Declutter the German Tech Tree

Suggestions
63

Thanks for the ping. I think it’s a worthy debate for the community, do we allow mix n match or should squads be more accurate? By which I mean Germans only use German weapons, Italians only use Italian except in cases of direct multi-use.

I agree with having to unlock a certain amount of weapons before the new tier.

I will say I do find it awfully annoying all the British-Commonwealth troops forced to run around with a Springfield as their reserve, which they never used.
Likewise although I much prefer the Italian rifles, Germans with Carcanos just ain’t right.

Perhaps P14 Enfield would be a more appropriate reserve rifle for UK-Commonwealth squads?

64

It seems like the OP had the right idea but went about it in the wrong way

  • Yes the german tech tree is cluttered and needs renovating

  • No, items should not be removed unless for a very good gameplay/balance reason

  • Yes, most of the German tech tree needs to be foldered behind other items to bring it in line with other nations. Pretty much exactly this:

In my experience, many new players after playing for a bit and understanding how the tech tree functions, immediately decide against using Germany seeing it’s massive size and bloat compared to the US tech tree

4 Likes
65

And people who understand how good Kiraly is.

1 Like
66

I personally disagree with removing things - I’d rather see redundant stuff Foldered. For example the late 109 Gs have a hilarious amount of engine power at low alts. For example, throw the Pre war 98ks in a folder with the normal 98k. If you want the little boost, yay, otherwise you can skip it.

2 Likes
67

Fair points. But why on earth do we need a ‘pre war Kar98k’. It’s the shame bloomin gun!

At least with a Canadian and British Sten gun, adding a proper British Sten gun means players can have accurate Canadian OR British Stens.

I also stand by my questioning of the Luftwaffe Drilling. It’s a survival weapon for pilots in a very misunderstood concept of Africa.

We can’t even use the 3 barrels in game and no one wouldve been running around with them on the frontlines.

1 Like
68

If people want to RP as their historically accurate squads, that’s fine. And obviously the tech tree could do with better organization, organization into sub-factions would be ideal (to go along with the ability to choose soldier nationality), but complete faction separation only limits player choice and would frustrate a huge chunk of the player base, not to mention the effects it’d have on matchmaking. Imagine all the new German players who looked at a guide going “but where’s the Beretta M1918? I wanted it for the high ROF,” and telling them “oh yeah we got rid of that because reasons.”

I like being able to outfit a squad with a huge selection of weapons, to be able to choose between the MP40 or the Beretta M1 or whatever. “Oh it’s not historically authentic,” this game has never been historically authentic. Even back in the campaigns things were silly when ostensibly one of the main points of the campaigns was to limit equipment choices for historical authenticity. Take Normandy for example: for pretty much all of WW2 the vast majority of US SMGs were Thompsons, but you didn’t unlock them until level 29. In the vast majority of matches you never even saw a Thompson, meanwhile US squads were running around with Stens and US AT Gunners were always using British PIATs. Or how about Axis Tunisia, where the damn ITALIANS in their own campaign NEVER GOT THE BERETTA M38A!

If I wanted to play BR2 Axis, but my favorite SMG is the Beretta M1 while my favorite rifle is the Mannlicher, then a change like this would be awful. If all the Italian/non-German equipment was removed and put into its own completely separate faction I’d just be pissed off since I can no longer do something I was once able to. I’m pretty sure every new player would feel shortchanged if a change like this was implemented and then they later found out “wait, my faction used to have like twice as much stuff”?

I’d much prefer tech-trees to be organized also by their respective sub-faction. Rename the nations from “USA” and “Germany” to “Western Allies” and “United Axis.” Instead of straight linear progression for the subfactions, once you unlock a weapon with one subfaction, you can continue from that point with the other faction if you want. Let’s say you unlock the last German Tier 2 SMG, the MP3008, you should have the choice then to either move on to the MP38 for Tier 3 in the German section, or you can branch off and research the Beretta M1 in the Italian tier 3 section. However, you’d still need to go back and research the lower tier Italian SMGs if you wanted to get those. Above all the player should still be free to mix and match their equipment and squad personnel as they see fit.

6 Likes
69

Some good arguments here.

I’m glad there is agreement about better organisation and putting things into sub-trees (some people get all worked up about the idea of a sub faction, not sure why?).

Now I remain partial to separated trees but I will consider the concerns I have in turn:

New content:
We see how full the Axis and Western Allies tech trees are at present. This is despite for example most British tanks and aircraft being absent, almost no Commonwealth tech or squads and other missing tech like the M3 Halftrack and Lewis gun.
I have always hoped that over time we would get new nations and tech, for example Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland, Norway to name a few. Clearly there just isn’t room in the current tech tree.
While without new content players become bored and the game dies.

So I proposed separate UK-Commowealth tree as this would allow more space for USA to have its own tech (as well as for example Brazilian and Puerto Rican premium squads) likewise proper space for UK to really get its own tech along with Commonwealth nations and other smaller Allied nations.

Now with sub-trees this could work. Just have an Allies tree and as I suggested in another post we would end up with something like this:
USA
UK
Commonwealth
France + BENELUX
Poland
Greece-Yugoslavia
Norway-Denmark

Some trees like the last two here wouldnt even need to be that substantial since it’s all the one Faction and one queue. It just organises the research better and allows for more additions.

This compromise I am happy with.

2. Nation appropriate maps.

This is where it becomes more difficult. If we had separate trees then we could have maps where only the British or Commonwealth fought, maps where only USA fought, and maps where they fought together. Likewise for Axis.

While the Allied powers did often fight alongside each other there were a number of theatres and battles where they did not.

This is especially an issue for pre 1941 theatres when USA was still neutral. The fact that we cant have British queued on their own has likely prevented a Battle for France 1940 campaign till now.

Some people wouldnt care about GIs at Dunkirk or Sedan but personally I believe it would be just too far of a stretch.
Burma was almost entirely UK-Commonwealth yet we have GIs running around everywhere. Lucky for the supporters of this situation, in real life there were eventually some Americans in Burma but not many.

We have also seen the craziness of French resistance in the Solomon Islands, Australian guerillas in the Battle of the Bulge and Volksturm just about everywhere.
I agree the game was never 110% realistic, but we’ve gotta draw a line somewhere. And as I mentioned before, it would be a real shame to completely discount every early war battle just because of the U.S.

I’m open to debate on how we could solve this without separate queues.

Perhaps uniforms could automatically change where not appropriate? Like Americans in 1940 France would automatically get BEF uniforms, likewise British in the Philippines would get USA uniforms?
Voicelines I personally wouldnt worry much about.

Regarding weapons, I understand some people like to mix n match.
I myself like the BARA2 for my ‘Australians’ (British squads I just call them all Aussies) because top mounted magazines suck.
I also much prefer the Italian rifles to the German ones (excluding Austrian Mannlicher M1895 and Czech Vz.24 which are excellent).
But do we really want French troops in 1940 using M1 Garands or Americans at Iwo Jima using Norwegian rifles? That’s up for debate.
My only proposal would be try and roughly match maps with BRs and therefore sort of early, mid, late war.

1 Like
70

Some weapons should stay there, like the Beretta M38s and stuff