wdolson -> RE: Japanese Air to Air Combat Dropoff (9/7/2006 3:42:09 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl The "cheat" is not the idea of Japanese "on map training", it's the way the game executes it. Fighter Pilots can work their way up to 80-90 straffing Chinese peasants (which might make them better at "ground support", but won't do a thing for their "air-to-air" primary skills). Bombers can do the same running little "transport shuttles". What happens in the game is a joke, and can be abused beyond all reccognition. If the Japanese wanted to engage in a real expanded "Pilot Training Program" to increase the number of "trained pilots" recieved, they would have had to increase trainer production and pull a number of their skilled pre-war pilots back to use as instructors. As the IJN didn't even have enough trained pilots to man the A/C it had available on Dec. 7th, this is unlikely. Japan's whole "war strategy" (such as it was) was based around the idea of a short war..., even they knew they didn't have the economic strength for a long one. True, there are innacuracies. It should be more difficult to build up your pilot skill to 80+ doing tasks that don't directly apply to combat. Ultimately, this game is attempting to model something massively complex. I don't believe any computer game has tried to simulate anything on this scale down to this detail before. I know Pacific War and some other earlier engines attempted some of this. The engine has limits. The training model could probably be tweaked a bit, but it would take some heavy rework of the engine to make it work completely realistically. As far as including training aircraft in the game, I believe the pilot pool represents pilots who have been through basic and advanced training. When you are drawing low experience pilots, that represents pilots who have been through an abreivated basic training program and didn't learn as much as those who had been through the complete program. The next step after a pilot comes out of the replacement pool would be transition training in obsolete versions of aircraft they will be flying in combat. In the US, the old Brewster Buffalos, P-39s, and other aircraft obsolete at the beginning of the war were retained for training. In Canada, the Canadians were building large numbers of Hurricanes to train RAF pilots. I don't see it as unrealistic for a Japanese in game training program to be using Nates and Claudes. In the real war, many of these were scrapped for their materials. Still, quite a few remained to be used up as Kamikazes at the end. The USN fighter pilots reported engaging a wide range of obsolete Japanese planes attempting to get through to the carriers. Bill
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