This post is a bit of a discussion on the use of captured equipment with the intent of generating further discussion about what simple changes could be made to make things a bit more practical.
First point is that most captured equipment like infantry weapons, artillery etc is no problem at all. You can have your divisions use this equipment without any weird anomalies because captured stuff is very much like your own. The problem comes with armoured vehicles and aircraft and, to a lesser extent, anything else with a movement speed.
Starting with ground equipment, the biggest issue is speed. The game has some ideas about what is the best equipment to put into your divisions and if you allow a mobile division to use foreign equipment you are constantly at risk that it will suddenly slow down due to reinforcing with a single slow tank. This has always be the primary issue and the only sensible approach I've found is to simply not use foreign equipment. This is somewhat reduced with the current meta of heavy tank divisions but is still a problem. This also has a secondary problem of using foreign tanks with very poor armament instead obsolete models of your own tanks. I've found that I always resort to just not allowing any foreign armoured vehicles in my mobile divisions as it is too difficult to manage.
There are exactly equivalent problems with aircraft but with range instead of speed. Exactly the same issue arise that you really don't want air wings polluted with shorter range captured equipment. With aircraft it tends to be less of an issue but still has significant impact.
As a secondary problem there is the issue that once a division or air wing becomes polluted with in appropriate equipment the only way to fix it is to wait for the natural upgrade process to replace the inappropriate equipment. You can't change the permitted equipment and get the bad stuff removed.
One way to use foreign equipment for both armour and aircraft is to setup specific training units using only the foreign equipment and train these to fully trained and then convert to units with your own equipment BUT you better have enough of your own kit that qualifies as 'better' so it all gets upgraded. I commonly use this for air wing training but it does require careful management and checking of the mission profiles. I usually end up with an airbase dedicated to deploying all captured aircraft - deploy with a star (same models only), set to train and periodically deploy more and merge. When you have surplus of your own models simply take a wing or two and switch to upgrade air models. This seems to work quite well.
This brings me to the issues with upgrading. One way to deal with all this stuff is to upgrade it which can be sensible even if the upgrades are expensive if it avoids the need for scarce resources. However, you run into the upgrade rules
For tanks I usually end stuck not knowing quite what to do. Typically all the foreign light tanks end up being assigned to occupation duties so I don't care about those. Medium tanks are bit of a puzzle because the only conversion unit I'm looking for is flame tanks and for some reason the direct build is often cheaper than a conversion and there are no resources being saved.
Does anyone have any better ideas on how to handle this stuff within the current rules and what simply changes could be made to the game to avoid playing as a mid-rank body in the armed forces logistics department.
First point is that most captured equipment like infantry weapons, artillery etc is no problem at all. You can have your divisions use this equipment without any weird anomalies because captured stuff is very much like your own. The problem comes with armoured vehicles and aircraft and, to a lesser extent, anything else with a movement speed.
Starting with ground equipment, the biggest issue is speed. The game has some ideas about what is the best equipment to put into your divisions and if you allow a mobile division to use foreign equipment you are constantly at risk that it will suddenly slow down due to reinforcing with a single slow tank. This has always be the primary issue and the only sensible approach I've found is to simply not use foreign equipment. This is somewhat reduced with the current meta of heavy tank divisions but is still a problem. This also has a secondary problem of using foreign tanks with very poor armament instead obsolete models of your own tanks. I've found that I always resort to just not allowing any foreign armoured vehicles in my mobile divisions as it is too difficult to manage.
There are exactly equivalent problems with aircraft but with range instead of speed. Exactly the same issue arise that you really don't want air wings polluted with shorter range captured equipment. With aircraft it tends to be less of an issue but still has significant impact.
As a secondary problem there is the issue that once a division or air wing becomes polluted with in appropriate equipment the only way to fix it is to wait for the natural upgrade process to replace the inappropriate equipment. You can't change the permitted equipment and get the bad stuff removed.
One way to use foreign equipment for both armour and aircraft is to setup specific training units using only the foreign equipment and train these to fully trained and then convert to units with your own equipment BUT you better have enough of your own kit that qualifies as 'better' so it all gets upgraded. I commonly use this for air wing training but it does require careful management and checking of the mission profiles. I usually end up with an airbase dedicated to deploying all captured aircraft - deploy with a star (same models only), set to train and periodically deploy more and merge. When you have surplus of your own models simply take a wing or two and switch to upgrade air models. This seems to work quite well.
This brings me to the issues with upgrading. One way to deal with all this stuff is to upgrade it which can be sensible even if the upgrades are expensive if it avoids the need for scarce resources. However, you run into the upgrade rules
- You can only upgrade something to another model of the same type if the equipment has been marked as obsolete. Often you will have a lot of captured equipment that is not marked as obsolete
- If it isn't marked as obsolete then you can only upgrade as a conversion - ie change type
For tanks I usually end stuck not knowing quite what to do. Typically all the foreign light tanks end up being assigned to occupation duties so I don't care about those. Medium tanks are bit of a puzzle because the only conversion unit I'm looking for is flame tanks and for some reason the direct build is often cheaper than a conversion and there are no resources being saved.
Does anyone have any better ideas on how to handle this stuff within the current rules and what simply changes could be made to the game to avoid playing as a mid-rank body in the armed forces logistics department.
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