Captured Russian tanks in German service

[Blitz1945]

Not sure how feasible this is, but it occurred to me playing the grand campaign again that with the captured Soviet tanks, there should be some sort of upgrade system unique to them. As the war progresses those units are valuable veterans but have no upgrade path but to switch to German tanks. Maybe if you capture a newer version of the T34 or KV1 Instead of getting a green new unit you could upgrade a current captured vehicle unit. Again, not sure if it is doable, but the captured units late in the war have to be changed out or die.
IMHO.

[ThvN]

It could perhaps be modded in a very roundabout way, but it would be very cumbersome. It has one advantage I think, it would prevent the player from using an army which has more French & Soviet tanks than German ones. I did that a few times and it just feels a bit strange. But would you allow French tanks to be upgraded to KV-1's?

[Blitz1945]

No, I would think that those and Matilda's stay the same. I am talking only Russian. For instance a have a KV1-B. Early in the war when I got it it was a front line unit. But as I progress I capture a's and c's. Be nice to change mine instead of getting the new unit. I understand that may be hard but say it unlocks that variant in an upgrade area between scenarios.

[ThvN]

...say it unlocks that variant in an upgrade area between scenarios.

I have actually contemplated a similar idea to be able to upgrade (for example) Panzer I's into Panzerjäger or Panzer II's into Marders. I ran into some issues, the biggest problem was that it is difficult to make sure that only a specific unit can be upgraded. But if units are preplaced in a scenario (like capturable units) it might actually be easier to make this work...

In the scenario editor, you can add a script to a map to alter a unit if certain conditions are met. I'm not sure if it can be made to work like this, but the editor can check for a certain unit class and for unique names. So you would have to give a unique name to all capturable units and work with special tags/zones, otherwise any unit of the same class could be upgraded to this captured unit type.

It might be a bit complicated to make, but I think it could work if you run a script to check for the presence of a certain unit type/name (say a KV-1C) and if such a unit was detected (when it is captured) it could spawn a special hex marker with a message for the player. Than you can move your KV-1B on that hex and it would change into a KV-1C and the original would have to be removed again. But than you would only be able to upgrade a KV-1B into C, as each type would have to have a separate name and the editor can only use one at a time. So you would have to add scripts for each possible combination of existing unit/upgrade available. Would be interesting to test.

[Blitz1945]

That's exactly what I was talking about!