My view on this has not changed. The Zeros were operating under special conditions (outlined above). I would consider increasing the range, as long as many other aircraft that flew long range missions, such as the B-24, had their ranges greatly increased as well. Are you sure that this is a good idea?
But my preference remains to stick to more conservative operating radii for all aircraft.
Andrew, I have to disagree with your position. As I stated above, its one thing to deny the occasional extreme mission but this prevents an entire campaign.
Nerfing an aircraft's range that was well within its capability and was amply demonstrated day after day during the Guadalcanal campaign is not the way to demonstrate historical faithfulness. Your claim that only highly experienced pilots were capable of this feat is incorrect. By the end of the campaign, the Japanese were using pilots to fly the slot who were of less experience than their allied counterparts. Yet they still managed to pull it off. And the A6M2 needed no modifications to perform this mission, just a belly tank.
As far as the B-24 argument... yes, they flew extreme range missions near the end of the war. I believe the longest missions logged was from Mindoro to Balikpapn at around 13.5 hrs. The range was a bit over 2000 miles round trip. AFAIK, they flew about 10 of these missions with greatly reduced bombloads. They carried 4-250lb bombs IIRC. Gunners were limited to one ammo box per gun. The aircraft was modified by removing some armor and other equipment. In addition they had fuel cells added in the bombbay.
For all intents and purposes, you could say it was a field variant which could be modeled as a separate B-24 if necessary, call it the B-24D-1 or whatever. You could give it a low production rate beginning in 1945. It would be nice if this could be done to relfect the capability of these field-modified B-24s so that they too could have a historical capability.
If something like that can't be done, that's fine. I would then support the extreme range capability for the B-24. They demonstrated the ability to do so... with modification.
What I want is as accurate a simulation of historical capabilities as possible. If that means every B-24 can fly 17 hexes to a target, so be it. If that means letting the Zero fly to Guadalcanal and back, so be it. I don't care whether its an allied or Japanese aircraft... give it the ability to perform missions that it did historically. If an aircraft needed special mods to perform the task, model it as a variant... whatever is necessary to ensure a historical capability.
This is not meant as a threat or insult but I will not play a mod where certain weapons systems aren't allowed to do what they did IRL. Stock WitP already has enough inaccuracies in it without further exacerbating the issue.
A related issue... Have you considered the effect this mod will have if there is a struggle for Guadalcanal? As the Japanese player will be reluctant to send Bettys down to the slot, that leaves routine naval bombardment as the only way to interdict the airfield. I can hear the cries from the AFBs now!
Chez
