Aicraft ranges, some thoughts

[Bombur]

I´m studing the editor of the DC:CP, and would like to share some ideas to improve the way the game deals with aircraft range

1-Movement in DC (and ATG) means different things for land units and air units. For land units it means speed. For air units it means range.
2-You can keep the same movement rates for land units, with different map scales, if you follow the rule: hex size must be proportional to time scale, so 5km for one day turns, 10km for two day turns, 15km for three day turns and 20 km for four day turns, and so on. If you use different hex ranges/turn lenght relations you cause movement distortion.
3-However, for aircraft, you will have only two movement rates: 33 hexes (fighters) and 50 hexes (bomber). Not only it isn´t enough to cover all the possible aircraft ranges, but it will ever create a distortion in different map scales.
4-Take for instance, a Bf-109E, with an operational range close to 300km. You will have two options: 50 hexes and 33 hexes
-If you use a 5km/hex map, the closest (to reality) range you get range is 250km (-16%)
-If you use a 10km/hex map, the closest range will be 330km (+10%)
-If you use a 15km/hex map, the closest range is 495km (+65%)
-If you use a 20km hex map, the closest range is 660km (+120%)

In 2/4 situations you will have a very different range from real life

Now take a A6M2, whose operational range close to 1200km
-For 5km maps you have 250km (-80%)
-For 10km maps you have 500km (-42%)
-For 15km maps you have 750km (-37%)
-For 20km maps you have 1000km (-16%)


-So the current system will always result in distortions for aircraft range, and it´s more significant for long range aircraft

-What would be the better fix?
-Increase the number of air movements will have some effect, because the movement we need will be in the high end scale (10 AP and less). So we would have movement ranges of 10(Air10),11(Air9),12)Air(8), 14(Air7), 16(Air6), 20 9(Air5), 25 (Air 4), 33 (Air3), 50 (Air 2), 100 (Air 1)
-So, let us back to our Bf-109E
-In 5km map the best value we have is 250km (-16%)
-In the 10km map the best value is again 330km (+10%)
-In the 15km map we can have 300km (0%)
-In the 20km hex we have 320km (+6%)
-In other words, these movements almost eliminate distortions for short range aircraft

-Now the A6M2
-In 5km maps we will have a better range of 500km (-57%)
-For 10km maps you have 100km (-16%)
-For 15km maps you have 1500km (+25%)
-For 20km maps you have 1000km (-16%)

In other words, increasing the number of movement rates improve the distortion and almost eliminates it for low range aircraft, but we still remains with a significant distortion for long range aircraft)
-So this distortion could be improved with Vic created, in the intermediate editor, a variabe to be edited: movement redux, just like in ATG. It allows us to adjust distortions for some scale/aircraft types. These values could be both positive or negative (negative meaning a higher cost). It would give us the collateral benefit of working with different turn lenght/hex size relations (for instance 10k hexes one day) and also to make adjustments for motorized units (a Matilda II and a BT-7 are both tracked vehicles but the latter is much faster, so we could have a movement penalty for the former and a movement bonus for the latter)