Taking sides
China:
People have been bugging me about adding China as a playable side for years & my stance has always been that they didn't have any of their own equipment & used a random assortment of units from other countries so they weren't feasible.
Well I decided to turn that from a negative to a positive view & have come up with a multi-branched tech tree that allows the player to pick & choose what countries they can "buy" units from. The unit list is split into three parts (Ground, Air & Heavy), at these points in the tech tree you can choose which countries units you'd like to use. So you could have British ground, German Air & Soviet heavy units, or you could have all three American etc.
I feel this set up best represents the fractal nature of China at the time & how different warlords had different equipment & so in-game different players can have different units. Post-war also benefits from this as depending on what tree you choose you can either play as PRC or the ROC forces in the Chinese civil war.
Some units of note are the Type 59 which will be known to anyone who plays World of Tanks
The P-40 Warhawk which was famously used by the American Flying Tigers. Also ROC F-86 Sabre's where the first aircraft to use homing air-to-air missiles while in combat with PRC Mig-15's.
Poland:
There has also been some interest in adding Poland in the past & while they produced many of their own armaments their defeat at the beginning of WW2 meant that development stopped. Unlike France which had many prototypes & projects which could be used, they don't have enough ground units to fill every time frame. With the idea of a multi-branched tech tree still fresh in my mind I decided to fill the gaps with Allied & Soviet Free Polish ground forces.
So in the Pre/Early-war time frames the units are all of Polish origin, in the Mid/Late-war periods you can either choose to use Allied or Soviet equipped Polish ground forces. However to make things interesting both have advantages & disadvantages.
Allied:
Pro.
Better anti-aircraft unit.
Mobile artillery.
Con.
Weaker Medium tanks.
No Heavy tanks.
Soviet:
Pro
Better Medium tanks.
Can use Heavy tanks.
Con.
Weak anti-aircraft unit.
Uses towed artillery that needs to be deployed to use.
In the Post-war period Poland came under the Soviet sphere of influence & built locally produced copies of Soviet equipment, so their ground forces are very similar to the Soviet unit list.
Unlike the ground forces the Polish air industry was quite active before the war designing several prototypes & concepts to fill the Mid/Late-war period. After the war they continued developing & building their own designs, so all of the aircraft are of Polish origin across all time frames.
Some units of note are the 25TP heavy tank project & the TS-11 Iskra which is still in use today!
Sweden:
Sweden, the greatest country to never fight in WW2... they have been neutral in all major conflicts for the past 200 years but to call their armed forces weak or insignificant because of this would be extremely wrong.
Even tho they tried to stay out of the conflict as much as possible they still prepared to fight if they had to. Swedish military spending drastically increased during WW2 to keep their military forces on par with other European nations. Some of their designs did see action tho, the Strv L-60 & L-62 were built in Hungary as the Toldi & Nimrod. Of course they also designed the famous Bofors 40mm which was used by nearly every country during WW2 & is still in use today!
So far no work has been done in D-day on these countries other than these preliminary unit lists. I first wanted to get some community feedback & see if there is any preference for a specific country or even if there is an objection to adding a new side, any & all thoughts or suggestions are welcome.
Can't wait to play as China.
