Is it proper to make a distinction between copy-paste tech-tree vehicles?

Machinery of War Discussion
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If you look at the ground tech trees, you can find several examples of similiar ‘copy-paste’ vehicles, both in the same tech tree or in different nations. For example, the ZTZ-88A/B in Chinese tech tree, the two T-72Bs in USSR tech tree, 4 similiar T-72M1/T-72A tanks in 4 nations and the Leopard 2A4 tanks.

It is boring to research the vehicles and their modifications that have barely any difference between their in-game performance. Especially those Cold War-era and modern tanks, which cost hundreds of thousands of research xps each, and make you grind for them repeatedly. They are just meaningless obstacles on players’ road to top tier.
So why shouldn’t we change this situation?

I would like to provide some examples to illustrate my idea.
For the ZTZ-88A/B twins, we can give ZTZ-88A the DTW-2-105 round and lift it to 9.3 br, while the ZTZ-88B remains at 9.0.
The T-72B(1989) will receive 3BM60 and a 1000hp engine and be moved to 10.7, and change its name to T-72BA.
Some of the Leopard 2A4 tanks can receive DM33 or more advanced rounds, or even high-res TVD sights if they have such modifications in reality, and adjust their brs.
And for Leopard 2A5/A6, we can lower the Leo 2A5 to 11.7 and nerf its APFSDS to DM43. The German Leo 2A6 can upgrade to high-res TVD and change its name to Leo 2A6A3/A6MA3.

2 Likes
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Those are good ideas but for entirely separate vehicles (apart from the ZTZ88A one).

The T72BA could be in a folder with the T90A and the 2A6A3 could be foldered after the regular 2A6 with the Leopard 2PSO or the 2A5 and PSO could be foldered together and the 2A6 could be foldered with the 2A6A3

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If the T-72BA get folded with T-90A then the T-90A will require about 100k-200k more xp to research.
I mean, the original idea of current normal folders (like the AMX-30B2, ZTZ-88A/B and T-72B/BM) is that the upper vehicle is the basic one, while the lower one shares similiar battle experience and in-game roles but has some of its performance improved a bit. But if you put the T-72BA under the T-72B and T-90A folded under it, then due to the lack of TVD and advanced armour layout, the playing performance of the T-72BA won’t differ from that of T-72B very much, and players still have to pay more to get T-90A.