Max Pilot limit (Full Version)

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AirGriff -> Max Pilot limit (8/11/2009 3:04:07 AM)

Apparently my opponent and I have hit the pilot cap and it's nuking our pilots. Can anything be done besides decimating my air units? Is there a patch coming for this issue?



n01487477 -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/11/2009 4:08:09 AM)

look here and read onwards ... http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=2194638

Patch yes, but are you overstacking or playing CHS ?

--Damian--



AirGriff -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/12/2009 3:23:56 AM)

Thanks for the response. I'm playing Big B. Not sure what you mean by "over stacking". I think maybe having more pilots than planes in the units? I have that in a few units, but not intentionally. The vast majority have roughly the same number of pilots as planes.

Having read through your link I am quickly realizing our game is in big trouble. Almost 3 years of pretty much daily play down the toilet. Please excuse me for a moment. I need to go barf.



n01487477 -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/12/2009 4:14:32 AM)

If you use and your partner use witpTracker, you can see if you are getting close to the threshold (summary-pilots 30K max both sides), I'd go back a few turns before this occurred and make some quick adjustments, then the game might be saved ... by overstacking, yep, too many pilots in airgroups ... what about your partner ?

A bit strange in BB, cause there aren't that many airgroups compared to other mods iirc

If you want I can have a look at the savefile for you ...





AirGriff -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/12/2009 3:15:13 PM)

My opponent has Tracker, but I don't. Guess I'm going to have to get it if we continue.

Our game has definitely taken a big turn from historical. Long story short, my opponent outplayed me in India and successfully argue that the Brits would drop out of the war, but I countered and said the US would then make the Pacific the primary focus. To mimic this, we agreed to let the Japanese land a unit on the West Coast and force the accelerated reinforcement schedule. I think this is why we got this issue so early in the game (April '44). I guess I've been a bit conservative in air attacks, so not as many losses as could have been. Plus, we never fought for the Solomon's since I beat him to the punch in the beginnning (he was busy kicking my butt in India).

So, the accelerated reinforcements kicked in about a month ago in the game and we just got this issue the last game day. I'm not sure we can fix it.



jwilkerson -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/14/2009 1:52:48 AM)

One cause for pilot overflow in stock, in that players cannot see the number of pilots in the airgroups. In some of the saves we have seen, there are 100s and sometimes over a 1000 pilots in many groups. You only see the active ones, but there can be many inactive ones. In the original design every pilot stayed in its group for the entire game, whether dead or alive, or wounded, or missing. Subsequent patches have implemented various "culling" strategies to remove dead pilots with less than 5 kills, etc. But still players dump more and more and more pilots into their airgroups and eventually overflow the pilot array.

One way to mitigate, or at least push out, the issue is to pull your air units out of combat after they have taken heavy pilot losses, then let them rest for a while before filling them back up. Say let them rest for a month. When doing this a number of lightly wounded pilots will return to the unit. Then you can fill the unit up and start retraining the pilots. By waiting a while and giving time for the wounded pilots to return, you will reduce the total number of pilots in the unit over time and push out the date when the pilot array will over flow.




n01487477 -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/14/2009 2:16:37 AM)

Joe,
yes I agree and have seen exactly the same thing ... but players can see the numbers of pilots in airgroups and totals via Tracker ... [;)]

Maybe what needs to be kulled are pilots in groups > (max size of group *20%), going from least to most experience pilot ... and other strategies ...

Thanks again,

[image]local://upfiles/19798/F63647B96A5B44D2B426A048B30DAA74.jpg[/image]



BShaftoe -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/14/2009 4:00:31 PM)

Exactly, what is the overflow limit? 20000 for combined pilots, or 20000 for each side?



n01487477 -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/14/2009 4:12:31 PM)

Sorry, I made a mistake before - there are 30K slots for pilots total in the DB ... it doesn't matter about each side, just the total ... I'm not sure at what point the overflow kicks in, but it is probably around the 30K mark ...

Once again, sorry for the misleading information I just confused myself ...






jwilkerson -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/14/2009 4:25:34 PM)

Right - we've increased the pilot array size - from the original 20,000 up to about 30,000 ... there is one pilot array for all pilots.



Nemo121 -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/16/2009 11:08:30 AM)

And is this going to be patched for WiTP original

It really is an utter game-killer for games going into 44 and 45 - which pretty much ruins the late-war game.



jwilkerson -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/16/2009 7:20:49 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

And is this going to be patched for WiTP original



It that a statement or a question?

We've patched WITP about as much as it can be without changing the data structure and truly requiring a restart of every game.



Cathartes -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/21/2009 1:47:15 AM)

There is an awkward work-around that has helped me thus far through Sept '44.

