As you know (I'm sure) the way to change the ranges is to change them for the planes.
"BP-clone" planes and make variants for different purposes, IMO.
I made VERY short ranged versions for carriers since a CAP flies over the fleet, not at the max range of the plane.
Ditto for airfield CAPs.
The only plans you'd expect to see far from home would be patrol aircraft, or planes flying somewhere to attack it (or CAP farther from home).
The ideal solution would probably be a mix between using the airbases (limiting you to the crappy "airstrike" stuff) and adding some campaign layers with the planes following waypoints (use random groups). Some might be strike groups (say from Rabaul to Guadalcanal, or later to Sunlight, Munda, Ondonga, etc). Such groups I would actually have unarmed, except for maybe a plane or two so they don't all unrealistically abandon their mission to attack a speck in the ocean.
I tried to no avail to get the ACE program to make radial patterns, looks like they need to be done by hand for that.
I have a mod out there someplace that makes som variant plane with short range, and I think the airbases are published WIP, too. Take all you need.
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