This was my idea exactly for my 39 setup. All nations start out with medium bombers and have to develop heavy bombers….so if Japan and Germany want to skip this technology for another they can. These new pieces are going to open the games for more house rules…isn’t that what we want? It’s what I want…! I think making Heavy bombers for the countries that don’t have an OOB heavy and making medium bombers for the countries that don’t have an OOB medium is the smart thing to do.
I agree with you here on the possibility of house rules. In my house rules version major warships already get 2 attacks, one for primary and one for secondary armament, so giving heavy bombers two chances to hit isn’t much of a stretch, any more than having 2-hit warships (or in my case, even 3-hit ones, though I haven’t quite settled on whether the 3-hit ones should be rare “super-BB’s” or standard BB’s, giving BC’s and carriers 2 hits…)
As far as making it a tech, you could also make certain techs be already awarded to certain nations as a national advantage: e.g., Germany could automatically get Heavy Tanks whereas the US & UK could automatically get Heavy Bombers, which to some degree reflects the realities of the war and of each nation’s research priorities in the early-war period up to 1942 (when some game scenerio’s begin, after all…)
Giving the oob 4-engines a “tech” status, though (even if it’s automatically awarded to the US, say) does somewhat push the B-29 out of the picture as an “upgrade” options, though… but this may become a non-issue, as I have yet see anyone firmly commit to doing a B-29 piece… (Other than TT’s old piece which is maybe too small…)
