ORIGINAL: AlaskanWarrior
ORIGINAL: el cid again
This is meaningless: the date of all AFVs is 4112 - and upgrades are nearly instantaneous! Further, it isn't true - even after the tank is made it was not issued as a general replacement - but as you yourself said - in tiny numbers per unit. Not quite the one unit issue of Firefly in British service, but four was normal. Anyway, I don't have the tank upgrade at all. If a unit does not call for that tank, it does not get it. ANY Sherman was worth having in PTO - unless it could not navigate the terrain - which we don't simulate. Generally, even a light tank was worth having - and in even more terrain types.
So what you are saying is that an upgrade from say M3 -> M5 -> M24 will never happen in the game. Thus any unit that starts with M3 will never be able to upgrade (not replace - replace and upgrade are two totally different definitions)to a better model as the years go by? Very interesting and undefensable set of logic you state above.
Once again this may be linguistic. Or it may be technical - in which case I am the confused one - not you. But IF I understand it right, there are two entirely different meanings to the word "upgrade" -
each is represented by the record in which you find the upgrade field
For Aircraft, you are allowed to control a unit upgrade directly - even if it has a weapon that does not upgrade - because there is an upgrade field for you to use. Thus I have some bomber units upgrading to different bombers than a similar unit does - and some even "upgrade" backwards - when that is what happened. But when you say "upgrade" in the AIRPLANE field, it means "after the date of the new plane, all production shifts to the new type"
For land units, it is more tricky - you cannot upgrade directly UNLESS you upgrade in the vehicle field - which probably means the same thing as for an airplane. Now this is a nice feature - and I use it often - when there is a clear progression - and when there are enough slots. The only problem with it is that we don't have a proper manufacturing system - not even in the sense we do for airplanes - and worse - the "date" field of the new vehicle is more or less a decoration. I found Japanese AT units that upgraded two levels in about four days! Not exactly what we want is it?
When there are several tanks in a series - Japanese lights - Japanese "mediums" - Allied lights (in two series - one American - one British) - we do use this system and HOPE the dates are meaningful. So units with these vehicles should upgrade if conditions are right - probably within less than a week of the date of the new weapon.
But in the case of the Sherman - there is no such series. The Sherman CS tank is NOT an "upgrade" of the Sherman - nor do we have the Sherman that IS an upgrade. The CS tank is - as you yourself posted - a SUPPLIMENTAL tank - which is why it is listed separately. You are not going to get a tank unit 100% of these tanks.
Since the British Sherman is the same as the American one - we COULD combine them - get a slot for the 76mm gun version - and THEN we could allow the upgrade to happen. Do you like that?
EDIT: I intended to also say that Joe invented a different way to upgrade a land unit. It produces "errors" in utilities that test for things being "right" with your scenaio. It is deliberately making the formation a unit points at different than the unit itself. A variation on this is to give the land unit some disabled elements. I use both methods. It has one neat effect: you can start a unit on 8 Dec 1941 (Tokyo Time - the only time that makes sense to me - the only time zone used by Japanese wherever they are) with the right unit - and it will evolve to the formation it had later. But the problem is it does so too fast - unless some rare circumstances prevent it (e.g. lack of supply, lack of production of what it needs). The only exception is when the things needed are date delayed. But a few days after the device activates - wham everyone has it! [If only the real world was like that!] Sometimes in RHS you will see blank lines in a unit. Usually that means some device will appear there - it is in the formation the unit points at.
