I mean they are available but not likely to appear in organised action (specially for Normandy) any more, because of their low effectiveness in battle is not worth for the army to pay the cost of transportation and maintenance.
Vehicles are usually not used as long as infantry weapons. Due to high operating cost, they will not usually be continually used when they show a clear disadvantage, except when the army have no other thing to use. Different types of ammunition also give difficulty to logistics.
If you really decide to use them, of cause it is possible, and they might even be effective if you have specialised tactics. But my point is most late game players who only have the default vehicles are not likely to use them even they take them into the squad line-up, so why do not give them an option?
I mean the condition of US fighting Japan is using early war item doesn’t restrict it to fight Germany with early war item. US can only use early war item to fight Japan doesn’t mean they can’t use early war item to fight early war Germany.
I was thinking the same thing, with the new tech tree being a thing either
A. Go with OPs idea and make it so you don’t have to have a tank or
B. Give us basic default era tanks to use. Someone may want to play on Berlin with just mosins (historically accurate btw) but only has a T-60 to compete with, they should get access to the default tank for the map, which in this case is the T-34-85 DT. To balance it the tank can’t be upgraded, you cant upgraded crew and their gear.
To make vehicles branch in the techtrees more worth to grind for some player who love vehicles, this idea may only apply for some events (maybe try for free in first several weeks of a new campaign release), and the XP gained when trying the new vehicle can be directly used to research it without previous research completed.
How are they going judge what is low BR and what high BR? Are Bar low or high br? what about multiple Thompsons? M1/M9 Bazooka? Or that BR rating will be only around few vehicles and M2 Carbine (which is awful anyway but very close range), can i take Browning m1919A6 to Pacific? It was manufactured since 1919. Or Johnson LMG to Normandy/Tunisia?