speaking about possible maps of China, I've made some reasearch on air operations including Sino-Japanese war. This is what I think:
1) AREA OF OPERATIONS. Zones of intense air action could be roughly divided as follows (with additional sub-divisions possible):
- North China/Yellow river area from Xian to Peking;
- Central China/Yangtze River from Chengtu to Hankow (~1000 km E-W), down to the region south of Tungting lake (Hengyang, Ling Ling);
- South China from Kunming to Hong Kong/Canton area (~1200 km E-W);
- Salween front from Kunming to Lashio (~500+ km E-W);
2) MAP SCALE. Considering heavy bomber operations, either for China/US air forces and the JAAF/JNAF, any 1:1 scale map would be as large as the Solomons map to say least, with lots of rivers and populated areas. Even cutting many large portions of terrain, distances would be huge, e.g. Chungking to Hankow is ~800 km, same Kunming to Hainan Island. Thus reduced map scale would be a prerequisite.
3) LEVEL OF DETAIL. The current library of stock textures and buildings does not allow a good representation of the Chinese landscape. So, unless a team is formed for perform such a task, a likely map of China would have to be rather generic and in any case it should be heavily underpopulated as well to maintain playability. The situation regarding the airfields is I think a bit better. So far I have recovered positional info on all the most inportant airfields in the region. Moreover, for some of them I also found aerial photographs and charts. Still, if someone has the possibility to search for material through the NARA archives, that would be a plus!
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