Most people that bought into Steelbeasts bought it for the FCS's on armor.Period.My issue with this upgrade is that we didn't get more of the very thing that they're known for.
...because sometimes everything has to change, so everything can stay the same. This is one of those moments. You can run headlong into a dead end, which is unfortunate at best - and plain stupid if you know that it's a dead end. I'd rather be anything but.
A code base as old as Steel Beasts needs to be modernized. Inevitably all energy devoted to such modernization will be subtracted from work on "marketable feature upgrades". But focusing on what's marketable is a certain path into a dead end. As much as I don't want eSim's innovation culture not be technology-dominated, but driven by training requirements, it is no secret that you must adopt new technology without hesitation if the necessity is identified. Companies that shy the risks that are involved with such a strategy - and those risks are very real - will eventually stagnate and die. The true art of managing a software company without being a software guy yourself is to reign in the technological risks in a way that it doesn't block technological progress. Needless to say, all such decisions are made under uncertainty. Ideally you find a way that identifies errors as early as possible so you still have time to correct your course. That we learned about the problem with the first iteration of the new terrain engine only in May 2016 was unfortunately much later than ideal.