Disband your extraneous air units into one big unit. For example, tou may have plenty of Helldiver or SBD squadrons or C-47 transport units that you don't really need. When you disband, don't have them return after 60 days. Take the one unit brimming with planes and pilots and pack 'em on a transport and send them to your favorite, deadly destination. You can also downgrade them to another airframe before sending them on a transport--this way you save the airframes you want and you can just lose older, obsolete craft that default to the maximum number of airframes the unit would otherwise have. The pilot numbers stay the same.

When the transport goes down, you've just culled a few pilots, and eliminated some air units. The unit on the transport will return after 60 days with maybe 1 or 2 pilots. It can just sit in some distant home airfield and wait out the rest of the war. 

If you're playing for points this workaround is a big bother, but both you and your opponent can agree on a total pilot number and a killing site for each others transports. You can give each other warning and enjoy the comedy. Small useless transports are always best for this errand. 

This is an insurance policy, and while I can't guarantee it will work for you, I have yet to see the bug myself.



jwilkerson -> RE: Max Pilot limit (8/21/2009 4:09:55 AM)

The current culling routines will prioritize removing "dead" pilots - so this is one idea. But those games that we've seen (saves of) that are really hosed need to cull thousands of pilots - a couple of hundred will only postpone the problem for a little while.

The best "solution" I've been able to think of - is just to play the whole game with a mindset that you will not immediately fill up devasted air units. There is a reason to do this - so you can start training up the new pilots quickly. But doing this means the units essentially double in (pilot) size. So doing this to many units every 4-6 months adds lots of pilots over the course of the game. As I've said, we've see units, not only with hundreds of pilots, but even with over 1000 pilots.




eloso -> RE: Max Pilot limit (1/1/2010 8:39:02 PM)

This bug really is a game-breaker. I think it kills the late game for both sides. I've heard arguments that it affects Japan more than it does the Allies, but I disagree. Both sides get shafted. Had I known that I would have had to delete 20% of my air force, the game would have never started.

This bug crept into our game right around the Thanksgiving weekend. (Roughly 20 FEB 44) We decided to go back a few turns and try to manually cull some pilots. The problem that I am having is that I’m getting reinforcement groups faster than the pilots die. It’s also had a major impact on strategic and tactical operations. I’ve decided to indefinitely suspend our game with the hope that something will eventually be done to alleviate the issue.

Here are some suggestions for fixing this problem. I’ve heard a lot about ‘culling’ solutions. To me this is counterproductive but still might be necessary in mods that have more pilots than the database can allow. I’ve heard this number is around 30,000 pilots but it hit our game at a number closer to 27,500. 27,500 happens to be less than the default number of pilots that appear in the stock campaign.



Why are the wounded pilots in groups hidden from the player?

Couldn't they be grayed out and just passed over for flying a mission until their wounds healed?



Why are the players allowed to add more pilots to a group than what it is rated for?

See above. Basically, these groups are being over-expanded inadvertently because of hidden pilots or players are deliberately stocking air groups with more pilots than they should have.



Also CV groups resize. I just had my groups change to increase VF units on the CVs but decrease the VB units. The VB units still have extra pilots in them. In addition, while on operations with replacements on to allow replenishment at sea, additional pilots are added to the groups.

Thanks for listening.



jwilkerson -> RE: Max Pilot limit (1/2/2010 12:38:33 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: OSO
I’ve heard a lot about ‘culling’ solutions. To me this is counterproductive ...

Well without it - the pilot array would fill up much sooner.

quote:


Why are the wounded pilots in groups hidden from the player?

dunno - but they always have been.

quote:


Couldn't they be grayed out and just passed over for flying a mission until their wounds healed?


Well they are passed over - but the original design was that all pilots every assigned to a group - where always in the group regardless of their status, dead, alive, wounded, unwounded. The culling routines attempt to remove the least useful pilots to minimize the number of pilots in the array.

quote:


Why are the players allowed to add more pilots to a group than what it is rated for?

dunno - but always been that way. It does provide a means for getting the air unit back into action quickly.

quote:


See above. Basically, these groups are being over-expanded inadvertently because of hidden pilots or players are deliberately stocking air groups with more pilots than they should have.

Players want to refill their decimated groups and get them back into action right away - they do not want to let the units rest and recover and have the wounded pilots come back to duty over time.
But that being said, for years we did not know the wounded pilots were hidden back there waiting to return.

The best solution is to expand the size of the pilot array - but that would not help games in process - it would require a restart to gain benefits of the resized array. We did resize the array for AE.

