AH pilots tend to know the AH aircraft. Also, the scenario isn't about only the A6M2 pilots. The most-vocal pilots are the ones who have complaints, not the ones who are content. So, when you go by what people mention, it is biased in the negative direction, not the positive one. Also, what I talked about is backed up by polling. Purporting that people probably aren't happy or shouldn't be happy isn't going to get much yardage.
This typically extends to their primary rides, and the big boys of the war like the B-17, and the P-51D. Even then, you get a lot of misinformation from anecdotes of pilots running 150 octane fuel, or that over-boosted the engine, or what have you. Hell, even simple ignorance comes into play.
For example, a fair handful of players from a certian unnamed squad seem discontent with the P-51D's modeling. According to them, it should be better because the USA won the war, and obviously if 109's are beating them, then the P-51 is under modeled. Screw the fact that there were 150 octane mustangs not represented in AH, and that latewar improvements to the 109G-10 and K-4 gave them parity or an advantage at high altitude.
According to one of them, the P-51D is "slow, barely breaking 300mph on the deck. And it climbs like s**t". When I confirmed that a 25% fuel P-51D was in fact capable of 368mph and ~2900fpm "as per the charts", his only response was "well who's charts are they"?
Ask your average AH player what the top speed of the G-10 was vs the K4, vs the G-14, and they couldn't give you an answer. Unless I miss my guess, most would probably just go with the G-14 because they both have G in the name.
Now you can argue that the scenario crowd is more likely to know more, and I'll accept that. However as example, were you to take a poll asking "did you know the TBD's top speed was only 202mph?" most would say no. We don't have the TBD, and no matter how much you love AH, theres no guarantee you're also a history buff.
Obviously people know the TBM does not make a perfect TBD; its a latewar replacement for it, how could it NOT be better. But I suspect that many aren't aware that there is at least a 53mph deck speed difference, and a ~75mph speed difference at altitude.
When people fly in a scenario, the experience is enhanced if they are flying USN planes when they are representing the USN in the event, rather than flying Japanese planes and especially rather than flying Japanese-marked Japanese planes.
I disagree with that point when substitutions are involved. Say we're doing an italian scenario, and want to represent the Re.2005 with a Spitfire VIII. The Spitfire is reminiscent of the 2005, and give it an Italian skin, and it would make a pretty damn fair visual approximation of one. Yeah, it would be using a Merlin instead of a DB 605, but you don't SEE the engine.
I disagree with this point especially considering that you could make a case that the TBD actually looks more like a B5N than it does a TBM.
I've flown 110C's as substitute for Ki-45's, and the fact that it was a 110C in no way broke the immersion, thanks in part to the excellent skin by Krusty. It looked Japanese, I was flying for the Japanese, shooting at things that looked allied, and being shot at because I looked Japanese. Now the skin part I give you. However given that Skuzzy has spoken up, I'd like to see what he has to say as to the difficulty of building in the skin vs the risk involved.
It's the same reason the experience is enhanced by having a historical terrain, rather than any old terrain on which you say "a19 represents Berlin", and by having clouds and sky color that is an approximation of the weather during the historical battle, having snow on the ground if there was snow on the ground, having the historical squadron labels, and having historical skins when possible. Yes, it is also enhanced by having the historical aircraft.
But thats exactly what you're doing. You're telling everyone to just pretend its a TBD, despite the fact that it makes a rather aggressively poor approximation of one.
So when the exact historical aircraft isn't available, and we have to substitute, there are numerous considerations. Consider scenarios that have B-17D's. Is a B-17G (with its much-superior defensive fire) the best substitute on performance? Maybe a restricted-load Lancaster seems a better choice by some fighter pilots who think the B-17G is too hard to shoot down compared to what they think a B-17D would be like. We would still use the B-17G and adjust numbers so that scenario outcome is balanced.
Here's the thing, in your example, you're substituting a B-17 in for a different B-17, I would assume because of the fact that it is infact a B-17, and looks like another B-17. But you're not doing that here, you're substituting in an entirely different aircraft, that neither approximates the TBD in performance, firepower, or looks aside from the fact that its also blue.
I already talked about that above. It is not irrelevant at all to bomber pilots.
But its not irrelevant to the A6M pilots either. 2 .50's is enough to seriously damage an A6M, where as a single .30 is not, unless the guy is ether EXTREMELY accurate, or very lucky.
You are choosing top level speed as being most important when the data shows it doesn't much matter to frame outcome, number of torp hits, number of bombers lost to enemy fighters, or number of enemy fighters lost to bombers.
I'm choosing top level speed and firepower over blueness (and not even the correct shade of blue), yes.
Tell me -- if someone is on the tail of your fighter pinging it with one 30 cal, are you going to sit there unmoving or move? That's the importance of the forward-firing gun. There have been *so many times* I have wished for even one 30 cal forward gun on the B5N.
If there is a single .30 pinging me and I have 75mph on the guy, I'll move a little bit to spoil his aim, and continue on wherever the hell I was going to go. I'm certianly not going to go "Oh god!!!!" and pull a split-S to escape the overwhelming destructive capacity of a .30.
I disagree.
And I respect that, however just because you're a CM doesn't mean you are
right. It does, for better and for worse, put you in a position to do something about your opinion, but it doesn't make that opinion anything more than an opinion.
Vne won't tell you what is useful. You can find it or not as you wish. What would be more useful is finding out what armor the TBD had. Where was it, what was it, and what was its thickness compared to what the B5N has (if anything) and compared to what the TBM has.
As I said, I would do both.
In scenarios, there is always a group of people screaming bloody murder over some particular item, no matter which way you set it. That has been true since scenarios were invented in 1993 (where I CO'ed in the first one and was the person who was screaming bloody murder over some aspect that, with the benefit of experience, I now recognize as trivial). If we had a scenario, needed Bf 109K's, and only Bf 109G's where available, we'd likely use Bf 109G's and adjust things to balance the scenario.
But a G isn't just a G. Theres G-2's, G-6's, G-14's, and G-10's. The best I can come up with is using a G-14 to represent the K4 instead of the G-10, despite the fact that the G-10 is a closer approximation of the K4.
And we're looking at the exact opposite of the situation you put forth. You're using an over performing LW aircraft to represent a poorly performing EW aircraft. Which is why I specifically used the example of the K4 subbing for the G-6 or G-14/AS, as it is a better analogy for what we're looking at.
