Slargos said:
Well spoken, Mrt. And in red aswell. Well spoken.
Well, at times "mod-speak" is necessary.
I think the current 'copter tech is quite enuoigh.
Frankly, I'm inclined to agree with you. There are quite a few arguments that would tend to make it somewhat unreasonable to take the tech tree much further in this direction. Most of these (regarding the physics hurdle of generating the sheer horsepower, the massive metalurgical issues, etc.) have already been made by other posters. Theoretically, however, I supose that it's probably that an nation with vast resources
could choose to focus exclusively on the prerequisite groups of technologies and achieve a degree of advance that might perhaps be on par with the late Korean war Bell models or early Vietnam war Huey.
Anyone interested in reading a (lengthy) treatise on the subject should see
this site which is an historical outline of the USA marine corps' essential strategy and development objectives in the development of helicopters for the Korean war. Another site that gives fairly good general details of the entire history of helicopter warefare
can be found here.
What would worry me most is that even achieving 2002 helicopter capabilities would not make a division - or more likely a brigade attachment - a realistic objective for a player of the game. I can't imagine forgoing the majority of advanced fighter, bomber, industrial, doctinal and nuclear technologies to dogedly pursue this in light of the fact that most equipment developed in the WW2 era and used in vast scale combat would blow even the most modern helicopters out of the sky. As an attack force I would suggest that this is unlikely to ever be feasible (other than close-in delivery of foot troops) in real life. Helicopters would not play a prominent combat role in modern warefare and would be more of a ligistics and supply tool.
Helicopters as a means of limited transport, supply delivery, medivac, etc. are a more feasible goal, however the majority of these concepts are largely abstracted in HoI1 and one might presume HoI2 is unlikely to want to iintroduce additional layers of micromangement to the player unless there is a significant reward. I don't (personally) see that reward, but could at least make a case for it if necessary. Assembling and coding the dozens of necessary tech steps to include hypothetical helicopter tachnologies would be counter-productive of Paradox development personnel time allocations, particularly considering that the facility exists for users to code this into a mod themselves if they feel strongly about it. I would prefer to treat the concept of such (relatively primitive) craft as being abstractly intrinsic to advanced infantry units (perhaps in HQ-related, logistic, or observational tech paths?) and avoid expanding the tech tree in all sorts of complex and unnecessary ways. If expansions are to be made, they should have more direct tangeable benefits to the player.
That's my take on it. Feel free to refute me.