An interim solution is to use one of the third party tools which allow visibility into all pilots assigned to a group. By using this tool a player could see how many wounded pilots he had in the group - and could manage addition of new pilots with this knowledge.






eloso -> RE: Max Pilot limit (1/2/2010 2:05:04 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

An interim solution is to use one of the third party tools which allow visibility into all pilots assigned to a group. By using this tool a player could see how many wounded pilots he had in the group - and could manage addition of new pilots with this knowledge.



Thanks for your response Joe. I'm having trouble accepting that allowing players intentionally or not to over populate their air groups being an integral design decision. Its a known issue that breaks games. Using tracker is what I have been doing in our game for the past month.

Requiring users of any product to rely on a 3rd party solution is a less than desirable business model. My philosophy on manufacturing stuff is that it is supposed to make life easier and those who engineer it should strive for this goal constantly. To me it is obvious that you, and the design team of AE, also believe in this philosophy which is evident in your latest creation.

I understand that this is an old version and support for it is going to be eliminated eventually as the world moves on. I was merely trying to brainstorm some additional ideas so games in progress might be able to finish without having to eliminate 20% of the air force and resort to using Tracker for an hour a day to sort through wounded pilots.

No hard feelings on my end. It was a fantastic ride up until now.




rtrapasso -> RE: Max Pilot limit (1/2/2010 5:59:07 PM)

i'll point out that Joe W. had nothing to do with the design of WITP... he had a LOT to do with WITP-AE, and the problems have been corrected in that game.



Cathartes -> RE: Max Pilot limit (1/9/2010 8:02:45 PM)

FWIW, I'm living with the pilot bug, generally evading it, and I'm in November '44. My opponent and I have a "Harvesting Treaty" where we take turns invading Marcus Island and in between pack it with disposal planes and pilots. If you take some army transports for example, disband one into the other and do not return the disbanded group in 60 days, you can begin to manage your pilot numbers. We send the pilots to the slaughter in Marcus. It's a pain, and it's not fun, but it keeps the game working. I've never played WITP this late into the game, and would hate to give it up.

I'm lean on my pilots and I sacrifice a lot to flak areas and try to keep my total well below 18500 pilots on map (use tracker). I don't fill up replenishment carrier units, and I no longer add pilots to groups. I'm always retiring/disbanding beat up fighter units and bombers into other ones to keep fewer viable. The Allies get so many air groups at this point in the game there's no way to use them all anyway. My opponent does the same (forgot his pilot limit, but it's much less). Unfortunately, the Soviet Air Force is now gaining more units rapidly, and they are not "active", so that's putting a further squeeze to my available Allied air units.



Twotribes -> RE: Max Pilot limit (1/20/2010 11:51:33 AM)

What is the array size of AE?



harrer -> RE: Max Pilot limit (5/2/2010 10:04:49 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson


quote:

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

And is this going to be patched for WiTP original



It that a statement or a question?

We've patched WITP about as much as it can be without changing the data structure and truly requiring a restart of every game.



Hi jwilkerson,


There will be a patch changing the data structure for those who want to start a new game without that problem .. or not ?

( is it fixed in AE ? )


Thanks in advance,



jwilkerson -> RE: Max Pilot limit (5/2/2010 3:38:39 PM)

There will probably be a WITP patch one day - but if you do not want to wait - you can do restart now with AE - the problem is fixed over there - array size is increased to 50K.




Oldguard1970 -> RE: Max Pilot limit (5/4/2010 10:15:41 PM)

Hi Cathartes,

I wonder if you could have another odd gentlemen's agreement. Let Japan activiate the USSR. Send USSR air units to an undefended "frontline" base for Japan to attack. This would allow you to "harvest" lots of allied pilots without messing up much in the real game.


quote:

ORIGINAL: Cathartes

FWIW, I'm living with the pilot bug, generally evading it, and I'm in November '44. My opponent and I have a "Harvesting Treaty" where we take turns invading Marcus Island and in between pack it with disposal planes and pilots. If you take some army transports for example, disband one into the other and do not return the disbanded group in 60 days, you can begin to manage your pilot numbers. We send the pilots to the slaughter in Marcus. It's a pain, and it's not fun, but it keeps the game working. I've never played WITP this late into the game, and would hate to give it up.

I'm lean on my pilots and I sacrifice a lot to flak areas and try to keep my total well below 18500 pilots on map (use tracker). I don't fill up replenishment carrier units, and I no longer add pilots to groups. I'm always retiring/disbanding beat up fighter units and bombers into other ones to keep fewer viable. The Allies get so many air groups at this point in the game there's no way to use them all anyway. My opponent does the same (forgot his pilot limit, but it's much less). Unfortunately, the Soviet Air Force is now gaining more units rapidly, and they are not "active", so that's putting a further squeeze to my available Allied air units.




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