Excess A/C in air units question

[Yamato hugger]

Targets are never set in stone. As it is now, when you attack a CV TF you sometimes attack a screening vessel. This is because the target selection is weighted in favor of the CVs but it doesnt mean they are the only thing that can be hit. That part wouldnt change, assuming it ever did actually get put into the game.

[W T Door]

I can see an increase in the probability of attacking a designated target class under orders of this sort, but given the level of misidintification that happened in real life, only a probability increase. Land based units that hadn't had extensive training in naval attack would be especially prone to this (I was once involved in an exercise where the US Air Force "attacked" the wrong battle group and this was with modern sensors).
Given that the closest thing to an AWACS were the radar TBMs that Butch Ohare pioneered the level of control outside the sensor range of a carrier fighter control center or CIC is pretty limited. This would be especially true in the case of a mixed task force maneuvering to evade attacks.
The problem I see with stacking units with particularly skilled pilots is that this probably wouldn't be done in real life. The best pilots tend to be spread around in order to share their experience with their units and improve the overall skill of the units. The original charter of schools like the fighter weapons school underscore this. When they first started it wasn't an extension of the fighter RAG but designed to provide pilots to return to their respective squadrons and instruct their squadron mates in the techniques and tactics they had learned. This may be also seen in the methods the USN employed during WWII where experienced pilots were rotated to the training command to pass their knowledge on to students in the pipeline.

[Yamato hugger]

Well, naval bombing is one of several different things pilots are rated in in AE and Navy/Marine bombers are better at hitting ships than Army bombers will be. The player is of course free to train these units up to make them more effective.

I cant say if this training helps in target selection because frankly I dont know. But I wouldnt be surprised.

[Kaletsch2007]

Still, I would have loved to see a button showing "transports or escorts"
But as metioned a lot of times before, we can not get everything.
With at least that much improvment in all other areas, I will survive that one missing

[Yamato hugger]

Frankly I would as well. From what I have read the Japanese kamikaze targets for Olympic were going to be transports not carriers. So I think the game had better model this aspect.

[Kaletsch2007]

Could not agree more. It is always disopointing, if you manage to get some bombers through the Allied aircover and than sink PG and MSW instead of the "bigger" troop transports.

[scout1]

OK, let me ask this another way .....

If we can't pull pilots out of an airgroup, how about limiting a units upgrade to the number of available pilots within that airgroup at the time of upgrade. Had a unit that wasted down to 6 pilots/aircraft but with kick arss numbers ......
It upgraded and now I had an airgroup with the same 6 kick arss pilots but 27 aircraft to choose from for the day's mission. It was a bit of a waste of aircraft at the time. Yes, it escaped my attention, but just trying to avoid gross mismatches between pilots and their rides .....

[timtom]

However if a unit is overstrength, the AI will attempt to redistribute some of its a/c to relevant units in the same hex.