My thinking on tanks...
Historically:
1940: French/British (Somua, Char B, Matilda 2) tanks on paper, slightly superior or on a par with Germans in hard quality and quantity.
Char B, Matilda extremely strong armour (Germany had no equivalent heavily protected tanks)
So, armour rating for some tanks (Char B, Matilda 1, Matilda 2) should be so heavy as to make them hard to beat by German tanks.
Attack values can be evenly matched. Those heavily armoured allied tanks will be very slow though.
1941: Weaker Russian tanks (BT-5, BT-7, T-26 etc) clearly superior to weaker German tanks (Pz1, Pz2, or equal to Pz38(t)) in terms of hard quality and overwhelmingly superior in quantity.
Those 3 Russian tanks all had quite decent 45mm guns. Pz1:machine guns only, Px2: 20mm gun, Pz38(t): 37mm gun.
BT tank was extremely fast. Should have double the speed of other tanks.
Stronger Russian tanks (T-34/76, KV1, KV2) clearly superior to stronger German tanks (Pz3, Pz4) in terms of hard quality and slightly less or on a par in quantity.
The Russian ones should have stronger armour, KV overwhelmingly so.
Russian tanks have superior firepower: All 76.2mm guns except KV2 which was even bigger.
Germans had 37mm or 50mm for Pz3 and 75mm (but weak penetration due to short barrel) for Pz4.
Russian tanks should outnumber German ones by between 5 to 1 and 9 to 1 depending on your source at the start of Barbarossa.
So the German tanks should have no chance in this game right during 1940-41, right? German tanks should have generally weaker attack values, weaker armor, and in some cases (vs T34/76) even weaker mobility.
However... for this period, the generally apparently weaker German tanks massively outperformed their stronger opponents. How can we refect this in the game? I would like to suggest a few possible ideas...
Historically, German success, particularly in the first half of the war, is often attributed to some of the following factors:
Better trained crews.
Better gun accuracy: due to better crews, better optics, better engineering, less mass-production approach
Better doctrine (blitzkreig/concentration of force).
Better communication. Each tank had a radio, unlike most Russian tanks of the time.
Better soft factors such as crew comfort.
Better visibility (better slits, having a well designed cupola (except for Pz1) as opposed to no cupola for Russian tanks of the time)
Better turrent (3 man turrent allowing for dedicated tank commander to watch the battle in his cupola). Russian 2 man turrent was inferior here, and Fench 1 man turrent was a really underrated, even decisive, disadvantage.
So...How to reflect this in the game...
I would suggest a few possibilities. Give German tanks a much better visibility. The otherwise superior T-34/76 tanks could have a very short visibility to offset their advantage in firepower and armour. I would suggest maybe visibility of 2 around them. If tank orientation could be programmed (probably can't), maybe visibility of 4 or something in a narrow field straight ahead awith a visibility of 1 otherwise. This would effectively make them blind when isolated. They could only see properly when together en masse or with infantry nearby to help them see the battle field.
And/or...they could have very poor ability to detect AT guns (assuming stationary AT guns can be placed and allowed to be set as camoflaged in the game)
If accuracy can be assigned to tanks, just like the catapult in AoS, that would be a good thing IMO. If so, German tanks should be clearly better here to help to make up for their inferior firepower etc, and help to relfect their actual superior historical performance (which basically existed throughout the war but to a steadily progressively reduced extent from 1941-1945...just as most of the examples of better German design given above were reduced over time. IIRC kill ratios on the easten front were something like 12:1 in favor of the Germans in 1941 despite their apparent on-paper superiority. This had reduced to something like 1.2:1 or 1.5:1 if I remember correctly by 1945. So these advantages should start out very strong for the Germans, but become less over time (as was historically the case)
Another idea is a strong combined arms advantage for the Germans at the start compared to no advantage for the Allies. Perhaps, on a ten point scale, this combined arms advantage could be 10 for Germans and 0 for Allies in 1941, gradually changing to perhaps 10 (or 9 or 8) for the Germans in 1945 and perhaps 8 (or 7 or 6) for the Allies in 1945 (as the Allies learn from the Germans and develop better doctrine (and perhaps the Germans are, in some cases, less able to continue their doctine as effectively). This combined arms bonus could be a buff given to German infantry and German tanks (and later Allied to a lesser extent) when they are right next to each other (or maybe within 2 spaces of each other). Also, German bombers should be given a buff if they drop a bomb on an Allied unit which is very close to a German ground unit.
Next 1942:
Similar to above, but Allies should start to bridge the gap.
1943:
German advantages outlined above are still significant, but Allies are learning and their disadvantage is noticably less.
Germans will have a golden period in terms of quality as they introduce the tiger and the panther while the Russians concentrate on mass-production of the now quite old T34-76...In other words, now German tanks (or at least the newer models which are still not super common) should have superior attack and armour values. Pz4 attack values and armor should be improved from their status of inferiority in 1941 to being on a par with Allied tanks. T-34/76 should become cheaper (reflecting the emphasis on mass-production and the single minded Russian focus on mass production of the one model) and now the battlefiend should be totally flooded with them.
1944:
Russia reduce the big German advantage in firepower from 1943 with the T34/85, but Germans maintain an advantage in terms of firepower. Bigger advantage in the west with the Sherman being mass-produced just like the T34 from 1942/43. German soft advantage only slight now as Allies have improved their doctines (using combined arms reasonably well now, using 3 man turrents now, using cupolas now etc)
1945:
Germans unable to move much due to chronic fuel shortages...Quantity overwhelmingly favors the Allies now and quality (Firepower/Armour) is, in some cases, (IS2, Pershing) as good for the Allies as for the Germans.
Sorry for my rant...feel free to disagree
