- Yes
- Yes, but with some changes
- No, I would like it differently (please tell us in comments)
- I agree with Gaijin’s proposed tree
As you all know, we recently had a blog post about the coming reworks of tech trees to lower the amount of grind needed to go through them. Part of this change included the foldering of many vehicles in all trees. The resulting tree looked like this:
The choices made here are often questionable at best. Logical progression of the tree is regularly broken, folders make no sense and we’re still limited to a 4 line tree. These choices promptly started discussion within the community, and as a result I sat together with some people to make a counter-suggestion that we would be more satisfied with. The resulting plan is two-stage.
The first stage consists of pulling the tree into the full 5 lines. These lines will be more logical when it comes to a development and progression point of view than Gaijin’s proposed tree. The 5 lines will be as follows:
- First line: domestic French fighters
- Second line: import fighters
- Third line: Aéronavale aircraft
- Fourth line: attackers, heavy fighters & light bombers
- Fifth line: medium & heavy bombers
The resulting tree at that point will look like this:
Some notable changes compared to the Gaijin version at this point:
- D.500s moved to start left-most line
- D.371s moved to start Aéronavale line
- Morane Saulnier fighters all moved to rank 2 and foldered
- Unfoldered V.G.33 and D.520, moved the latter to rank 3
- M.B.157 returns to the French fighter line where it belongs.
- Foldered VB.10s
- Foldered all Potez 630 variants
- Foldered Mirage F1CT with F1C
- Vautours moved back to rank 5, foldered and end of their line
- Foldered F-84G and F-84F
- …
As you can plainly see, this plan is not perfect. The import fighter line is painfully empty with only 2 aircraft between rank 2 and 6. Thankfully for Gaijin however, this is very easy to resolve. After all, it is the import line. The aircraft that go in this line have all been modeled for other trees already, all that Gaijin has to do is create a proper skin for them and plonk them in the tree.
If we include all the vehicles that can be added in such a way to the tree, then the result looks like this:
This version of the tree is much healthier looking, and this initial change only requires copy-paste work. For this example we decided to also fill up other lines with vehicles that could easily be copy-pasted over from other trees, but of course that would not be strictly necessary. The focus should be the filling up of the import line. The other lines often have domestic counterparts available to fill the holes, but since this would require extra modeling effort from Gaijin, we can’t expect them to do it in a few weeks time.
It’s most likely also a long shot to receive all these aircraft at once, but simply adding one type per rank should be very doable for Gaijin without any major effort from their part.
This new setup leaves plenty of space in the top tier bracket for future additions as well. It should also make it easier for Gaijin to figure out where to put stuff. An addition such as the Super Étendard doesn’t have to awkwardly slot in somewhere around the Jaguar, it can easily be added in the Aéronavale line, after the F-8E(FN).
Not foldering aircraft models that aren’t related to each other was also done in attempt to prevent future issues with aircraft placement. For example, the lower ranks of the domestic French fighter line still have a lot of potential, with more powerful variants of existing aircraft still left to be added. Gaijin had foldered the V.G.33 and D.520 together, but both of these aircraft have more powerful developments. Foldering them together makes it almost impossible for these aircraft to ever come to the game in a logical manner. The new setup allows for Gaijin to simply folder them with the already existing base model.
All-in-all we felt like this proposal is a more logical next step for the French tree than what Gaijin suggested. Leaving plenty of space for future development in all ranks, while still adhering to the new ideas that Gaijin has suggested on their blogpost. I hope that I’ve been able to convey the ideas behind everything we did, and look forward to your feedback.
Spoiler
I used the following tool to create the proposed trees, figured I might share it for those of you that want to make a counter-suggestion: WT Tech-Tree Maker