The more I see of the variant system, not that's its been very much, the more I'm thinking that the game would be better off with a simple, single researchable upgrade to each tech that unlocks a new equipment item (and more distinct techs in the tank, plane & ship trees). The ability to research it could be unlocked by spending experience points. With research companies assigned, nations could end up with different stats for their equipment. This could apply to infantry weapons in the same way.
As I mentioned somewhere above, I I'd like to see heavy weapons as separate production items to the base infantry weapons. If they are produced separately, and the current variant system is applied to infantry equipment, that could allow players to assign more or less heavy weapons to different types of battalions. Say a standard battalion is 80 infantry weapons and 20 heavy weapons. Once the Germans start running out of manpower and switch their infantry to defensive tasks, they might produce a variant battalion of 60 infantry and 40 heavy weapons. This could also model different sized battalions, with say battalions of only 80 units of equipment. Thinking about this I think infantry weapons is the best place to use a variant system, but I wouldn't have 4 different stats that can be increased by 0-5 points, I'd just have infantry and heavy weapons with a total of between 50 & 100 and where heavy weapons can't be more than 50% of the total. Players could use experience to vary the size/composition of their standard battalions or create variants. Variant battalions would need to be separate from infantry battalions in the divisional template, so that a player can choose which type of battalion to assign rather than just having a one size fits all mentality. In such a fashion we could have small lightly equipped battalions for occupation duties, medium sized battalions packed with heavy weapons for static defence and larger more balanced battalions for normal campaigning.
