@SS:
What you could do is have most of the advance pieces for each country ( the 5 ) available in a weapons development tech chart starting on a certain turn where you roll for weapons tech ( doesn’t start maybe until turn 5 or 6 and depends on type of game ) and then when you get into the turns of lets say turn 9 ( depends on your date and year frame for lenth of game ) you start getting those certain weapons automatically. Then by turn 16 or so all the country’s will get all the techs do to development late in war. This way you add them as time goes on and it won’t overwelm some people.
Some very good ideas here, but do you think the turn numbers are a bit long? The reason I ask this is with our games, particularly with Axis victories, the games are fairly short, about 8-10 rounds most of the time. Now, our Allied victory games tend to last longer, roughly 12-15 rounds.
So, if you don’t even start trying to develop tech weapons until rounds 5 or 6, most of these nifty things might not even get used.
You mentioned having a certain turn (you used turn 9 but I understand it could be varied) nations would start getting some of the tech weapons automatically. So after that point, you would no longer have to roll dice for tech development, you can simply purchase those units. Would they be a little higher priced than normal units or would it be an automatic change over.
For example, lets say Germany has Jet Fighters on it’s chart. Once the “tech turn” arrives and Germany gets Jet Fighters, would all of Germany’s fighters be converted to Jet Fighters? Or would they simply be able to purchase Jet Fighters from then on? Would the Jet Fighters be more expensive than regular fighters (fighters = $10, Jets = $11 or $12) or would all fighters for Germany from that point on simply be Jets?
I could see pros and cons of both sides. On one hand, it would be kind of cool if Germany still had the option to buy regular fighters OR jet fighters, but that would only work if they were different prices. You could price Jets at $11 since they would be effectively replacing tactical bombers.
On the other hand, it would kind of suck for Germany to get jet fighters but still have to pay more for them.
Still, I think having a tech list that is based on round numbers is pretty cool. In our games, we like playing with tech but rarely do because no body wants to spend the money on research tokens. We are all too busy buying regular units to attack or defend. This is why I have had a hard time introducing new types of units into the game (land mines, fortifications, rail markers and stations, etc.).