You have a lot of enthusiasm, Denholm, but if you're planning to make an SEA terrain out of this, we already have one that works quite well, ASW's Italy terrain. The elevations and the land masses are very accurate, along with a highly researched and represented field layout. You're not going to do a better job than what ASW did.
If you really want to do this particular terrain, then do it for yourself and the H2H crowd. Or perhaps, you could funnel that endless energy you have into something we don't already have, maybe something really unique, something outside the mainstream of SEA events.
Something like the Soccer War of 1969, maybe... just an idea. AvA guys have been asking for that forever. I just don't want to see you wasting your time on something that won't get used as you intended.
In answer to your questions:
1. Not really, but it's good to have something strat-worthy going on, just in case.
2. Never heard about the "2 carriers" rule, and I'm sure we've violated that one.

I do know that you need to be careful when you have a list of CV numbers that cross from 99 into the 100s... they won't show up in the TG list correctly and cause TG Jump commands to behave oddly. For example, the CVs show up like this:
100
101
102
97
98
98
Because 1 comes before 9.