ORIGINAL: Dili
I think that would be a bad idea since suddenly an unit just disappearing from front-line is not okay. It is also not likely that Japanese just changed their squads in one go, certainly units continued with them for while.
If the units loose squads in combat then Japanese player is forced to upgrade the TOE to have new squads. It seems the less worse option.
Only a problem for ongoing games; an issue I flagged in my post. Otherwise not a problem as has been consistently demonstrated by Allied players who have many combat LCUs withdraw which do not even return unlike the suggested "fix" where the Japanese LCUs would return.
The actual fix adopted works but is inelegant. Its main benefit being the minimum amount of dev work involved. The fix creates other issues which whilst not game stoppers do lead to player misunderstandings. The greatest misunderstanding being that the 1943 upgrade = a downgrade. Notwithstanding what some say, it isn't.
What AE is doing is replicating the historical Japanese lightening of their reinforced units. Doing so via a change of TOE in AE was a possibility but it in turn leads to other problems, chief amongst them being shortage of suitable location spots for TOE upgrades and opportunities. There is a reason why Japanese TOE upgrades do not approach the frequency of Allied TOE upgrades.
The other main issue with doing it via TOE upgrade is that the historical lightening was not done, in AE terms, at the TOE level but at the squad AE abstraction level. There is significant AV reductions which would need to be done (plus actual worloak) if this route had been adoptedImplement the change via TOE and the devs would have been criticised by the internet knowledge dependent fanbois.
Alfred
