Karl, the way i see it, standard ECU's are a solution to the problem of managing an engine requirements smoothly and reliabley under situations like changing throttle position etc, aftermarket ECU's are always geared more towards out and out power and what happens under WOT so i'm sure you are correct that the standard ECU is hard to touch on that basis, especially given the amount of development hours that goes into creating the algorythms and data tables etc in the first place with exactly that in mind, where as aftermarket mapping is normally about what happends on the ragged edge.

Lamda sensors help though in that respect i would imagine, it means that you can just let half the transient fuelling requirements get taken care of without you lifting a finger surely?