Nope, it was the fuelburn setting that killed it for me. The Ju88 fuel load isalready woefully undermodelled - just 2 hours endurance no mater what you do with the throttle - when the actual plane could and did go off on missions lasting 7-8 hours. In this one the Ju88 is subing for the G4M, because its performance is closer to that of the G4M than is that of the Ki67 (say the GMs, and I'm prepared to take theirword forit on this). The G4M, incidentally, was noted for its long range as well as its lack ofarmour and tendecy to burst into flame if you frowned at it...
Sooo.. endurance at fuel burn 1 is 2 hours. At 1.8 it is 67 minutes. In an average mission flown at moderate altitude, you can bank on about 60% of mission time being spent getting to target, and 40% on rtb, assuming you simply fly the reverse route. Lightly loaded (the G4M only carried 1000kgs of bombs, maximum, usually, and oftenonly 800kgs) the Ju88 gets up to the vicinity of 5-6km in about 20minutes (I have exact figures for a fuel burn of 1, cant be bothered to dig em out just now) . If you allow heavier bombloads (simply because there isnt AFAIK a way for the GMs to bar them), then you're talking more like half an hour to get to 5kmish (16-17thft).
Now, let's assume that the limb isat default autopilot climb speedof 150. 20minutes at 150mph is 50 miles, and half an hour is 75 miles. Asume level flight of 250mph pre-drop, and in 10-20 minutes you can fly about 40-80 miles. Which means that effectively the buffs are limited to a range of 115-130 miles if they climb to 5-6km. Oddlyenough, if theydont climb high, but fly at say, 250mph at sea level for33 minutes, they manage 137 miles.
And during that time, they use up what is supposed to be a full fuel load, with consequent effect on weight and trim.
That's just too far off anything resembling realism for my liking. No matter f the buffs dont actually have far to fly; if thats the case, anydecent mission planner will drop their fuel load accordingly to give the boost in performance that lower weight brings. Also, to artificially limit planners options as to how to plan their bomber raids by severely curtailing their range takes away partof the skill of buffing that makes it fun. It's different if what you want is to do a scripted fairly exact refight of a battle, but if whatis intended is to see if historycan be changed, then the planners on both sides need to have the options in their planning that the commanders of the time had.
We had a situation like this during the pre-game of BoB, where the fuel burn rate originally thought up would have given the LW no option but to simply fly straight at their targets and straight home, no chance for anydeception, spoof attacks, or trying to take aslightly longer route to avoid AA or setup the attack better. Thankfully, the fuel burn wasn't reduced below 1 in the end (I argued for a rate of.75 and restrict the RAF to 75% fuel maximu, togive the Ju88s more flexibility).
Please don't take the above the wrong way - I am emphatically NOT saying that I think the folks who've worked hard to put Guadalcanal together have screwed up. Not knowing their remitorintent I cannot comment on that. All I am saying is that the reason that I, as a person who is down amongst the"realism nut" end of the spectrum of the AH community, am not interested in the game is because the game parameters (including the planeset and modelling thereof) IMO bend reality too far. The GMs and game designers are constrained by what the program code hands to them.
Which is, I suppose, a plea to HTC to please pay a tad more attention to bombers, with regard to improving the number of important types available (G4M is a must for the IJN) and particularly the accuracy of the fuel load modelling. If those issues are improved, then the kind of reality alterations the GMs need to use to make a scenario playable either won't need to be so severe, or alternatively, won't have such a grossly unrealistic effect (a Ju88 with a 7 hour endurance at fuel burn 1 would still manage nearly four hours at fuel burn 1.8. I could live with that...)
As I've said elsewhere, I'm sure that this scenario is likely to be fun - just not my kind of fun!
Esme
