Slitherine

The Hs 129 is game is available only after 6/17/1944 but it actually entered service in April 1942 and saw heavy fighting in the East. Production shut down in Sept 1944. Could we get this corrected?

I second this. It seems like the 129 B-1 and B-2 were arriving at the front in spring 1942.

It looks like the Hs 129 in the game is the HS 129 B-3 with the 7,5 cm gun. But only 20-30 planes of this variant were ever built. The gun was to big for the plane a caused serious problems with flight stability.

Well, at least I can thank you two guys for calling my attention to the Hs 129. A simple reference to Wikipedia confirms what you are saying about the availability of this aircraft and its presence on the Eastern Front in 1943. I can't fix it officially, but since I needed a different type of German tactical bomber in my scenario — I'm tired of looking at Stukas! — your thread was the answer. Fortunately, I can override the dates in a custom scenario.

I also noticed the B3 in sov3_01_Prokhorovka (12/7/1943) of Red Storm which wasn't nice.
vanilla availability: 17/6/1944
Quite a failure in scenario design here.
If you need more variants then by all means create some. Hack the barrel away from the model and we got the B2!
I already created two other variants, all using the same B3 model ofc but I don't care:

Hs 129B-2 (MK 101): 1/6/1942 - 20/11/1942
- deliveries of the new Hs 129 B-2 model began in May 1942, side-by-side with the B-1 (of which just 50 planes had been delivered at that point)
- in June they received a new weapon, the 30 mm MK 101 cannon with armor-piercing ammunition in a centerline pod
- ES: Sevastopol

Hs 129B-2/R3 (BK 3.7): 20/11/1942 - 14/1/1945
- HS 129 arrived in Tunisia in November 1942 with 5.(Pz.)/Schlachtgeschwader 1, which had previously operated on the Eastern Front. In Tunisia the Hs 129 enjoyed some success, especially in December 1942.
- SS: Race for Tunis

Hs 129B-3 (BK 7.5): 14/1/1945
- 25 produced from June to September 1944
- Hs 129 B-3s were delivered to 10 and 14 (Pz)/SG 9 in winter of 1944/45 and were operated successfully, even against the giant "Josef Stalin" tank
- PzC-GC45E: Goldap

The date of the B2/R3 is chosen by me to still add this variant to Sandstorm at proper time while banning the previous variant. Maybe a bit too early compared to the Ju 87G (2/3/1943), but I'm fine by that.

If ppl prefer to have it in 42 or early 43 it's NP. But the hard att should be toned down then as it's not the 75mm Pak-equipped B3 then.

Which puts it more into the range of the already available Stukas then, so it would not be really a great alternative. However, I'm not strictly opposed to intro it earlier.