Alright, having played around with the modding tools, I came up with a Proof of Concept that tackles 95% of the issues I had with the design of DAK:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2947341907
Features
HQ
The HQ hasn't really changed very much, partially because it didn't need to but also because the modding tools didn't really allow for it much in practice. The important thing to note is that T1 or T2 can be constructed right out of the gate, addressing my issue with the linearity.
T1
T1 has now 2 side tiers instead of 1. The first upgrade on the left unlocks the second column and the second upgrade unlocks the third column. After putting my ideas into practice, I swapped the flak halftrack and the Assault Grens in the tech tree. It just made more sense and having played around with it a bit, it plays well.
T2
T2 also has 2 side tiers, the first also unlocking the second column and the second unlocking the third column. The recovery HT is gone and I substituted the Carro Armato for the Puma, as it was the closest alterative for the POC. I also changed the stats of the Carro Armato making it fairly useless against infantry, so it feels basically like the Puma in Coh2 and fits the role I intended for it nicely. Relic would ideally use the real thing though. The other unit that saw changes was...
Panzergrenadiers
They now have the MP40 and MP43 upgrades. MP40s and MG34s were swapped from from original plan, MP40s get unlocked when any T1 side tech is purchased and MG34s come from any T2 side tech. The MP43s come with T3. This upgrade dichotomy adds another interesting dimension to the tech paths.
T3
T3 can be reached when any 2 side techs or any side tech and both T1 and T2 are purchased. This allows for up to 6 different tech paths to T3! Within T3 itself, the entire top row is unlocked immediately. I found in practice, locking the Stug behind the same tech as the Tiger made little sense. The first side tier upgrade unlocks the tiger and the second side tier upgrade unlocks the Stuka and Flak. One nice benefit of this setup is that directly teching Tiger is much cheaper, as you don't need to go through the deployments. Speaking of which...
Deployments
Within the armoury, I moved out all the upgrades to the respective tiers that unlock them, as this made more intuitive sense to me. I kept the grenades and 250 upgrade here, as well as adding an upgrade for base healing. This means you don't
have to tech T1 to get heals or use the med truck. As for the deployments, all deployments are locked behind upgrades here, which is what he icons denote. For example, the assault gren icon unlocks the assault gren deployment. Once that is unlocked, you can upgrade the panzer 3 one below it and that will replace that deployment and only that one!
This means you can pick and choose which deployments you want with a lot more granularity. However, the mod tooling currently has a lot of limitations, so I was not able to edit the deployments. This means they still come with the 250, sadly, but presumably we can update this in the future. You're also not able to create new deployments, so the armoury is missing that middle row of deployment upgrades I detailed in my original plan. But for getting the idea across, this works!
Notes
In creating this MOD, I changed the following:
- Assault Grens and Panzerjägers can't repair anymore as I feel this was overkill.
- All upgrades that were in the armoury like grenades etc were reduced in manpower but now have a fuel cost, to balance things out and make teching yet more interesting.
Aside from these changes, I have not touched the balance, as this MOD is purely a POC for the redesign. None of the other factions were changed. Nor were the battlegroups touched.
Conclusion
After having modded my ideas, I'm fairly happy with the result! I addressed 95% of the issues I had with DAK and the remaining ones I couldn't change due to limitations with the MOD tooling. I feel this setup is outright superior to what we have now, it allows for significantly more tech paths, upgrade choices and also makes the Deployment system less of a standalone gimick but something tied into the tech tree nicely. All that remains is to hope Relic takes some inspiration! Give it a go and let me know your thoughts! If anyone has feedback or wants to play with me on it, shoot me a message!