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Altaris -> Mod idea for getting rid of horrid pilot training (3/13/2010 3:14:37 AM)
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So my PBEM opponent and I are thinking of restarting a campaign and in the process got to discussing some mod ideas to get rid of the horrendous chore of pilot management this game offers. I personally find it to be a level of grognard micro-management that comes close to ruining an otherwise great game. Poking around in the editor and doing some tests, I thinnk I've hit upon a way to get rid of this, with a few minor house rules in place to keep it under check. In addition, I think it opens some doors to making things like TRACOM actually beneficial.
In the editor, you can go to the Scenario tab and click on the Pilots button towards the bottom of the screen. Here you can set the XP and replacement rates for all the game's pools for each year from 1941-1948. I created a little test scenario where I set the XP values at random amounts between 10-99, then loaded up a HtH game and started pulling in pilots from the Replacement Pool to fill out squadrons and observe what their XP values were.
What I found was promising. Basically, whatever the XP value that is set for the pool determines the XP value of any pilot coming in from Get Pilot -> Replacement, with about a +/- 5 variance (so if XP was set to 55 for the pool, the pilots would between 50-60 XP). Their skill settings depend on the type of plane of the squadron getting the replacement. Seems each plane type has a set of "primary" skills, these skills come in at the same value as the XP rate, again with about a +/- 5 variance, while all other skills come in at what appears to be a random value between 30-60% of the XP setting (so, if the pool has an XP rating of 50 and is pulled into a fighter squadron, whose primary skills are Air and Defn, they would have XP, Air, and Defn between 45-55, and all other skills between 15-30). The base primary skills for plane types are listed below.
F - Air, Straf, Defn
FB - Air, Straf, Defn
NF - ? Haven't tested yet
DB - NavB, NavS, GrndB, Defn
HB - GrndB, Defn
MB - GrndB, Defn
LB - GrndB, Defn
AB - ? Haven't tested yet
RC - Recn, Defn
TR - Tran, Defn
PA - NavS, Defn
FP - NavS, Defn
FF - ? Haven't tested yet
TB - NavB, NavT, NavS, GrndB, LowN, Defn
In addition, it seems primary skills also include any skills listed on the squadron info display as Major Skills. An example would be Betties and Nells, which have Major Skills of Torpedo Bombing and Low Naval Attack, when replacements are pulled into these plane types, their skills in NavT and LowN are also granted at the same level as the XP cap, despite the fact that they are MB plane types.
So, my initial thoughts on this mod were to set all the values at 55 or 60, and treat the Replacement Pool as basically the Reserve Pool, and get rid of the need for on-map training altogether. The only skill I could see needing to train up would be ASW, since no planes appear to have this as a primary or major skill. My reasoning here is that now the player is just going to plop as many replacement pilots as they can into restricted training squadrons and simply train them up to 60ish XP anyway, but spend a huge amount of time and hassle doing it. This method would abstract the pilot training process and take away the cumbersome process currently in place.
Since these would all be out-of-the-box ready pilots, the initial pools and replacement rates would need to be reduced. I'd like feedback on what others think the reduction should be, I was thinking of reducing both the initial pools and the rates by 30% across the board. Additional "untrained" pilots would be simulated by the Trainee Pool that pilots are automatically drawn from if the other pools are empty (from my testing, it appears that pilots out of the Trainee Pool typically come in around 40-60% of the XP rate of the Replacement Pool).
TRACOM would actually serve a good valid purpose here too, since putting vets into it would net you good pilots at a faster rate, whereas currently it just gives you more crap pilots you don't need.
There may need to be a few house rules to make this work, in particular, no gaming the system to get better skill pilots by doing things like pulling all your bomber pilots initially into TB squadrons then cycling them out to the General Reserve and into other bomber squadrons (since they get all the primary skills of other bombers plus the good ones of NavT and LowN).
We've also talked about some methods to make pilot reinforcement more reasonable. Request Veteran would be a fairly decent solution if it wasn't for the fact that it's horrible to try and keep up with where the pilots requested this way are (since you can't see them if the delay is >7 days) and even once they do show up, you have to go and set them to active from the pools. Instead, I was thinking of a house rule that pilots can be drawn using Get Pilot, but no individual base can draw more pilots than twice the AF size (we're playing 2-day turns). This would simulate a finite amount of pilots on-hand to quickly draw into depleted squadrons without having to micro-manage the pilot screens.
Anyway, hoping to hear some feedback here on the boards regarding this matter. I think it's a great way to get rid of the micro-management hell of pilot training, but want to make sure we get this right before we start really thinking about a restart (only get one chance to get it right!)
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