I find that you and I share quite a bit of common ground on ideological matters but that we completely disagree on each other's views of TNO*. Mind you, it is a demo and they did rush it and Orenburg was pretty much destined to be dysfunctional in their current state** and Panzer can be a bit... eccentric at times, the systems of social changes and economic simulation were not all that usable then, but I was quite intrigued and fascinated about all the events between the four countries and reading the events and internally stating "oh dear" hundreds of times yet appreciating the dark humor in the events of Magnitogorsk and the Black Bandits. The way things look right now TNO is probably going to blow Kaiserreich right out of the water in terms of content, even if the backstory had a few liberties in it.
In any case, Thousand-Week Reich is definitely the more "down-to-earth" of the two mods with a more realistic premise and outcome and I'm actively looking forward to them as well, though I really should catch up on their development diaries sometime soon. The rump USSR in that mods looks fun as hell from your descriptions, so I'm definitely going to go read up on this.
*Though I do agree with you on Atlantropa - while it makes for an interesting story and I'm willing to mentally handwave it purely for the sake of that, your points plus the process of building such a large dam (let alone a series of dams) at the edge of the Mediterranean and draining it into the middle of Africa between the late forties and the fifties is quite literally unfeasible. The reason it hasn't been removed at this stage is because it's quite well ingrained into TNO's lore and gives Hitler's former allies a reason to flip him the bird and split from the Axis in the postwar world. I'm not sure exactly whether to call it "apologism" per se, he's still doing a lot of terrible stuff like letting war criminals get free in order to "liberalize" the Nazi state and its economy, but at the end of the day a Nazi is still a Nazi and the reforms were only done out of pragmatism and not as a true believer in freedom and democracy.
**When you played the demo, I'm not sure if you were aware that there actually is a path to remain LibSoc as Orenburg and succeed in pulling off those reforms while keeping both Malenkov and Burba out of power. It does involve dividing the council as little as possible and saving up a lot of political power to make it work, but it is quite doable.
I think Panzer is a lot like SM Stirling as a writer. He should've just done a novel instead of a mod, because the demo at least wasn't very fun to play. It was literally just sitting there watching focuses tick down for hours and sometimes reading an event about Russians being jerks to each other.
The thing about Orenburg that really defines the entire mod for me is that someone basically proposes "hey how about we literally just replicate the American presidential system and have regular elections?" and both the authoritarians unite to take that group down ASAP. Also Burba is portrayed remarkably positively for a petty despot. The whole experience--and I played all four factions, and did both paths for Orenburg (I did try to avoid picking a chairman but I never managed to get it to work so I figured it was one of the shitty "failure is the only option" paths--was boring, in fact the only humor that actually worked was Lysenko the mad scientist and that got old fast. The whole experience was dull and the "humor" was basically edgelord "dank meme" crap.
TWR at least managed to get the jarring tone shift of black comedy suddenly becoming horror right. "Ha ha this infamous Nazi is running a resort, what a hoot--
jesus fuck he murdered HOW MANY PEOPLE to build the resort on their bones??" That's a lot more horrifying than Apocalypse Cultist Himmler because it's such a
banal reason to commit appalling evil, and reinforces the top-to-bottom inhumanity of the Nazi regime. Less a supervillain and more just "what the actual fuck is wrong with this guy?"
Also Speer's slavery economy tree and Zhukov's "nuke the NKVD, then shoot Konev just to be sure" plan to fix the USSR drew a chuckle out of me. The latter is something of a meme but it actually makes sense in the context of a post-Beria rump USSR in limbo.
Here's some of the options for TWR's USSR:
Vasily Zaytsev:
https://old.reddit.com/r/twrmod/comments/ccye3f/the_final_nkvd_tree_zaytsev/
Zhukov dealing with Beria's legacy:
https://i.redd.it/9hsnztzs96931.png
https://old.reddit.com/r/twrmod/comments/c7o26s/director_secretary_what_is_going_on/
https://old.reddit.com/r/twrmod/comments/c7aurc/the_single_most_miserable_oath_for_the_union/ (Kuznetsov is a doomed path but at least
making everything into a gulag is just a little amusing)
https://old.reddit.com/r/twrmod/comments/c6x2ad/mr_konev_this_is_for_the_grand_marshall/ Stalin Jr.
https://old.reddit.com/r/twrmod/comments/c3z7d9/purging_is_goodright/ Konev is like Pinochet except with planes instead of helicopters.
https://old.reddit.com/r/twrmod/comments/c5xapx/the_only_non_socialist_ussr_leader/ Weird but amusing option.
https://old.reddit.com/r/twrmod/comments/c367ks/the_final_of_the_socdem_nkvd_trees/ Vigdorova is an economy nerd and has a very hard but peaceful reclamation plan.
https://i.redd.it/4xoigjxmtg531.png "Fyodor Ivanov" is a renegade German with a quasi-Nietzschean philosophy who apparently believes that the Russian people's continued survival and will to resist proves them a superior race to the Germans. Or something.
And this is Yuri Orlov, who's a real person and a professor OTL:
https://i.redd.it/uvyzxzmmw8531.png https://i.redd.it/tl8tu7l3dl631.png https://i.redd.it/et9m80s15ke31.png He's a well-meaning socdem idealist who can take over after Molotov promises reforms, tries to turn tyrant, and is killed for it.
Zhukov's future nuclear test site:
https://old.reddit.com/r/twrmod/comments/ccld02/everyones_favorite_future_nuclear_test_site/
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/468937771516690432/591641539164373012/SS_Faction_Teaser.png Himmler's Germany (
jesus fuck everything to do with him and Heydrich is balls to the wall horror, like
Gotenland)
Also, TWR revolutionary France (I think after communist resistance overthrows the French State):
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/468937771516690432/602194247592181772/FRASocMLTeaser.png
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/468937771516690432/613099184161030172/FRA_Minet_Teaser.png
I really like these two for some reason. They came to the Revolution (tm) bright-eyed and idealistic, and a decade or so of being beaten out on the anvil of life later, they have literally nothing left but the Revolution (tm).