During New Years Eve day until well into the small hours during the constant barrage of fireworks outside, me and 3 other friends delved into a night of Hearts of Iron 2 Darkest Hour with an alien invasion mod one of them had spent the past few weeks creating. The 14 hour game was well played, me playing as an Imperial Loyalist Germany fighting a civil war at the beginning of it, with imperial loyalists eventually winning by 1935, as the other players researching, and building up troops.
There was a triggered event within the mod using the soundtrack from Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds which caused all of us to jump out of our skin as we quietly sat there watching me rebuild a new left wing democratic Germany. To cut a long build up short the Aliens landed in South Africa and soon made tracks, cutting down both colonial French, Italian, and British forces with ease until most of the continent became enveloped by the Grey forces, with the ruling Green forces landing soon after!
The world rallied and went off to fight the alien menace but as many lost divisions left and right, I was teching up to tank divisions and even managed to get Armour Spearhead Doctrine in the research tree quicker than others so within 3 years of an awkward stalemate, I came to the rescue but didn't get the credit, with divisions of tanks. This is where the Green Aliens brought out their much larger and more powerful Tripods that acted like Heavy Tanks, pretty much King Tigers with a good amount of morale and health, but not too much.
Half way through the game another event popped up which told us intelligence and radio signals have shown that there is unrest between the lower cast Grey Aliens and higher command class Green Aliens. We had the option to treat the aliens all as the same or attempt to side the Grey Aliens to insight a rebellion, then later to possibly coexist with them. We chose to side with the Greys and me and the American armoured divisions cut across Africa and lower Europe levelling Tripods and supporting allied aliens. Eventually we won, the Green aliens were annexed, and the alliance with the Greys would have worked but a certain maniacal American player, that now had vast stretches of land in Africa, chose to go to war with the Greys to kick the aliens off the planet! This caused another world war of which most of us lost due to attrition, supply problems, and plenty of revolts.
Now on to BKC scenarios of me wanting to recreate the battles I had in the mod, if he plans on releasing it to the internet, with WW2 countries facing against tough, not invincible, alien Tripods. I was thinking of 3 classes based on weight or strength of weapon. Like the heavy tripod would be based on the Tiger II with a better armour save, a medium being based on a tank destroyer, and the light being the quicker but best light tank of WW2
All alien tripod companies/divisions are autonomous and (going for counters at first and then models) will have their own CV based on what class of alien you are facing, Grey or Green, perhaps throw in Red too, between CV10 to CV7. This should mean that the Tripods are always on the advantage and pushing deeper into your territory and lines but are obviously not completely invincible, just tougher than your average WW2 tank.