I agree with the notion of the more flexibility the better - I liked that you could play in the editor of CMX1 and put stuff from Dec 1944 into June if you wanted to, or drop American paratroopers onto Crete if it floated your boat.
I think the concern is probably unwarranted; BFC will likely go the opposite way and wring us dry for every additional piece of equipment or unit type. Expect vanilla for the first release. The Panther was a better tank than the Tiger in every respect anyway - twice the frontal armour, at any rate, and more common since it deployed as a "medium" tank in the panzer divisions instead of a heavy tank in special armour battalions.
Still going to need "asymmetric" victory conditions since we all know every game is going to be armour-heavy, which is the way of tactical squad-based company-level games, and the German armour was king. Plus that terrain - if they really do model bocage faithfully.
There isn't enough for the infantry to do, that's always been my mantra with Combat Mission. To make an interesting game, you need choices and decision trees, and Steve has consistently been saying he wants to keep a lean interface. You have to, really, because of the Real Time. So instead of loading down the game with real life options for the infantry, like you get in ASL - clear roadblock, use explosives, mousehole through a rowhouse, split into teams, break off into pairs and mop up a building, send a scout up into the steeple of a church, swim across a river, clear a wire obstacle, dig a shellscrape, deliberately dash across a road as a squad to minimize exposure, push a stuck jeep out of a muddy ditch, interrogate a POW for local intel on hidden enemy units, scrounge ammunition, climb a cliff - you get half a dozen options that the AI performs poorly, without benefit of triggers.
aperbag: