So, there are four Fw 190 fighters in the game: variants A, F, G, and D. The first column in which they vary are availability dates. I have come to rely on Wikipedia data; admittedly, when I first started using Wikipedia, I was skeptical. It has become evident to me, however, that common good will and effective editing combine to make it a reasonably accurate source of information.
Therefore, I went with their availablity dates on each Fw 190 model. The first Fw 190 A came out in June 1941. That was the date already in units.csv. Focke-Wulf continued to turn out variants (A-1 through A-9) until February 1945, so rather than leave it open-ended, I entered 28/2/1945 as the expire date for Fw 190 A in my file.
It seems to me that model A was always a "dogfighter" and that its successor in that role was the model D, which the default units.csv also lists as "dogfighter." The production of model D overlapped model A's latest versions toward the end, beginning in August 1944, which is correctly shown in units.csv. Obviously, production of model D ended shortly before the war itself ended in Europe, but I left it open-ended for future alternative history scenarios.
That leaves the ground attack versions of Fw 190, F and G. Model F started coming out in May 1942 but really did not get into high production until spring of 1943, so I left that available date as is. However, Wikipedia says model F was still being built until February 1945, so I entered that as the expire date (besides, the default units.csv file had a typo in this cell: "1./1/1944").
Fw 190 G was the enhancement of model F, but here's the thing. The enhancement was in more range than model F, which reflects in 10 fuel versus 8 for all other Fw 190 in the game. It has slightly better attack values (particularly inf and veh att, as apropos for groundAttack), but not a significant jump, so okay. The thing is, G was being developed nearly at the same time as F, so I could have moved its availability up to August 1942 but, to have some differential, I left it at the default of July 1943 (and open-ended, for alternative history).
The attack values all look reasonable, so I left them alone. That brings us back to the original topic, cost.
The cost of a Fw 190 A in the default units.csv file is 105; that looked strange, so I made it the base of 100. Dogfighter model D was a significant improvement over model A, but not that much, so that a jump in cost from 100 to 120 (not 130) seems appropriate.
Here is how F came out of A in development:
The Fw 190F configuration was originally tested in a Fw 190 A-0/U4, starting in May 1942. The A-0 testbed aircraft was outfitted with centerline and wing-mounted bomb racks. The early testing results were quite good, and Focke-Wulf began engineering the attack version of the Fw 190. New armor was added to the bottom of the fuselage, protecting the fuel tanks and pilot, the engine cowling, and the landing gear mechanisms and outer wing mounted armament.
Well, if model A started at cost 100, then I think model F should start at 120. However, the improvement from ground attack F to G was only in terms of adding fuel tanks to extend range, so the jump in cost should be smaller, from 120 to 130.
Thus, my Fw 190 section now looks like this; only the dates and the costs have changed. (Again, this is my personal file, not official; only my recommendations, so to speak.)
- Image2061.jpg (39.87 KiB) Viewed 736 times
