Stroked motor oil levels?

Yep - the farther away from the crank you can keep the oil, the better off you are. If you could put the top of the oil 3 feet below the crank, that would be great! But reality is you can't so you use a combo of a crank scraper (windage tray) and oil pan "features" to minimize the oil flinging around in the bottom of the engine. Don't forget the crank scraper is just that: it is designed to "scrape" the oil off the swinging crank and, working with the pan, not let it re-enter the airstream and cause heat/friction (power loss). The pan cannot do this by itself as it is just an empty space/volume. The "ledge", kickout, or dam on the right side of the pan helps prevent the spinning crank from picking that oil back up (remember the crank spins CW looking from the front of the engine) but the scraper tries to get the oil off the crank and send it to the pan in the first place. The "magic" in the scraper comes from the various shapes, windows, louvers, screens, etc. That takes a LOT of development testing.

As to more volume...it's there for more than one reason: higher volume insures oil will be there to cover the pickup under extreme conditions (high rpm or sloshing in a road race course or?) and more oil will run cooler than less oil. IF it is kept away from the spinning crank! In drag racing, temp is not the issue as the engine doesn't run long enough to matter. Keeping the pickup covered is all that matters. Hope that makes sense!!