I think splitting nations is a serious problems. Thai players deserve Thai vehicles in one place just as much as Chinese players deserve Chinese vehicles in one place.
But to make that happen I agree that the current subtree system is bad. There needs to be a rework.
With a rework, it could actually be placed in a Thai research tree, which would solve the problem.
ROC is not a subtree. The tree isn’t called PRC, but China.
Thai and Japan are two literally unrelated countries put together simply for a bit of geography and good old sake of Japan’s tree size.
If you can treat every country fairly like this, then I completely agree: remove Japanese planes from the United States, remove Soviet tanks and planes from Germany, remove German tanks from France, and so on.
Doesn’t matter that Thailand and Japan are unrelated. Thailand is an official sub tree in the Japanese tree so their vehicles go there, it’s as simple as that.
Either you go the sub tree route and give all the vehicles of said sub tree nation to the tree they are in, or you go full purist mode and remove all foreign vehicles from every tree, including China.
can’t have your cake and eat it too (or whatever the saying is).
In the game, ROC vehicles are inherently part of the Chinese tree, not an independent “sub-tree,” just like DDR (East Germany) in the German tree is clearly not a sub-tree.
So this cannot be compared to the Thai line at all. If you really want an example, you could use other nations for comparison — like Singapore’s vehicles being placed in the Chinese tree and Thailand’s in the Japanese tree — that would follow the same logic.
Doesn’t matter if ROC is not a sub tree, China is the home for ROC vehicles while Japan is the home for Thai vehicles, it really is that simple. There are 2 arguments being made against the VT-4 to Japan:
It can’t be added this update because the timing would be insensitive.
Japan can’t get the VT-4 because it’s a chinese designed vehicle.
I’ll mostly leave argument 1 aside, because fair enough argument and the simple solution is to just wait and release it in a later update.
Now argument 2 is the stupid one, mainly because it shows how hypocritical these people are. So Japan can’t get the Thai VT-4 as it is a Chinese designed/produced vehicle, but they will gladly request the M1A2T which is a fully US designed/produced vehicle.
Subtrees should not be lesser nations. They should be equals, and treated like their own nation. There is nothing that gives US, Chinese or even Japanese players the right to have their vehicles in one place, but not nations like Thailand, Hungary or Finland.
But I do think subtree nations should get their own research tree, under their own national flag and name. This is just one of many things I think need to be improved with subtrees implememtation.
VT4 joined Japan in the same way that a Middle Eastern country’s vehicles joined Israel or Ukrainian tanks joined Russia. This is a very sensitive issue.You can’t just ignore these reasons just because you don’t care about the historical legacy of the East.
This is not about “hypocrisy” at all — the real issue is that it hurts the feelings of players.
There is no such deep conflict between the US and China, but there is a serious historical and political conflict between China and Japan.
If American players believe there is an issue between the US and China, they can always raise it in a separate discussion.
But forcing Chinese-designed vehicles into Japan’s tree ignores this reality entirely, and will naturally cause backlash from Chinese players.