Air Unit aircraft type upon arrival (ISSUE)

[el cid again]

Sid,

I may have discovered an issue. I don't know as this may be working as
you intend.

On 23 DEC 41 the following reinforcements are supposed to arrive at
Durban, South Africa:

Aircraft Slot Group Name
======== =========
1383 RAF No.17
1416 RAF No.135
1417 RAF No.136
1437 RAF No.232

All groups are listed as arriving with 16 x Hurricane IIb aircraft

In our game they arrived as Buffaloes. This happened because of a game
mechanic.

If you are slated to get an aircraft group as the allies of a certain
type and you lack the sufficient number in the replacement pool the game
does a check to see if there is another type available. There are a lot
of Buffalo type fighters at start which is why I suspect that it chose
this. It is supposed to choose another aircraft that the plane can
upgrade to that are in the pools. If there are no aircraft available in
the pools then it will come on as listed.

The problem is we are only 17 days into the game. Hurricane production
is 26/month. I don't think enough time has elapsed to produce the 16
planes needed to fill out these groups. I only have 14 Hurricanes in the
pool. No Hurricane groups exist on map so I'm 100% positive that it
wasn't caused by me filling out a group.

The groups are assigned to India command. They can still load but it
seems an odd choice to have UK units assigned to this command.

If you actually intended these groups to arrive as Buffaloes then
disregard this message. If they're supposed to be Hurricanes then you
might want to bump up the at start pool by a few aircraft to ensure they
come on map.

[el cid again]

The idea that an air group will not appear as I define it seems radical and wrong to me - but I have already discovered (and addressed) this
with respect to RTAF.

For the Allies this is a big problem - involving probably hundreds of units and thousands of aircraft. Careful research is destroyed by automatic code routines - and units will appear with the wrong plane - or not appear at all (but be "organizing" - I just figured out). This is like carrier air group resizing - a well intentioned idea that should be torn out - and because it is present it means that most units sooner or later will be wrong with respect to their historical sizes. I hate such things - no matter how well intentioned - and they get in the way of trying to do things historically: it means that the things we enter in the data set are changed from right to wrong.

For a case not in December 1941 putting in planes in pools means they appear years too soon. Yet production rates cannot be high enough to permit a rapid build up in many cases unless we are willing to have vastly too many appear total by the time the production ends - if it ever does end. Even if we like the solution of putting planes in the pool in Dec 1941 - and understand that then buffalo units will have hurricanes - we hardly can do that for F4Us or whatever. Planes in the pool are instantly available - even if production starts years later.

There are several dimensions of this - and the suggestion may work (it did for RTAF) but mostly it won't work. In the RTAF case the planes were obsolete - and no one will want to use them - so they stay in the pools until needed. For the Allies - units in the game will want the Hurricanes (or whatever) and players won't understand they cannot use them - so they WILL use them - poor units will then be too effective in the early days - and the later reinforcement units STILL won't have the planes they need when they appear - so code will still substitute the wrong plane.

We might in some case address this by vastly increasing aircraft production rates or moving forward dates of production - but that results in too many planes too soon - and then they keep coming - which hardly seems a solution.

Ideas that might mitigate this issue are solicited.

Long term - programmers take note: the easy solution is 'use the data as entered' and do NOT write routines that force it to be different. This reqauires zero programming time and causes zero problems forcing careful research to be rendered useless. ALL proposals to write routines that change the data are suspect - because that means there is no way to get right data into play.

FYI this is already a problem for some Allied air forces: I experimented with putting in some fighters ROCAF needs bye and bye - and they get sucked into non ROC air units - and so are not there when needed. I see no answer other than changing code - a non starter idea: why should a unit not appear as it is specified?

[el cid again]

I think we can mitigate this problem for the critical early cases and ignore the later ones. Eventually the Allies have so many planes they can and probably will change units equipment to whatever they want. But early on - planes are scarce and a problem. A few units can move forward a few days and appear with the right plane. Obsolete planes can be put in pools with little risk of use until needed - and no risk of use before production. A few cases (Hurricane IIb) of a small number of planes that are useful may be abused - but if so the player will get the later reinforcements with Buffalos - and this is only a matter of a few days - so whatever is done is probably tolerable.

But I would prefer a solution for most units later in the war - better than the wrong plane appears with the unit. In one case I was able to change the plane type - and sync with production better - upgrading into the new type - and it appears to be more correct as well. But we need a general solution if one can be found - thinking caps on please.

[goodboyladdie]

I had the same issue Sid.

A starting pool to cover at least the initial four units (more would be better) would be the simplest solution. Any abuse of this would cause the player issues later, as the production figure of 26 is very tight and leaves very little room for losses/misuse.

[el cid again]

I found one case where we can start the unit with P-39D and upgrade to P-39 Q - and that is also what really happened.

I found three cases where we can move date of appearence 8 days - to game start - and no pool issue exists.

The no British upgrade rule until May 42 helps prevent abuse in the Hurricane case - and I added 80 to the pool.

There is one P-36 unit that would appaer - but it needed all 20 in the pool - and my intent was to have 20 ON TOP OF those in units -
this being correct - so I increased the pool to 40. Players may still use them early - but it is not a big problem - and it is likely
to help the Allies at a critical early time.

There are a few other eratta - and this will all end up in an update of some sort or another.

Analysis continues.