Replacement Pools and Aircraft With Units

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Gary Grigsby's Eagle Day to Bombing the Reich >> Replacement Pools and Aircraft With Units

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Replacement Pools and Aircraft With Units - 3/21/2010 4:21:07 AM

vimconfused

Posts: 71
Joined: 2/9/2010
From: London, UK
Status: offline

I've been thinking about how pilots are trained, and taking on board some recent comments about flying missions that are not combat related etc. Also thinking about my earlier question about if there are not enough (serviceable) aircraft for the number of pilots available when a sortie is required, who gets the planes?

From my limited experience, it seems that the available aircraft go to the most experienced pilots. There is some logic in this, not complete logic because there is an argument that if the experienced pilots are extremely fatigued, there effectiveness may be below pilots with far less experience, and may then be lost needlessly.

This discussion is given more importance due to the lack of available aircraft with the units. Of course aircraft with units need maintenance and repair etc, but in what happens when you have a vast amount of replacements in the pool, which simply sit there until a unit has an aircraft destroyed? Only allocating new aircraft to a unit when one is destroyed makes some sort of accounting sense, but really works against pilot training.

It seems to me (please correct me if this is wrong) that for example, if you have 8 "good" pilots in a staffel that would not benefit from flying a sortie (I understand that below 70xp pilots get xp just for flying), and 4 pilots that would benefit from flying... but only 8 serviceable aircraft, then the 4 pilots that most need the experience won't get the aircraft to fly! This is not an unusual case because how often is it that a 12 plane staffel actually has 12 planes ready to fly? And this works against the least experienced pilots who most need to fly!

This is bad enough, but I have 400 or so spare Fw190A-8s that sit in some virtual pool somewhere, but units that cannot fly with all their pilots as a lot of their aircraft are in maintenance/repair. So why aren't units given spare aircraft when there are plenty available? This would enable them to fly more aircraft at any one time, and train the less experienced pilots.

Post #: 1

RE: Replacement Pools and Aircraft With Units - 3/21/2010 1:12:56 PM

Dixie

Posts: 10303
Joined: 3/10/2006
From: UK
Status: offline

Assuming I understand your points correctly:

If the best pilots in your unit are suffering extreme fatigue then it's time to pull them out of the line. Aircraft in the pool are not just in the pool, they're also in transit between factories and depots and maintenance units and the front line. Most units in the game are overstrength as it is, a squadron with 18 planes couldn't just demand an extra 4 to train pilots. Planes didn't roll off the production line and straight to the front line and when units were short of aircraft it would generally be the new pilots who were short of experience who would miss out.

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(in reply to vimconfused)

Post #: 2

RE: Replacement Pools and Aircraft With Units - 3/21/2010 2:21:37 PM

Nicholas Bell

Posts: 549
Joined: 4/10/2006
From: Eagle River, Alaska
Status: offline

Maximum aircraft in units is fixed. German gruppen can only have 40 aircraft, so you will never see those excess planes in the pools distributed to units unless they are short. Number of pilots is usually the limiting factor.

Unfortunately the game does not include code to recreate the historical change in the LW TO&E which increased the gruppen size to 64 planes - 4 staffel of 16 planes. I hexedited the German units to have the US group formation size (72 planes, 48 max flyable) which was a half answer to that problem. The numbers worked but the program didn't accept the change when running - it forced all German units with the new organization into 63 minute readiness no matter what.

The fact that the best pilots are always selected to fly makes sense since that is what you would want in a combat situation. What is needed is a training mission which would fly the least experienced pilots. But given Harley's MIA status (real life concerns perhaps?) and the lack of any news on fixes for more pressing bugs (like the turn-around bug) I suspect that any new changes requiring code work are not likely.

(in reply to Dixie)

Post #: 3

RE: Replacement Pools and Aircraft With Units - 3/21/2010 8:09:15 PM

vimconfused

Posts: 71
Joined: 2/9/2010
From: London, UK
Status: offline

I accept the argument that "the pool" doesn't mean a field full of planes sitting around doing nothing, and represents the whole "system" including aircraft in transit and rear maintenance depots etc.

But I can only accept it to a certain extent. For example, if I took the staffel I want to train with its 12 x Fw190A-8 (only 8 of which are flyable, so the new pilots won't be training) and convert it to Fw190A-6, I will draw from my pool of over 1,000 Fw190A-6s to provide 12 aircraft for the staffel. If 4 of these then required maintenance, no further 190A-6s will be forthcoming, despite my entire pool of A-6s having no other purpose other than to feed the training requirement of a single staffel.

OK so there may not be any precedent for such surpluses IRL, but nevertheless I have these surpluses and they do me absolutely no good, while at the same time the supply system works against newer pilots having any aircraft to train on.

As far as rotating fatigued pilots out goes, well its just more micromanagement isn't it. Sure it would be the most efficient way to go but its not as if the game is short of this already!

(in reply to Nicholas Bell)

Post #: 4

RE: Replacement Pools and Aircraft With Units - 3/22/2010 2:13:29 AM

Hard Sarge

Posts: 22741
Joined: 10/1/2000
From: garfield hts ohio usa
Status: offline

Nick

we did add in the 4th staffel to most of the units that did get one (those are the Staffel size units)

not all units upsized, didn't have the people to do the full deal the whole way around, and in the end, a lot of those, were broken off of other units

VC

hassle is, most of the units you are talking about, would not be at full strength for flyable aircraft, it was a big issue with how many planes they could get airborne and keep in the fight

most of the Gruppen that start with more then 36 planes is my doing, I gave them extra

I will talk to Harley and see if we can add in some surplus planes to the Axis units, not sure as that is a touchy area in the code

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