Tank project dlc

[Archangel85]

I mean, historically, the tank designs used by the different countries were all compromises, based on the availability of various metals, the capabilities of industry, the doctrine of how the tanks were to be used, and so on.

So, ingame, why would you play as Britain, and design something like the Matilda - heavy armour, slow speed, light gun, instead of a more useful design that better fits the game mechanics ?
Why would you fit a two-man turret to any tank, when you have the option to just fit a three-man turret ? Why would you limit your designs when you're not faced with the constraints that made those historical decisions rational ?

A Mathilda-type tank would be useful to add enough armor to your infantry templates to bully other infantry, i.e. its historical role. The light gun and slower speed would make it cheap enough to offset the cost of the armor.

A three-man turret might be overkill for certain vehicles, and could come with other drawbacks - increased size of the vehicle, increased cost, reduced speed due to the bigger turret etc. It's a trade-off that countries have historically been willing to make because of the better division of labor between crew members, but even the Germans ran around with two-man turrets in their Panzer IIs, and the early model T34s also had only 2 man turrtes but still made life difficult for the Germans. Besides, three man turrets could always be linked to doctrine research and be available earlier in some trees compared to others.

Problem is, most tanks were rubbish until ca 1942, with the exception of the soviets, whose T34 was arguably better and worse than the others.
But a Tank designer would need to take into Account the benefit of hindsight, lest the player would build his Sherman or Pz IV G in 1939, because he knows better than historical designers and military staff.
Something the naval designer has less of an issue with because of naval warfare's Rock-Paper-Torpedo Bomber mechanics, while tanks are more Like "More Rock than You"...

The germans seemed to have little trouble winning with their "bad" pre-1942 tanks. A lot of that is down to better doctrine, but the best doctrine in the world is useless if you don't have equipment that can execute on it. Investing the resources to build a tank in 1938 that is still the best in the world 5 years later, instead of getting more "good enough for now" tanks earlier, would be an interesting choice in my opinion.