Special rewards

[Sourdust]

Been thinkin' a bit about the "captured equipment" feature, which is the main way PC doles out bonuses for extra-good performance.

I've always been of 2 minds about these. On the one hand, they're a fun bit of chrome. On the other... well, either the captured equipment is worse than what you have, in which case it is really just a bit of extra prestige that you cash in, or it is better than what you have - in which case it actually dilutes the nation-specific advantages and disadvantages that each nation has. That's not a good thing. For instance, one of the weaknesses of Germany in the early game is the lack of a heavily armoured infantry support tank. They had no equivalent of the Matilda, KV1, or Char B1. That's a function of Germany' panzer doctrine, which focuses on blitz, rather than dispersed infantry support. But if Germany can just capture and use French Char B1s, it detracts from the uniqueness of both France and Germany.

Further, actual historical use of captured equipment in operationally meaningful volumes was exceedingly rare. Germany almost never did it, aside from the Czech equipment captured pre-war. They used French tanks in 1944 on the Western Front, but mostly as pillboxes and in other ad-hoc ways, not really as part of operational tank units. The exceptions are Axis minors, who used some captured French and Russian equipment due to a lack of alternatives - the Finnish panzer division was pretty much entirely equipped with captured russian tanks. The Allies pretty much didn't use captured equipment at all. Russia used lots of Lend Lease equipment, but not captured German equipment in any operationally meaningful way.

On balance, I think I'd prefer to see other ways of granting bonuses and easter eggs, rather than captured equipment... like:

1) Bonuses in subsequent battles. Eg, capture a particular town, and you gain intelligence that helps in your next battle (translates to a +1 spotting on all units in next battle). Or maluses to your opponent... eg, use a strat bomber to knock out objective x in battle one, and the enemy loses 2 air units that would otherwise be there in battle two.
2) Heroes. Achieve some special objective, and get a hero - perhaps he gets rescued, or perhaps he "makes his name" in that battle.
3) Priority use of new equipment - achieve a special objective and your force is allowed first use of new equipment (accelerates timeframe for some new equipment by one battle.)
4) Free elite reinforcements at end of battle
5) Custom battlefield modification of equipment or custom tactics - eg, your guys have figured out how to bolt additional armor on to their tanks / bolt additional .50s on to their B-26s for strafing runs / figured out how to do "skip bombing" - or whatever, to add a small bonus to a particular unit or equipment type.

Etc etc.

[naturesheva]

I totally agree your points of "captured equipment". But I think a lot of people will still love the idea of "captured equipment", which is nice feature in terms of game play.
My suggestion is to make the "captured equipment" not permanent, but only exist for one scenario.
So, each time players captured an equipment, the captured equipment will not become a unit. They will be a "ticket" to enable player to temporarily switch one of their core unit into the skin & stats of the captured equipment for only one scenario.
The benefit is that the core unit will keep its experience, heroes, kills... and be upgraded to have a better performance in the next scenario. So for Germany, before the introduction of Tiger, an experienced unit with a KV2 will be so helpful.
Also, these "tickets" will be only available for the next 2-3 scenarios, which will encourage players to use them.