One idea I've been throwing around in my head for a while is that of a more original take on an alternative history WW2 campaign. As we all know, seemingly 99% of WW2 history campaigns simply involve hitler winning WW2 instead of losing it, and that's a pretty lame idea now that it's been done roughly infinity times over. So hence my idea:
Story:
Shortly before the time of the historical D-Day invasion, (and before the invasion of russian begins), field marshall Erwin Rommel and his other conspirators (as history suggests) attempt to assassinate Hitler - succesfully.
Rommel takes control of the Third Reich, and attempts to negotiate peace with the Allies, at the same time reinforcing his atlantic wall defenses with extreme fervour. The allied commanders, however, dismiss his offers of peace and begin Operation Overlord - with disasterous results.
Rommel's vision of the Normandy coastline is, by the time of the invasion, in full swing - an inpenetrable fortress with few flaws. With the added support of panzerkampfwagens, hundreds of antipersonell mines and deadly AT and AA emplacents, the wehrmacht easily defeats the allied invasion; suddenly all bets are off, and the outcome of the war is thrown into question for everyone.
It's now 30 years later - and a very different type of 1974. With a nuclear weapon ceasefire after the allied nuclear bombing of japanese cities hiroshima and nagasaki resulted in the axis nuclear bombing of london and washington DC, the world has split into four sides, not two -
The Allies: the forces of britain and america, as well as the displaced people of poland, holland, belgium;
The Axis: the japanese and germans, and various conscripts of czech, austrian and polish origin;
The New Eurasian Empire: finnland, sweden, and russia, neutral superpowers (after russia's nose is bloodied in the winter war, it accepts finnland as an ally for fear of the nazi regime invading it, and later sweden joins too) whom play a background role, defending their countrie(s) from both allied and axis interests.
Unity: Italy, saudi-arabi and africa, whom split from the third reich to form a semi-neutral state, but one that often works to undermine one of the other three superpowers to try to twist the war to their own ends.
Other countries (such as australia, new zealand, and canada) have split from the Allied forces and now simply pursue their own survival.
Erwin Rommel has since retired from old age, and the Third Reich has come under new leadership from a more warlike leader, who has, for the last decade and a half, seen to it that the war is continued with brutal effeciency.
With five decades of war, battle lines are still drawn and most of europe, russia, africa and america lay in ruins; bizzare new military technologies have emerged on both sides, but there is still no end to the conflict in sight.
Weapons:
Weaponry would be a mixture of WW2 weapons and strange, 'modern' weaponry; the most commonly used weapons would be semiautos: the Garand for the allies (which has since taken over from the SMLE mk4, which now serves as a sniper rifle; but the british garand -is- in .303 caliber), the Tokarev SVT-40 for the Eurasian Empire and Unity, and the Gewehr 43 for the Axis; but there is also other designs, too. Of course, none of these previously mentioned guns, nor the following ones, bear much resemblance to their original designs; in the time the war has continued, they have been continously redesigned.
The assault rifle, the STG44, has single evolved to further designs, now featuring a sort of remiscence to the Heckler and Koch G3, but with 1940's styling and now chambered in .280 intermediate; branded the STG55, these are the weapons used by the german Axis soldiers, to lethal effect against their mostly semi-automatic armed enemies.The americans have since developed the M14 rifle, which now serves as a replacement to the BAR rather than an all-purpose assault rifle; however, they still use the Springfield for sniping and sharpshooting, and evolutions of the BAR design continue to be popular.
Unity has their own weapon; one based off the FN-FAL design; this design is highly effective, but is limited by expensive manafacturing costs, and the Eurasian Empire uses (with the death of Kalishnikova during 1946, the AK-47 is never invented) a modified design of the Soumi submachinegun, this time in an intermediate, not pistol, caliber.
Well, whatcha think so far? I've got ideas for a new bunch of vehicles and stuff as well, but I wanna hear what everyone thinks of the core idea. It'd be a very complex mod to make, unfortunately, but as I said, it's something I've been wondering about for a while.