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Don Bowen -> RE: Air group divide (5/13/2006 2:07:18 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: alfrake
The patch note list pilot distribution when dividing an airgroup as fixed. In my game it is not. I still find occasional Japanese airgroups that don't split pilots and planes correctly when divided. For example, every fraction of 27 gets 9 planes, but pilots go 12, 8 and 7. Rebuilt and split again, numbers randomize.
First of all, it was overly terse to report that Version 1.8 corrected uneven allocation of pilots. What it really did was correct the mass assignment of pilots to the “A” group.
There are a couple of basic points:
- Pilots are assigned to specific aircraft when needed. At any given time an aircraft may or may not have a pilot, depending of it’s recent history (flying missions, new replacement aircraft, newly repaired aircraft, even pilot killed on ground in bombing attack).
- There are three sub-groups of aircraft in the airgroup: ready, damaged, and reserved.
- A simple divide-by-three-and-ignore-the-remainder is used for the initial allocation.
The split of the airgroup goes like this:
- The number of ready aircraft is divided by 3 (remainder temporarily ignored).
- This number of planes (AND PILOTS if the planes have pilots) are allocated to each of the three new sub-groups.
- The remainder from step#1 (including pilots) is allocated to sub-group “A”.
- Repeat steps 1-3 for damaged aircraft.
- Repeat steps 1-3 for reserve aircraft.
- Remaining pilot allocation. Prior to Version 1.8, all remaining pilots were assigned to the “A” sub-group. Version 1.8 changed this to split the pilots between the three groups in a process like steps 1 plus 3. There is also considerable additional complication with historical pilots assigned to the airgroup. These are pilots assigned to the squadron in the editor but whose delay has not yet expired. They are linked to the squadron and must be allocated but are not yet available for use. This work was added in Version 1.8 but is not apparent at time of airgroup divide.
During work on Version 1.8 we discussed this and analyzed other options. The solution adopted in Version 1.8 was adopted partially for speed of implementation and the matter may be revisited at some time in the future. A couple of very good ideas were presented for both the division process and for the handling of “future” historical pilots.
There are a number of points to be made about the current process (with Version 1.8 changes):
- Since aircraft may or may not have pilots, an even allocation of aircraft to different sub-units may not result in a similarly even allocation of pilots and the allocation might not be consistent from one divide to another.
- The “remainder to A” process means that the “A” sub-group may have up to 6 more aircraft and up to 8 more pilots than the other two. This would be:
- Up to 2 ready aircraft with up to 2 pilots.
- Up to 2 damaged aircraft with up to 2 pilots.
- Up to 2 reserve aircraft with up to 2 pilots.
- Up to 2 additional unassigned pilots.
- Additional handling of historical pilots may also result in “B” sub-group having one more pilot than the “C” sub-group.
The current process does not result in creation of three exactly equal sub-groups. However, the remaining unevenness in allocation is minor, especially compared to the previous versions (which would sometimes produce pilot allocations in the range of 56-8-8). Also, a quick round or two of combat will even things out quite a bit. The ability to provide consistent allocation in a divide-recombine-redivide process is probably not worth the effort.
Hopefully this will not be a problem as we have quite a lot of other items to attend to.
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