Slitherine

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Didn't we have this conversation when the game came out?

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ORIGINAL: castor troy

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ORIGINAL: BigJ62

cat fat.

wow, never seen that before

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ORIGINAL: Shark7

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ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown

OK, I found the screen. So how do I reduce the fatigue of the planes? Stand them down? Fly at a smaller percentage?

Be sure to put some on REST, at least 20%. I generally set my patrol aircraft up like this...

Naval Search Mission:

Naval Search 60%
Training 20%
Rest 20%

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ORIGINAL: michaelm

Longer patrols means increased fatigue on pilots AND planes.
Pilots rest up and recover fatigue between missions when given a chance.
Planes recover fatigue when stood down, being repaired but mainly when undergoing maintenance.
Maintenance happens once the plane fatigue exceeds the Maintenance level (found on the screen shown above next to Durability) with a bit of randomness thrown in. Generally a forced maintenance is shown in the Ops report.

Plane fatigue can increase the chance of 'op loss or damage'.

Base has bearing on Ops damage but it does on Ops loss.
The code checks against the base's capacity;if it too crowded and the pilot is of low experience (50-), then it is possible for plane to lean towards crashing on landing. Float planes get around this code by using an inflated capacity of 100 times the a/f size. [the comparison is against a random 200, so a base 3 or higher always gets around the check and does not get any loss. It also gets a bonus against cracking up if the random 200 is less than the capacity.]
But if you are flying from an a/f of 0 or 1, the loses would be extreme if the pilot was of low experience (<50) - with a a/f of 0 almost every test would fail to be above a random(0-199).
This is old code and I'm afraid was not touched when I added the support for float planes to land on water and get pass some of these Ops checks.
My inclination if to treat the af as a minimum of 2 when dealing with float planes -  this would still give the planes .5% chance of crashing on landing for a low experienced pilot.

I'll need to run some tests to see that pans out.

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ORIGINAL: bklooste

Because most players work them to the bone..

While the unit currently has no fatigue in brisbane 124 missions indicates its been very busy....

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ORIGINAL: SuluSea

 
Restrict  PBYs to 10 hexes, 40 % search, 10-20% training, and 50-40% rest and your ops losses will go way down.
Also when transferring long flights run the risk of ops losses as well.

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ORIGINAL: crsutton

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ORIGINAL: SuluSea

 
Restrict  PBYs to 10 hexes, 40 % search, 10-20% training, and 50-40% rest and your ops losses will go way down.
Also when transferring long flights run the risk of ops losses as well.

I can confirm this although I use slightly different setting. One mission only. ASW or search, %40 set to fly, no other missions, none set on rest, If patrolling in zones of enemy air superiorty or over bases, I use higher altitides (12,000 ft) and I do not search at maximum range as you rarely spot anything beyond 12-14 hexes. Then I watch the morale. If it starts to drop below 85, I rotate the unit to rest it completly. My pools have about 20-25 cats of each type.

I avoid using them for recon over major bases. You will lose a lot of them this way. Makes sense as they were slow and vulnerable.

I also train up some of my B17s. (D model is good for this) in naval search and use them to fill out the gaps early in the game. B17s are tough and seem to survive better.

Only problem is there never are enough.

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ORIGINAL: castor troy

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ORIGINAL: crsutton

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ORIGINAL: SuluSea

 
Restrict  PBYs to 10 hexes, 40 % search, 10-20% training, and 50-40% rest and your ops losses will go way down.
Also when transferring long flights run the risk of ops losses as well.

I can confirm this although I use slightly different setting. One mission only. ASW or search, %40 set to fly, no other missions, none set on rest, If patrolling in zones of enemy air superiorty or over bases, I use higher altitides (12,000 ft) and I do not search at maximum range as you rarely spot anything beyond 12-14 hexes. Then I watch the morale. If it starts to drop below 85, I rotate the unit to rest it completly. My pools have about 20-25 cats of each type.

I avoid using them for recon over major bases. You will lose a lot of them this way. Makes sense as they were slow and vulnerable.

I also train up some of my B17s. (D model is good for this) in naval search and use them to fill out the gaps early in the game. B17s are tough and seem to survive better.

Only problem is there never are enough.

there won´t be much chance other than to further reduce my numbers on search (thought 70% would be "ok") or to keep on disbanding squadrons to keep up with the losses. With two more disbanded I guess I could replace the losses and keep up with them with the monthly replacements. Using only 50% or less on search is very discouraging as my squadrons don´t spot anything else than my own TFs three hexes off the base anyway. Oh wait, if KB is around I "spot" it due to the fact that I suddenly get info on a Cat being shot down somewhere in the Pacific.

Range of only 10 isn´t the way to go for me either as this is just not enough in AE IMO. 10 hexes in WITP could be enough but in AE it´s not that far considering the fact that you see TFs zipping in at 8 hexes per phase for a raid or bombardement or 8 hexes per turn if they move at cruise speed. Therefore 16 hexes would be optimal if only thinking about the usual distances moved by SC or CV TFs.

As it is now, I estimate my needs about 20 Cats per month while I get only 17 IIRC (speaking about US only). And this without filling out my empty squadrons I receive. And that´s my main problem, I can hardly keep up with my op losses and should also equip my empty reinforcement squadrons.

edit: just did a rough calculation on the op losses posted on the first page of this thread. If we roughly take 6 months of war and the op losses (of the US types) then I end up with 16,83 op losses per month which is covered by the 17 replacements. Add in the squadrons that are missing aircraft and possible combat losses and I end up with too few obviously...

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ORIGINAL: crsutton

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ORIGINAL: SuluSea

 
Restrict  PBYs to 10 hexes, 40 % search, 10-20% training, and 50-40% rest and your ops losses will go way down.
Also when transferring long flights run the risk of ops losses as well.

I can confirm this although I use slightly different setting. One mission only. ASW or search, %40 set to fly, no other missions, none set on rest, If patrolling in zones of enemy air superiorty or over bases, I use higher altitides (12,000 ft) and I do not search at maximum range as you rarely spot anything beyond 12-14 hexes. Then I watch the morale. If it starts to drop below 85, I rotate the unit to rest it completly. My pools have about 20-25 cats of each type.

I avoid using them for recon over major bases. You will lose a lot of them this way. Makes sense as they were slow and vulnerable.

I also train up some of my B17s. (D model is good for this) in naval search and use them to fill out the gaps early in the game. B17s are tough and seem to survive better.

Only problem is there never are enough.

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ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus

Castor, in another thread you were talking about this. We were having almost the same losses: around 16 or 17 per month.

The case is, someone on that thread gave an advice. I followed it and now my losses dropped to 6 or 7 per month. Either there are gremlins on your game or I would like to know what you are doing exactly

All I did: 12 hexes and 50% search, that's all. Are you doing this, or the search range is longer? More than the 50% of pilots fly?

P.S.: needless to say, with 6 or 7 lost planes you can more or less survive (9 + 8 = 17 replacements per month or 8 + 8, I can't remember exactly). True, you need quite many months to have all of your squadrons filled with planes. But is that historical or not? I don't know the answer.

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ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus

Ok, I see. That explains your heavy losses

When I was having your same [operational] losses the 80% of pilots were doing something: 50% search + 30% train. I always used the same search range though: 12 hexes.

50% is not that bad. Ideally a squadron can explore 120 degrees. And as others have already said, follow history: use bombers as patrol planes

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Finally, someone noticed the AVD, AD, and AVP ships. They seem to help with the maintenance when they have supply and are at the bases. I am not sure that PBYs and amphibs get full support from the Base Air support. Thus the need for the above ship types. Just my humble opinion, and seems to work in my games.