Wishlist: Vehicle weapons to be available only if units carried

[dmnt]

In another thread this was on my "I wish..." list but when putting my kid to bed my subconscious came up with an idea: What if vehicles could have some of the very weapons the carried troops are having if and only if there's a suitable unit within?

My idea on how this could work with the least amount of implementation, testing, bughunting, hair loss and psychiatric care for developers would be that units be created with the matching gun without the ammo.

Case BMP-1 / BMP-2:
they have a detachable ATGM launcher that can be operated on the vehicle when the ATGM unit is being carried.

1. Create a vehicle unit with the same ATGM weapon but without ammo or strip out the current ammo if there's an ATGM unit commonly present (as I believe is the case)
2. Change the program code so that if there's a unit within that has suitable ammo and vehicle has none then use that
3. Change program code so that unit details shows ammo for example 0+4 when the vehicle in case has no ammo of its own but troops carried within do.

So a (Russian OOB #335) BMP-2 with 9M113 Konkurs would have 3 weapons with following ammo loads:
77 - 30mm 2A42 A/C (HE 40, AP 20)
166 - 9M113 Konkurs (HE 0, AP 0)
64 - 7.62mm PKT CMG (HE 120, AP 0)

Here the BMP-2 would have AT-4 (or AT-5) launcher and if loaded with a unit that carries the same it could fire the missiles from that units ammunition load. If the troop is unloaded then it has none to fire. Because loading/unloading consumes movement points and thus affects ATGM it has no adverse effect and it can't be used to gain improper advantage. If the unit carried is destroyed so is its ammo.

Therefore the ammo check for vehicles should do:

• on info screen show unit ammo load + loop over carried units and check for matching weapons and add the ammo to the load after plus sign (or other method to show the human that the ammo load is not the vehicle's natural quota)
• on moving/firing check if there is any ammo for the weapon on vehicle ammo load or the units carried. Disable weapon if not. Reduce ammo primarily from vehicle's ammo load but if empty then from first matching unit's ammo load.

The same operation could be used on AAMGs, AGLs and anything without big trouble. The vehicles seldom carry anything that is common group weaponry such as LMGs and even these could be solved by duplicating the weapon for vehicle use if it causes problems in some OOBs. At least Russian OOB with BMP's and Inf-ATGM riding them could have great benefits from this. The price of 0-ammo ATGM is naturally much lower than a loaded one.

The downside: the AI and the pick list. If units don't have matching weapons, like AT-4 on vehicle and AT-5 on troops then this approach naturally wouldn't work at all for AI except by accident or if the pick code is tweaked (== more coding) to prefer matching weapons for 0-ammo guns.

This could change the gameplay a bit by allowing "temporary reload" by using the troops nearby. Other than that I have a hard time coming up with game related problems this could create. The main question is that is this too big a change from developers point of view compared to the advantages it would produce.