to rebel (they want a peace of the pie)

I would like to see Loyalists get new skills also, Spy insertion corvettes that let you look at what's happening on a foreign planet (even a pirate base) or star base perhaps,

Observation stations that give you more info but are cheaper than starbases, various technologies to keep the civilians happy, from gladiatoral pits to ballet theatres depending on race. (as examples)

Happiness as a new game system would add to the depth of the game. Some planet types would just be better to live on and have happier people (it's nicer to live on a Terran planet than on an Asteroid for example)

Lol, not quite.    That said, I'm writing a science fiction novel and while I'm majoring in computer science with intent to minor in psychology, I have more than once considered dual-minoring in writing as well.  I just love to tell stories, that's really what it comes down to.  Hopefully when I finally finish the novel, I'll be able to publish it.  Whether or not I make money from it is irrelevant.  If it entertains others as much as I did writing it, it'll be worth while.

Yeah, I once had a short story assignment.  And the plot I've come up with is good for multiple series within the same universe (I daydream a lot) just taking place at wildly different times so while the main series would take place around 3600 AD, there's another segment that would go at 3100-3200 and so forth.  I ended up taking a snippet of the one from 3100 and making that into a short story.  It would have been 30 pages, so I shortened it to 24.  Then I found out she only wanted 2-5 pages...  I ended up with 14.

Regardless, this is wildly off-topic.  Any comments on the actual content of my post rather than just the style?

or the rebels get an actual scavenger ship...

No, from the sounds of the new things put up about corvettes, they will do things more like attack the systems of ships.  I'm assuming that they'll have abilities that disrupt the use of various functions like weapons, regen, engines, etc without actually disabling them.  Just small little things to give you that extra edge.

I don't know why everyone keeps doing that, Yarlen, because its annoying me too.