So I played your game during the previous jam and it's definitely in a better spot now but a tutorial is going to be crucial I think. For the question of balance, I don't think any strategy can outweigh buggy rush currently and unfortunately the AI does buggy rush every time which gives you small room for mistakes, overwhelming you if you aren't prepared. This time I went into it knowing that and tried my best to buggy rush as well but somehow I still lost despite us having the same number of factories. I think the core idea is solid, but a tutorial is pretty mandatory for a very complicated game like this and the AI probably should not be buggy rushing, at least not in a first level. It's such a hard strategy to counter that having that as your first challenge can definitely put people off a bit. That said, when you get into the swing of it and you're head is still above water, it is quite fun. So with a little bit of polishing on the difficulty and the new player experience and I think you may have something pretty special.

Ok, I actually learned how to play, I must say the learning curve is a bit steep, I was always in my ''base'' and never try to venture outside, I thought I just needed to create enough fighters to protect me, and later they just kill the enemy, I didn't know what the scout were for at first, It took several attempts to understand how they worked and how the light works and that you can place your units only where the light is. I could not win against the IA tho, it was too hard, I think I tried 10 times. I am interested in keep playing because once you know how to play it's very fun, maybe trying the online to play against people who suck as much as I do xd. I never got to use all the units and buildings, I was under attack too often to learn how to use them nor have the resource to create them.

Also, I just it would be useful to have an indicator that a bulilding has created a unit, like a flash or something and a sound.

overall, this was a fun even through i didn't really follow everything that was going on!

TUTORIAL
yes. i had trouble understanding the game / what everything did. a tutorial would be appreciated!
there's already a lot to understand/many moving parts now, so i think it's better to polish what's in the game currently. maybe additional units could be unlocked as part of progression later on?

SINGLEPLAYER vs MULTIPLAYER
i'm biased since i only play singleplayer games haha

OTHER FEEDBACK
when enemies appeared, i thought they were my creations. having them in another colour would be helpful.

Overall, fun game and I found myself playing several times! (Although it might've partially been because I was trying to figure out how it works. Agree with the other comments that a tutorial is needed.)

Fairly often buggies would teleport to the enemy on the browser version, not sure if this was intentional. It is also unclear what scouts do. Also, if your construction facility is destroyed, is there any way to recover from that? If not, why doesn't the game just end there?

Also agree on focusing on making singleplayer the best it can be before relying on several people playing your game to make it fun.

This is a nice game. Played thrice and got beaten all three times. But possibly survived longer each time.

A tutorial would help this game a lot. The voiceover that informs you a particular resource is not available to build was very helpful.

I liked the concept of no control. I've played a fair share of RTS, and don't really enjoy the unit micromanagement, especially past the early game, where there are a lot of units. So the no control could be a good thing. You could consider a "low control" rather than a "no control". I understand you want to differentiate from a standard RTS. Something simple like "unit stance" would make a lot of difference. This is also present in full RTS games by the way. Something like "defensive" stance would enable my buggies to stay at base for defense, or until I can amass several of them, change stance to "attack", and send them off, etc.

Maybe a bug: Somehow the construction bot that I built doesn't seem to do anything. (The one that's already there does all the work.)

I felt each time that the enemy rushed me very early, and I could do my best to barely hold on. Some "defensive" buggies would have helped a lot here. Or you could consider changing the economy in some way to make early attack difficult or infeasible. You don't have to cut off rushing altogether from the game. I gather that is a viable strategy in RTS games. But right now rushing feels too dominating over anything else.

Regarding your questions above:

1. Tutorial first, then units.
2. My opinion is it's important to get the single player experience right, before going into multiplayer. Again, not to deter you from building the multiplayer. Just a slight leaning rather than a strong preference for this.

I think that since the AI doesn't upgrade their units, after you survive your early game with economy boom (and don't lose your base as a result), it's just really easy. The second unit is a bit strong since they have so much HP and the AI doesn't seem to use them.

I think you've reached a point where more units arent going to help with the core gameplay much more. I think a tutorial is super important for any game, so you should definitely focus on that!

Perhaps you could experiment with some kind of control over your units. Yes, I know the hook is that they are automated, but I think you could maybe have some kind of very simple controls. It was really frustrating when I couldnt move my construction bot to where I want until I have enough money to build what I want.

I find it very limited in terms of strategy right now, if I dont immediately and constantly invest in buggies I still feel like I am going to just lose even if that is not the case. That prevented me from using any of the new units or research. I think you need to incorporate some kinds of early game defenses that can counter the spam of buggies in some way.

Also, multiplayer is really tough to pull off for any indie dev, just in terms of getting enough players. I would suggest just focus on making the AI a bit better for now

This had me feeling like playing Starcraft, used to do that A LOT and I like the potential here.

This is a hell of a challenge though and there are some rough edges like animations, feedback, maybe tutorials (not much of them, just enough so you can survive an attack) well although I think single player campaign is cool and all, I think it might not be worth the amount of work you would have to put into it, so my vote is to focus on refining what you already have and focus on a multiplayer experience

I think that a tutorial is always needed in each game, then I think you should firstly focus on a better structured single player campaign