TIS questions, is the modification fair?

[Volcano Man]

Thermal Imaging System. And yes, it does make sense to have TIS equipped vehicles at the effectiveness in which they are represented. TIS is an extreme advantage, if your enemy has one and you do not then you are essentially helpless in low visibility conditions, regardless of if you have IR sights or illumination flares -- you are just a sitting duck, no two ways about it. The enemy can essentially see you at long ranges, avoid you, and maneuver to a position to put effective fires on your while you are helpless. This is why (of course) Western armies prefer to fight at night.

The argument that TIS cannot detect infantry easy is totally false, you use TIS (in real life) to find the infantry because they stick out in the open terrain like sore thumbs. They are visible in windows and in forests as hot spots and they show up even at long ranges. In other words, a tank equipped with TIS will have it on at all times, even in the day time, in order to find and locate infantry (and vehicles) quickly.

As far as how much of a multiplier the TIS adds to the attacking power is, as with everything else, open to everyone's opinion. It has been like this since FG85, and I don't think there is a problem with it. To me, "400%" (4x) effectiveness certainly represents a situation where one side is helpless and easy pickings, if it was lower than this then it wouldn't be effective enough. Low visibility conditions is when these TIS equipped vehicles would get their 4 or 5 : 1 kill ratios in, and it is the only way to allow the west to counter attack on night turns while the east attacks in the day. It is the ONE AND ONLY qualitative advantage that the west has, and is the only real thing that can offset the numbers of Warsaw Pact / North Korean hordes. Having said that though, the only real ideal approach would be to have the multiplier be something you can set in the PDT file, with 400% being the default, but anything less than this default (again, IMO) would not be a realistic enough advantage.