andatiep wrote:So it means that there were no tanks in the Eastern Whites side...
Currently the game provide many american (but actually displayed as British Mark...) tanks in Vladivostok and the Whites can fight with them in Siberia, Ural and Volga...
Maybe we should keep White tanks only for the Western Whites...
...Or maybe we could provide tanks in the East only if the Western High Command (Janin and Co) keep its support to the Whites in Siberia (so only if the Eastern White player don't chose the new Option Military Dictatorship which lead to a clash between Janin&Czech vs the White leadership). Whithout this clash, we could suppose that Western troops would provide tanks there (and Graves would maybe not have the feelings to let its tanks to the less wrong side:neener
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Besides this, Orel, do you have any informations about the tanks the reds succeed to produce themselves. If their copy of the Renault was challenging the British Marks ? And after all, to fix a probable date of production. For now, the Red tank factories options arrive in june 1919, so Reds tanks could start to arrive 3 months later in early october 1919. When are the first reports of Red tanks used on the fronts ?
Janin was a representative of the French mostly. As far as I understand, the Whites had warmer relations with the British, which were the ones responsible for most of the aid, that had their own independent of the French policy towards the Whites. Kolchak probably never received tanks since he never ordered them for his army: at least I could not find such information. At the same time, despite Janin's dislike Kolchak had received other forms of war supplies from the allies, such as uniforms, rifles, cannons and bullets. Even the Americans sent some supplies, despite Grave's actions. So, personally, what I think should be done is Kolchak should be given the opportunity to buy tanks via an event.
Towards the possibility of producing tanks by the Reds, I am sceptical. A perfect example of this is the story of the Renault Ft-17 that the Reds captured in Odessa and tried to copy. First it arrived to Moscow: it was found that it could not move by itself since it lacked some of its parts. Ok, the Reds order a second tank to be sent to Moscow, that could participate in the parade on the 1st of May. The parade passed, the "movable" tank was sent back to the frontline, where it along with the other 2 that were outside of Moscow were captured in June 1919 by the Whites. The one that was sent to Moscow first was sent to Nizhniy Novgorod, in order to be copied. When it arrived, the Reds found out that on the way to the factory, even more parts of the tank were stolen. It did not even have an engine, a transmission box, plus it arrived in a taken apart state without any documentation, so I do not think anyone even knew how to put it back together. But even then, the Reds managed to find two French engineers that supported the Communist party and used to work for Renault: they took two Renault trucks, and started using those parts as models for the the tank. The commissar from the Red department that would overlook this project, would constantly try to "help" the engineers and workers in their task, by using course language and his Mauser pistol to motvate them. Finally, by the beginning of 1920 they make an experimental tank that was sent for testing, that lasted until the end of 1920. In 1921, the Reds finally made 15 tanks, that never saw action in the Civil war but participated in the parade celebrating the end of it.
The Mark V was much harder to produce. It had certain parts that were specially designed for this tank, such as the engine, so producing it from scratch and in Communist Russia was hardly possible. Plus, the Reds never even tried to do so in real life, not even after the war had ended.
Aside from those two though, there was the model of Gulkevich's tank: based on an armored tractor of the American company Allis-Chalmers. There was only one such tank built, since as we could see on the example of the Renault tank, the Reds were hardly capable of developing the production of anything new, or even preserving the production of something old.
There was also the Austin-Kegress: an armored car with rubber caterpillar tracks that was supposed to enter production in 1917. 34 copies of pairs of Kegress's caterpillar tracks were produced in 1917, yet due to the revolutions this never had taken place. In 1919-20, the Reds managed to build 12 such armored cars that participated in the war, but they pretty much used what was already made before they came into power.
Realistically, I do not think that the Reds should get an opportunity to build tanks in the game: all of the Red army tanks that participated in the RCW were captured from the Whites. The only series they managed to make, were the 12 Austin-Kegress armored cars(whose parts were made before 1918) and 15 Russian Renaults that never saw action, and were not continued to be produced at all. The Reds frequently could not even make rifles, I recall from someone's memoirs how he, a White soldier, received a rifle captured from the Reds that was produced in 1919 by the Tula factory. It did not extract bullets as it was supposed to: and this is a simple Mosin rifle, what can be said about Red tanks then?
Seeing this, I would probably offer to consider the possiblity of making tanks and armored cars a capturable support unit.
