Thanks for your constructive argument. I understand where you are coming from and this is why I am not saying "SC sux, play COH". I am exploring the merits of each in a rational approach.
I appreciate that SC has strategy and it is not just a click contest, however, for all of the things you mentioned COH not only has the same concept but in my opinion an improved concept. Let me explain by discussing 3 of the points you raised:
1.) Armour system. This provides soft and hard counters (e.g. a bullet shooter cant hurt a tank, but a missle shooter can). Or siege tanks are effective vs buildings. etc. Both games have these concepts which I like. However COH has armour FACING. This is real world - tanks and vehicles have stronger armour on the front and are susceptible to additional damage from the rear or sides. This means the micro is INTERESTING, as in, try to flank a tank, or try to keep your injured tanks rear away from the enemy fire etc. What is the equivilent in SC? Try to back up a unit out of another units range while you reload your special attack? Doesnt seem as interesting (and BTW recharging of abilities is a facet of COH as well so you can still do this if you want to).
2.) Economy - of course this is important and both games require macro strategy. But this is my main gripe with SC, in order to do macro effectively you need APMs. It's almost like "micro" Macro. You need to click on lots of stuff in order to IMPLEMENT your macro strategy.
In COH this is massively improved. How? Well your economy (including your pop cap - geez if I need to build one more pop cap building in SC I will go crazy) is based on areas around the map that you have conquered (by planting a flag in that sector). Ok so what does this mean? This means that EVERY SQUARE INCH of the map is useful and fought over during the match. This was first offered up in Dawn of War 1 and I was instantly in love with the concept. No need to worry about worker units. So you might say "then raiding workers has been cut out of the game", this is not true, you dont raid worker units, you raid resource points and cut off an enemies sectors. if there is no supply line from the HQ to a given sector the enemy wont receive resource units from it. (I am not even going to go into how cool it is having 3 different resource types that actually have a logical point and impact the gameplay in an interesting way).
3.) Different armies - Yes Blizzard hit the jackpot with SC1 compared to all RTS at the time for coming up with 3 vastly different races. Protoss slow and powerful, zerg fast and cheap, terran jack of all trades (over simplification i know). What about COH? Surely you have played this. There are 4 armies and they are VERY different. You need to learn each army just like SC. Each army has 3 in game doctrines to change how they fight so thats 4 x 3 = 12 different styles. How many possible match ups is that??
Now to the crux of my argument. SC1/2 have things about the game that make the macro a pain in the a$$ and mean those with better APM have a distinct advantage. I just cannot understand why Blizzard didnt introduce this model:
1.) Make units into squads. Build a squad and use re-inforcing like COH so you dont need to group units manually and baby sit them.
2.) Provide a retreat feature (reinforcing a squad is cheaper than buying a new one, plus squads can gain veterency which impact how they play).
3.) Allow squads to have semi AI, so they take cover by themselves etc.
Now you will say "well good micro can do all those things"
I appreciate that SC has strategy and it is not just a click contest, however, for all of the things you mentioned COH not only has the same concept but in my opinion an improved concept. Let me explain by discussing 3 of the points you raised:
1.) Armour system. This provides soft and hard counters (e.g. a bullet shooter cant hurt a tank, but a missle shooter can). Or siege tanks are effective vs buildings. etc. Both games have these concepts which I like. However COH has armour FACING. This is real world - tanks and vehicles have stronger armour on the front and are susceptible to additional damage from the rear or sides. This means the micro is INTERESTING, as in, try to flank a tank, or try to keep your injured tanks rear away from the enemy fire etc. What is the equivilent in SC? Try to back up a unit out of another units range while you reload your special attack? Doesnt seem as interesting (and BTW recharging of abilities is a facet of COH as well so you can still do this if you want to).
2.) Economy - of course this is important and both games require macro strategy. But this is my main gripe with SC, in order to do macro effectively you need APMs. It's almost like "micro" Macro. You need to click on lots of stuff in order to IMPLEMENT your macro strategy.
In COH this is massively improved. How? Well your economy (including your pop cap - geez if I need to build one more pop cap building in SC I will go crazy) is based on areas around the map that you have conquered (by planting a flag in that sector). Ok so what does this mean? This means that EVERY SQUARE INCH of the map is useful and fought over during the match. This was first offered up in Dawn of War 1 and I was instantly in love with the concept. No need to worry about worker units. So you might say "then raiding workers has been cut out of the game", this is not true, you dont raid worker units, you raid resource points and cut off an enemies sectors. if there is no supply line from the HQ to a given sector the enemy wont receive resource units from it. (I am not even going to go into how cool it is having 3 different resource types that actually have a logical point and impact the gameplay in an interesting way).
3.) Different armies - Yes Blizzard hit the jackpot with SC1 compared to all RTS at the time for coming up with 3 vastly different races. Protoss slow and powerful, zerg fast and cheap, terran jack of all trades (over simplification i know). What about COH? Surely you have played this. There are 4 armies and they are VERY different. You need to learn each army just like SC. Each army has 3 in game doctrines to change how they fight so thats 4 x 3 = 12 different styles. How many possible match ups is that??
Now to the crux of my argument. SC1/2 have things about the game that make the macro a pain in the a$$ and mean those with better APM have a distinct advantage. I just cannot understand why Blizzard didnt introduce this model:
1.) Make units into squads. Build a squad and use re-inforcing like COH so you dont need to group units manually and baby sit them.
2.) Provide a retreat feature (reinforcing a squad is cheaper than buying a new one, plus squads can gain veterency which impact how they play).
3.) Allow squads to have semi AI, so they take cover by themselves etc.
Now you will say "well good micro can do all those things"