1)The amount of people who play maps bigger then 20x20 is much smaller then players who play normal sized maps
Yes, it isn't a supcom, but is heavily inspired by it, and we also see a ton of new features and abilities to keep eye on. Devs said before, that they are gonna focus on competitive part of the game, and limiting air possibility with fuel mechanic would make game much slower and less fun. If you need fuel refueling buildings or slow naval/land units(won't even count air refueling units, because it just makes the whole mechanic useless, just a mandatory unit you always have to build to be able to do anything), you have pretty much no chances to get a succeful air raid on high skill levels, which is bad. Hell, you won't even be able to do early agression on mostly naval maps with bombers or interceptors. You can't try and bomb enemy because your range is heavily limited, you can't try and intercept an enemy transport that is gonna drop engineers on an island because again, you are limited by fuel and can't get on another side of the map to do that. Can't do a drop onto enemy's base that could give you a chance of a come back, because again, very limited by fuel mechanic. Air units already trade bad against any AA in normal quantities, limiting their movement to slow units that can be easily killed would make them useless. Besides, all the maps from developers we have seen are around the size of 20x20 in supcom, so the focus of the game is more likely to be on this size maps. If devs were to balance the fuel mechanic around this size of maps, the air units would suck even more on any bigger map.
Or more tactical and strategic?
I don't count moving your air units from left to right and enemy doing the same with AA as strategic. There is no strategy in using your air units if they are so limited in movement enemy has eternity to prepare for it. By the time you are able to set those fuel units in position to strike enemy would have more then enough time to prepare AA and counter any raid of yours.
Ok, do you have any numbers on how many players play 40x40 or bigger maps? I doubt you do, but you also set your maps and LOUD style of gameplay as something better then others. What is an average online of LOUD? Lets compare it to FAF. Whenever I Launched LOUD I have seen max 3 lobbies during online peak. FAF has like 14 lobbies many of which are 4v4-6v6 and many of them are half/almost full and many more players in matchmaking, so from my side I see that there are multiple times more people playing 20x20 maps then people playing 40x40 or bigger.
So, if so many players are playing against AI and are not competitive, and just want to have fun and explode stuff, how would a fuel mechanic that only limits their options be any good for them? It would be in their interest to be limited by "balance change" that is focused more on multiplayers, because if AI can "abuse" this "balance change" those players can just lover the strength of AI until they are comfortable.
If so and it is only meant to matter for 40x40 and bigger maps then do whatever, I don't play such big maps anyway and it won't ever affect me.
Well, your point is well taken, there are many who prefer simplified simulations, without any level of realism or details or variety - and there are many who want as much detail and complexity as they can get (Hearts of Iron), which is very successful. Who are we to decide if one is better than the other ? All I can say is that LOUD users, who are predominantly single players, care very passionately about realism - in fact, to a much more pointed degree, than I had ever anticipated.
If they care about realism they would know that air units in 28th century when fusion reactor technology exists could not be limited to short period of time in flight. Modern commercial passenger planes can fly for 18000 km without refueling across Atlantic and more. No way a unit with fission reactor that has fuel of incredible power density ever be limited to even half of that.
1)We see fusion reactors as a building in Sanctuary, they are already much smaller then the prototypes we have, there is no reason at lest Chosen would not be able to make them small enough to fit in a plane. There is no way units can use such power hungry abilities like shield, plasma weapons/ railguns and so on without an efficient power source right in them. Lire in real life, railguns are limited to being stationary or put on a ship exactly because of how much power they need, and since we don't have any technology for efficent power generation, those are the only options we have right now to put them on. But as you can see with EDA, it is not the case, they have a relatively small t3 unit that can shoot a railgun with high rate of fire while not having much volume inside it for any sort of batteries to house that would be enough for a long battle.
Besides for the lore on this part, the lore lords are pushing an idea that those fusion reactors don't produce energy for everything else, but they use energy of the Sanctuary to produce plasma that would work as an efficient energy storage material that could be used to fuel units and everything else that needs energy and transport easily(but as we know, the resource transportation stuff is not here because it is not a priority for this style of RTS)