In SH4, the ranges come from the airplanes' cfg files, and the "order of appearance" is all chance. Other than the "patrol" platforms, which go out every so often no matter what, the "response" airplanes are always a roll of the dice. If you have six planes, each plane has a die dot. If the game rolls a "one", the "one" plane goes out. If the game rolls a "two", the "two" plane goes out, etc. The only way in SH4 to control what goes out is to restrict the AirGroups and specific planes available. Such as, we might want Corsairs going out instead of Wildcats, if there is a US Marines' AirBase nearby, or maybe drop the number of planes available of each type, or just drop all but one or two plane types from an AirBase. It does involve cloning though. You might want to clone a Corsair one way for later CV use, while the land-based version might have a shorter range. You might also want to clone specific AirBase assets, such as an LAB_FP40_AirBase or LAB_LBWhitley_AirBase, or whatever... The only problems with more airbases is of course, complexity, plus more airplanes responding if they are all within range of the detected U-Boat...
