yup is the best approach, me impatient as I tend to be, used to screw installations by adding way too much at once and being unable to pinpoint the CTD-causeing mod(s) later
curious about the WIP data inis you write about
thanks for understanding m8!... and yeah i'll get there just with more focus on stability.
the inis.. I guess short version is if AI/player takes battle damage the FM switches to "hard". So AI can stall/spin if it pulls too hard which it often does. some of my inis have too strong pitch command and a full pitch can easily overshoot to departure. If it's player he can recover, but if it's AI it doesn't know how. So the aero data need to take this into account (which it mostly does in TK's default data).
so i adjusted pitch moment, adjusted elevator angles, adjusted lift center. but you change one, many other params need changing and you find more problems so it's a snowballing effect...
I reckon it's also because we've made planes more durable in these guns only theaters, as the same with your korea enhancement mod. TK's default setup planes are fragile, plus most times you have missiles or at least 30mm "nuclear" shells where planes go down with just 1 hit. becomes different when you're shooting machineguns etc. they take hits but sometimes they continue to maneuver/fight.