Arsenal 1945 — Omega War

1.1 The questions this study answers (user, verbatim, 2026-06-10)

Recorded on the game-fantasy Stage-3 approval and in research/game-fantasy.md (Downstream Implications):

"Let's do more research on late-war and plausible prototypes getting into the fight? Also what's the earliest pre-war and early war equipment that would be used? Should that be included in this document or a separate one?"

Decisions already taken (AskUserQuestion, 2026-06-10): a separate artifact (research/arsenal-1945.md) via its own staged mini-cycle (this scope page → sweep + working packet → canonical artifact), run next, before /game-genre-map — the adjusted route is recorded in the game-fantasy approval record.

Follow-up decision (chat, 2026-06-10): a historical-divisions research cycle — which divisions players can build decks from, and what units go in each — is queued after this cycle's equipment list is confirmed and before /game-genre-map. Recorded at the route gate below; that cycle gets its own staged scope page when it starts.

1.2 Approved fantasy anchors that constrain this study scope evidence

• "The 1946 arsenal gets its war." Pillar 2 (The plan comes together) names the 1946 almost-weapons as natural phase-gated payoff material — the arsenal history shelved is the reward shelf. Evidence already on record (FRQ4 Claim 4.2, high confidence): Centurion prototypes reached Germany in May 1945 weeks too late to fight; the M26 Pershing "saw only a limited amount of combat".
• War start: spark 14 July 1945 over the Saxony demarcation line; mutual mobilization; the shooting war opens August 1945 — the equipment snapshot date for this study.
• First front: Central Germany (Saxony–Thuringia zonal line) — landlocked; no naval layer in v1.
• The war is conventional (nuclear flag: the bomb is a queue, not an arsenal — stays in its crates).
• Tone register B (war-room gravity) — sober framing; the clean-Wehrmacht guardrail (F-A4) applies to how re-armed German formations and their equipment are described.

1.3 Idea-brief anchors scope evidence

• Faction split: UK/Commonwealth, US, France, and re-armed German formations, plus western exile formations (Polish II Corps, 1st Polish Armoured Division, Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade) versus the USSR and its satellites (Polish People's Army, Romanian/Hungarian forces). On the Hungarian listing, see the clarification in §1.4.
• Deck-as-roster with phase escalation: base building gates which deck units/upgrades come alive and when — the findings here become the phase ladder's raw material.
• Aircraft and ships are strategic-map assets only; naval tactical combat is an explicit non-goal (ship-to-ship stays abstracted/auto-resolved).
• "Historically inspired, not accurate" — plausibility serves the fiction; it is not a rivet-counting contract.
• Open item this study feeds: the unit/division data schema draft (factions, divisions, units, loadouts) shared by the tactical layer, deck builder, and campaign war map.

1.4 Clarification (rev 1): would the Hungarians historically fight with the Soviets? scope evidence

The Romanian and Hungarian listings carried from the idea brief rest on very different historical footing:

• Romania — yes, established fact. Romania switched sides on 23 August 1944 and its First and Fourth Armies (on the order of half a million men committed) fought under Soviet front command through Transylvania, Hungary (including Budapest), and Slovakia into Austria and Bohemia until May 1945. A Romanian contingent on the Soviet side in August 1945 is a direct continuation of forces already in the field. (Bulgaria is the same pattern — the Bulgarian First Army under Soviet command is already cited in the approved fronts table.)
• Hungary — the weak case; an extrapolation, not established fact. Hungary fought on the Axis side until the Soviets overran the country (Horthy's October 1944 armistice attempt was crushed by the Arrow Cross coup). The Soviet-sponsored provisional government declared war on Germany on 28 December 1944 and the 20 January 1945 Moscow armistice obligated Hungary to field divisions against Germany — but in practice only two new divisions began forming and the war ended before they reached front-line combat; Hungarian participation on the Soviet side amounted to small volunteer elements (e.g., the Volunteer Regiment of Buda during the siege of Budapest). In August 1945 Hungary is Soviet-occupied territory under a Soviet-chaired Allied Control Commission with a small, armistice-limited army.
• What this means for the study: "Hungarian forces on the USSR side" is a premise extrapolation — a satellite formation the USSR could raise and equip under Soviet command (the Romania/Bulgaria model), carrying a real reliability question (Hungarians fighting for the USSR a year after fighting against it). It is plausibility-tier and later-front material, not an Aug-1945 standing force. ARQ4 (amended below) carries the question: what each satellite could actually field, with what equipment, and how reliable it would be.

Confidence note: the above is established history recalled at Stage 1 to answer the feedback — it is not yet source-verified; the Stage-2 sweep (category E3) verifies and cites it.

2.1 Research questions

2.2 Deliverable shape (canonical artifact contract)

• Per-faction equipment tables — category × era-band (pre-war / early-war / late-war / prototype) × plausibility tier (in-theater / in-production / production-ready / paper).
• Service & production evidence — dates, numbers, theater presence, with citations.
• Phase-escalation mapping — which material reads as early/mid/late-phase and what the reward shelf contains, per faction.
• Gaps register — what the sweep could not establish, with confidence caps.

2.3 Non-goals

• No stats or balance design — equipment identity and plausibility evidence only.
• No unit/division data schema authoring — this study produces the schema's research inputs, not the schema.
• No division-roster authoring — which divisions are deck-buildable and what units each contains is the follow-up historical-divisions cycle (queued after this artifact is confirmed; see the route gate).
• No art/asset sourcing (models, references, silhouettes).
• No genre-convention mapping (that is /game-genre-map) and no mechanics design.
• No re-collection of approved audience/fantasy evidence — reused as [carried] where valid.

Availability is a plan, not verified coverage. Method note carried from both prior cycles: research subagents have no web access in this environment; the sweep runs in the main session. Stopping rule per the depth chosen at the coverage checkpoint below. scope evidence

7. Compile