Local Yokel
Posts: 1494
Joined: 2/4/2007
From: Somerset, U.K.
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Okami, I think the detail contained in your original post merits greater attention than it has so far been given. This certainly sounds like the well-known disappearing pilot bug. If this is, in fact, what has bitten you then the details you give may tell us something about the way it does so.
My understanding is that the bug arises when all available records in the pilots table of the game's database have been assigned to pilots who have gone into active service, and the game's mechanics need the use of additional records that have to find a place in that table. Since the number of records in the table cannot be increased, existing pilot records have to be overwritten to accommodate the new pilot arrivals.
The process of overwriting pre-existing pilot records could be accomplished by recourse to a variety of methods. The details you give suggest that existing pilot records are selected for cleansing and re-use by reference to the unit of which they form part. It's a bit like decimation of a Roman legion (but without conferring an incentive on the survivors to fight better/harder!). And it's really not a very clever way of selecting records for overwriting.
If it's got to be done at all I would have thought that that the more intelligent basis for purging records to create new 'pilot spaces' would be via a multi-stage test, e.g. Is he dead? If so, was he an ace? If so then conserve his record else purge it for re-use. And if the ranks of the dead don't suffice to clear sufficient record spaces, then perhaps select by reference to number of missions flown, again conserving aces' records.
The purging selection method chosen appears inelegant and unfair: it hits the unit rather than the general pilot pool. This is a boundary condition the game falls down on badly. Enlarging the pilot table (as in AE) merely moves the boundary. That may suffice. If the solution adopted in AE isn't one that can be applied to the standard game, then the problem is a priority candidate for a patch to the overwrite selection methodology. Given the critical impact that pilot quality has, players shouldn't be left in the position of having to improvise kludges so that the boundary is never hit.
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Japanese Naval Air Pilots - 
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