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The Medium Tank in RA1 is not an Abrams though; it only looks like one externally. Same with the Heavy Tank. While they look like certain modern tanks that we know, they're different "on the inside"; WWII-style steel armour instead of composite, more primitive electronics, different guns, etc. Make sense? Meanwhile, the GDI Medium Tank would be much closer to the real Abrams in terms of technology. Also because this is an alternate timeline, things developed a bit differently. So no, you don't need to make a tank exactly like its real-world counterpart. (otherwise the double-barreled Heavy Tank wouldn't exist at all) Another way to think of it: Imagine if someone traveled back in time with the Abrams/T-80 designs, and attempted to reproduce them with WWII-era technology, inevitably making numerous compromises in the process due to the limitations of the technology available at the time (less armour, weaker engines, more primitive electronics, etc.), as well as the cost of production. That's pretty much what the RA1 Medium/Heavy tanks could be characterized as.

Another idea that came up on discord, that I've considered in the past, was "Volcano but with the map boundaries turned into water". Here's an example of that which is just lazily taking the original map, deleting a bunch of the terrain and making the outermost edges all dip to the same elevation. A real version would be a bit classier than this. So we get our first full combined arms map - infantry, tanks, helis, planes and naval - and isn't particularly big, so in addition to travel time not being a concern it could even be suited for low player counts.