castor troy
Posts: 14330
Joined: 8/23/2004
From: Austria
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Q-Ball
The devs have done a fantastic job in this game, and an often thankless one too. So farbeit from me to pick nits, I do want to float out a couple observations regarding pilot quality, and see if it warrants a tweek somewhere.
I think there is little, if any difference between Japanese and Allied pilot quality in the long haul. At start there definitely is, as there should be, but once you wipe out the first cadre on both sides, it seems that the quality and process is identical. Let me explain.
Replacements come from the pool about 35-ish in experience; sure, the Allied pilots maybe a few points higher, but at that level that represents maybe a week of on-map training. Both sides train on-map the same way. Thus, BOTH SIDES will end up with about the same quality of pilots. Now, it could be that the Japanese pilot school runs dry of even the 35-exp guys, but I am not there yet.
You could even argue that the Allied have a tougher time keeping up in pilot quality. A good example is the IJN v USN pilots. IJN Pilots can on-map train in a number of units, including ones stuck in the Home Islands. Where do USN pilots on-map train? Only on a carrier sitting in port or if the airgroup is pulled off the CV, because there aren't any shore-based units that the USN can use for on-map training.
Thus, I can see that over time the IJN pilot quality WILL erode, but it will erode pretty much right down to the Allied level, not below it. Both sides will trend toward the same level plane of what can be accomplished via on-map training. The only Allied advantages might be they have more air units to do on-map training with.
First, are others finding the same thing, or am I off-base? To the devs, does the Japanese pilot program crash later in the war for lack of even the 35-exp guys? If I am right, and we want to simulate the slow decline of Japanese pilot quality, how do we do that?
I would almost advocate the elmination of on-map training, but extending the replacement training to 2 years, and if you leave a pilot in 2 years they are an elite pilot. If you pull them out after 1 year, and they are pretty good pilots. Etc. Or something.
Anyway, putting that out there for debate.
you are spot on! The only way to see the Japanese ending up producing the same skilled pilots as the Allied is to completely wipe out all their pilots every month. Not possible I guess. Even if they run out of pilots that graduate from flight school, there will be endless supply of exp/skill 10-15? pilots and as we all know, the lower the exp/skill the faster you gain through training. So in fact the Allied pilots need perhaps 2-3 weeks less on map training when they come out of flight school compared to the Japanese. Add in the production rates of the Japanese in a PBEM that has gone the normal way and you will soon find out that until hundreds of top fighters and heavy bombers coming out of the factory (late 44) you are in deep trouble. 
As for the USN pilots, either you do training in port or you use your land based USN squadrons as training squadrons and draw pilots onto the carriers from the land based squadrons when you need them. I expect every skilled Japanese player to do on map training whenever possible (heck, I also expect the unskilled ones to do that), so the pilot quality won´t decline a lot until very, very late in the war.
In WITP it took me 3 months to see a complete rookie becoming quite an ace with the "on map training" (bombing, not the training order). It´s the same in AE. Within 3 months every flight school graduate will have reached 70 skill easily and it´s not possible to train further up anyway. Skill, not exp but as we´ve learned, skill is what you really need, not exp (which doesn´t go up without much combat anyway). What has changed is the way to get elite pilots. In WITP it was on map bombing of empty bases and in AE it´s the training order.
< Message edited by castor troy -- 1/16/2010 8:49:07 AM >
_____________________________
|
Printable Version
Observation on Japanese v Allied Pilot Quality - 
) makes that hard.
I believe that the USN alone lost more aircraft (and pilot trainees) in training squadrons than they lost in combat during the war. Add that to my score! 
) are correct, I guess the way to do this with fairly minimal micromanagement is the following procedure... 
I do remember when AE was still in development that you were going to have the option to pillage your half trained pilot pools, hence the 1-3 / 4-6 / 7-9 months training bands. I guess reserve in that context implies pilots who are partially trained? 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread