TF is crate ent. on about? They've not even made an RTS, let alone one with love and care out into it? They've got an RPG* (grim dawn) and a city builder (farthest frontier) on steam. Neither come anywhere close to what an RTS is supposed to be, and like others have said, Dune (don't know the specific name), C&C, warcraft and StarCraft we're all impressive mainstream games, all RTS.
Haven't read the post, but what if kind of detached world do they live in?
On that last part, theres a difference between elevating a file to admin, and being an admin in Windows.
In a lot of cases the ui is GREATLY simplified when not an admin, to the point where you might only have like 20% of all available options.
For the standard user? Great! Not when you're messing around with permissions.
It's why you ALWAYS log in as Admin when setting up a windows server. Iirc you can't even install tiles without actually being an admin, even if you have all logins.
From my experience with windows, your current guess is correct btw :D