The one area that the axis forces really dominated in world war 2, in the west at least, for superior design was in Jets and armour, late war mainly!, earlier blitkreig armour could be argued as inferior but with better tactics that were employed.Both jets and tanks fortunately, were not produced in enough numbers to stop the allies but it is an accepted fact that the German heavy tanks were the toughest and possibly the deadliest.
Now in aces high for the first year and a half(?) the allied planeset really dominated the skies of AH for european theatre types at least(nik became a real pain!).As a fan of LW planes I like others who chose to fly them were frustrated by the superior speeds of types like the p51d and the turning capabilities of other allied types like the spitfire.In ground attack we had for a LONG time no real capability at all! (remember when and for how long the 190a8 was all we had?
).In the bomber catagory we had an even worse time until we had the ju88 to toy with.(I say toy with because it suffers from being the only bomber that is pre 1943-45).I really love the diversity the ju88 offers,and persist with its use because of this alone, even when i know 9 times out of 10 a determined attack will easily leave you dead.
We were lucky in only one area, the ground vehicles!.We had the only tank and the deadly ostwind(imo a vehicle that has spoiled somewhat the balance of choice in AA defence). The M16 was an excellent choice as an AA platform in that it is vulnerable without that instant kill capability.If you was a good shot and possess some skill you can get kills, but at the same time a more carefull pilot could kill you with a skilfull bomb or rocket attack and when hit by an M16 this type of pilot had a chance to react and escape harm.Not so with ostwinds(or AI ack for this matter!).I think a lot of the frustration in AH is that when hit by ai AA/ostwinds there isnt a lot you can do about it.This led to a lot of people ignoring the excellent ground attack side to flying.If when hit you get a chance to break off you are more likely to try again and use some skill and possibly we'd avoid this suicide dive mentality.Where they know they are going to lose a wing first hit so they dive in drop everything and hope it hits close (who can blame them when ai AA or ostwind AA is so deadly?)
Back to tanks, on average it took TEN shermans to kill a tiger.(recalled from memory 99% sure this was the statistic).The method employed was often to send so many shermans and other types into the battles that these heavy and dangerous tanks were simply overrun by the amount of allied tanks or were destroyed by air attacks when the allies really took a hold on the air.I think HTC should recognise that a lot of their customers are fans of books on history about this 'deadly image' of the axis.In AH there isnt many occations (not before the jets anyway) where you thought the axis had much of an advantage.However, we always had our Gvs but unfortunately not a lot we could match them against.Tank battles were just the same type vs type and did little to help us understand why the panzer was rated so highly.
I was thinking that HTC should Avoid bringing the very much later allied tanks I have seen requested in AH like the pershing or firefly version of the shermans in favour of the earlier types that had such a hard time against the better designs The Germans fielded.A simple sherman M4 would imo be a fantastic first tank addition to AH.(not only that but this is the icon of the allies for me personally from kellys heroes to the battle of the bulge this is the tank we often see and think of for WW2)
What Im asking for is for HTC to keep the Ground war an area where if you choose to be allied you will face a deadly enemy.In MA this will not be a problem in terms of ballance because, after all, you can take the same tank if you find it too difficult to attack a base etc.But for scenarios etc it is possible to field greater numbers of inferior tanks vs smaller numbers of the superior tiger/panther/panzer types.Learning decent tactics instead of slogging it out with longer and longer ranged guns will become the norm.Using cover or speed or numbers to overpower the small but deadly enemy could be a lot of fun imo.We might even see a few great tank commanders emerging!!
What i would really hate to see is an Allied tank from the very end of the war that greatly outperforms the panzerIVH or any other axis tank we might get for a while.What i mean is this:
If we introduce a pershing with a bigger gun the Panzer IV will be outclassed, the favoued tank would be the allied pershing and the panzer driver or fan would be frustrated and we would be back to pershing to pershing slug fests, only now at greater ranges.If however the sherman M4/or similar allied early tank like the matilda, was introduced most if not all will 'try it out' because we all like them, we might find the panzer a tricky foe and some good fights should emerge with a differing setup and capabilities/weaknesses.
I think personally that as AH has a heavily late war orientated plane set it would be a good idea to keep 'axis types' happy with the better types of ground vehicles.By all means perk them to reflect their rarity etc but keep them cutting edge.
If we get were to get the tiger or panther or kingtiger or jaggpanther etc, then by all means , introduce much later allied designs but please dont introduce an allied tank that suddenly leaves axis fans cold.I for one want to feel the difference by introducing models as they arrived into the front line, and this means Germany pretty much leading the way most of the time(russian front not included here of course, I have often read of the T34's superior design for the russian terrain and that would also be interesting to 'feel')
Anyway this has gone on a bit long , but i hope you understand what i mean here.Im ok with the airside of AH leaning towards the allies a bit but in the gound war I really feel it would be better for aH to keep it how it was on the front in europe.deadly but rare heavy german tanks taking on large numbers of inferior allies tanks interspersed with a few better versions but exacting high costs.And trying to convey that vulnerable feeling the allied tank veterans often talk about.Those Allied veterans often admired the vehicles of their enemies and openly admitted to wishing they had similar ones.Much as many german crews envied the mobility and good design of the Russians T34.
ok request over
