The Philippine Phandango was historically accurate, but as lopsided as it could be. I was KKEN's XO for the scenario. It was tough trying to plan against the hardware. The KI-61s were getting ripped apart by P-38Js and P-47D-25s. Even the FM2s were as fast or faster than the KI-61s, not to mention more maneuverable. That is the type of scenario that turns players off. The design was great. The planning was great. Fencer did a fantastic job putting it together. But, the hardware was a historical setup for the Japanese to be defeated, against some super tough and resilient American aircraft.
This scenario came with canned mission assignments for each aircraft group that had to be followed. The Ki61s were often assigned to jabo vs. ground and water targets with Nikis flying air cover. I don't know if that was done for historical reasons or not, but that is entirely backwards. The Ki61s are outclassed in the scenario to begin with, the only way to make them useful is to use them correctly, and that would be to have them always flying air cover, and never jabo. The Niki with its cannons is far better suited to taking out ground and sea targets. Unfortunately this was out of KKEN's hands, he had to follow the canned mission assignments.
The other problem is that squad sizes were really really random even before no shows were taken into consideration. To keep it fair to everyone, all squads should be around the same size, because when two opposing squads meet in the air, the one with greater numbers has a big advantage. In PP, the Ki61s had really small squad sizes while my Niki squad had up to 14 slots. This just doesn't make sense unless it was done for historical reasons. For balance, if anything the outclassed aircraft should be given larger squad sizes, certainly not smaller.
