SteveMartin wrote:
In my opinion also, I think that a lot of the drive to change the fuel rules comes from players who tend to favour playing the German side. I have seen this for so long in the thirty five years or so that I have been playing wargames. Everyone wants to play the German side, with the neat uniforms, the neat tanks, the neat planes, etc. None of them want to play the big picture though, the overwhelming numbers arrayed against them, the lack of supplies, the lack of air superiority or naval superiortity, etc. They all seemed to have the same opinion, that the German military machine was so brilliant and invincible that only an incompetent Hitler and his political staff prevented them from overrunning the world. This is their idea of expert thinking and I believe we are seeing a prime example of it here in this discussion.
 I don't get this. Either it is just a not so subtle flame-bait or else I don't understand why you wrote anything like this. I don't see why you bring out the good old trump card of AH without ever arguing against my points or justifying your arguments. Firstly, this is not WWII but the great war, or WWI.
Secondly, I enjoy playing as the triple entente and as the triple alliance (aka the Germans) both, and anybody can tell you that I have, in general, no preference except that I don't like to fly the Bristol or the Halberstadt because I simply cannot get them correctly  .
Thirdly, my arguments don't stem from crypto-apology or overawe of German achievements, but from my knowledge of aircraft design and flight mechanics: should you like so I could tutor you in a crash course of basic flight mechanics, as you don't need to know aircraft design to understand WWI air combat. If you want I can show you why patrol/flight endurance has nothing to do with combat endurance. The math is not that hard.
Fourthly, your point about number superiority can easily be addressed in scenario design, rather than in some abstract "fuel" boxes. By the way, you might want to check about the story of a countryman of yours who was jumped by 60 Fokkers (according to a British newspaper article), and managed to shoot down 4 (yes, he got a VC for that).
Fifthly, you conjectured that scarcity of supply, lack of naval superiority () and air superiority should have influenced the duration and the odds of an air combat. There is a logical fallacy. Fuel scarcity could maybe cut a patrol short and reduce the number of sorties but it does not necessarily cut a combat short.
gugliandalf wrote:
IMHO, it doesn't make any sense.
No more than changing any other plane stat.
Lastly, to counter gugliandalf's point about game stats, while we could argue forever that Wright and Hall used questionable characteristics (check http://pease1.sr.unh.edu/bluemax/designnotes.html ) to compute aircraft statistics, which is beyond my point, my claim is that "fuel" is not structural, but contingent.
Also: prop driven airplanes are not cars, where speed has a strong effect on mileage. In WWI most engines (the rotaries) where unthrottleable (my spell checker fails me now) and fuel consumption did not depend on speed.
I hope I made myself clear and that someone (gugliandalf, I hope that now my arguments look sensible to you) will actually bother to read this long post.
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