Originally posted by Wotan
The Spitfire whiners will whine about whatever Spit they are fighting.
There can never be 'too many variants'. That's just silly. There needs to be as many variants as necessary to make ToD viable through out the war years.
The Spit V with 12lbs boost was in service in Feb '41 (Mason) and in July/August '42 @ 16lbs boost.
The F-4 entered service in June '41 (it was fully deployed by July '41).
The Spit V @ 12lbs had 6 months with out an F-4 then about a year facing it.
The easy thing to do I guess would be just to drop the 16lbs Spit V but I would hope that HTC look at the possibility of doing both. I am not sure how much differences there would be in the physical model but IIRC they are close enough that one, different skins would work.
As for the Spit Mk1a there's no question that it should run at 12lbs (100 octane). Its silly to make claims like 'just because I think...' with out any supporting evidence. The evidence is pretty clear that the Spit 1 could run at 12lbs boost as of March 1940 and fitted with CP props by Aug...
Spit LF XVI @ 25lbs boost would surprise me. This would make its 'usefulness' in ToD and in events very limited.
Spit I - 12lbs
Spit Vb - 12lbs
Spit Vc - 16lbs
Spit F.IX - no more Hybrid
Spit LF.VIII - great choice
Spit F.XIV - I never thought the 14 was all it was hyped up to be. Maybe 21lbs will change that.
Spit LF.XVI - 18 lbs would be the best choice
There will be no Mk Vc, just a 12lbs boost Mk Vb.
For scenarios the new Seafire III with 18 lbs boost will stand in for the Vc.
The MkXVI at 18lbs will be for a trial period, if it doesn't work out it will go to 25lbs. The only advantage it has over the top 3 or 4 speed demons at 25lbs is its climb rate, 0-10k in under 2 mins.
It would still be slower OTD than the G10, D9, La7 and Pony, Pyro is just conscerned about it phenominal climb rate (5700fpm up to 10k).