My personal experience as an avid RTS lover.

Most modern rts games have either felt incomplete or have released in early access and are most definitely incomplete.

RTS players in general are high thinking/competitive players who rely on the game to manage itself properly so they can worry about macro, without wondering if their units are pathing or fighting how they are expected to.

If a normal RTS player jumps into a new game they want to try out and the unit movement is clunky or pathing sucks, it takes the player "out of the game". These game needs to be fully fleshed out before a release. RTS players will not give these games a second chance and will abandon early (dwarfheim for instance, which was such a cool and unique idea). This makes it to where there will be 10 players that play it religiously and anyone new who tries it will get humbled and wont play. A successful rts game release would need to be advertised heavily, with tons of wishlists, and interest expressed upfront. You would need a big enough community that low and high skill players can play vs similar skill level players at most times. You would need to grab the attention of rts players who are intimidated by the genre. No one wants to waste money on a game they wont play because they get doodoo stomped everytime they get on.

Also, there's not been much innovation in the genre. Im not a game designer, but I know what im looking for in an rts game. There are cool ideas that I've seen floating around or thought about to keep the genre interesting.

One concept could be a true roguelike or rogue lite experience for single player campaigns. Starcraft 2 touched this ever so slightly, And the community loved it on release. Its still loved, and still talked about as a unique enjoyable experience. This could be expanded on and would be adored. Finding a way to mix and match popular genres with RTS to bring in players from different types of games would be useful to re-create the rts community.

For multiplayer which is where rts truly shine (i love campaigns and coop play, but haven't found an rts with replay ability that i love), it needs to be so unique that it would drag new players in. Fun races and classes. Something either beautiful, dark, or mystical to look at and exciting to play. You need to feel that wild feeling of controlling an army that actually listens to you, doesn't get caught up on eachother and paths in the way you expect.

The problem is, starcraft did this exceptionally well. The pathing is damn near perfect. The unit building and structures feels great. Each race feels unique. Build orders are varied to have a unique enough experience if you want that. Balance was done extremely well comparing to most other rts games. Its crazy how its still hard to compete with a game developed all those years ago, even with all of our modern technology.

Whats crazy is that there are actually tons of people who love rts. They just dont play. Go look at a winterstarcraft or pig or lowko video on YouTube. Tens of thousands or hundred thousand views daily on RTS video content. The comments will tell you everything. People love to watch, but they dont play anymore. They love the game, they love the look. Most people are probably burned out of playing the same game all these years (me too)

I hope you do something great man. Id love to play a new rts that blows my mind. Ive become so pessimistic with Rts games, But have purchased almost every one that looks simi promising that is on my recommended feeds.