ORIGINAL: Local Yokel
It would be interesting to hear from Damian/Floyd exactly where Tracker is getting its pilots figures. Playing Japan in CHS 157 (Nik Mod, which tends to keep pilot losses down), I have been monitoring pilot numbers from 1st March to mid-May 1943. I have seen JAAF pilot numbers fluctuating in a way that may well reflect the combined effect of losses plus new airgroup arrivals. But with the JNAF there have been some radical changes in the pilot total - on one day exceeding 500, which clearly did not reflect losses/new airgroup arrivals. Looking at pilot stats within individual airgroups the impression I get is that the code is already recycling previously used pilot slots by this stage of the war. At this stage the Japanese pilot total is around the 6000 mark, so even if the current Allied pilot total were double that number (which I doubt, at this date), it would imply an aggregate of used pilot slots not much greater than 18,000 - still way short of the 27,000+ figure at which the bug may be biting.
I would certainly like to see the pilot bug fixed in WitP, particularly for the game in which I'm involved, since at this stage I'm still in possession of substantial quantities of highly competent pilots. Were the pilot bug to bite me, it would probably bite very hard.
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John(Local Yokel),
Floyd and I found enough data slots to represent 30K pilots, I believe this was confirmed by Joe in some post a long while ago (I think it was in the tech section, but can't find it). Tracker reads that 30K worth of pilots slots each turn and resolves the numbers. We can't see the underlying code, just the savefile, so I can't comment authoritatively on what happens, but can confirm that the slots are reused. Nemo and I are into 50K losses over the course of the war, so obviously they are...
I'd say that the code does have a cut off point (27.5 ~ 30K), where it does start the cull, remember the numbers are calculated by named pilots + WIA + KIA and some pilots delayed (their a/g are usually based on CV's) but NOT other delayed pilots (those in the pool).
[*]Total pilots = total list size.
[*]Active pilots = pilotList.size() - tot_inactive - tot_delay - tot_mia - tot_kia - tot_wia
If you want me to look into the "radical changes", send me the files before and after and I'll get back to you. PM me for email.
I'm not 100% sure how you will overcome the CHS problem of too many airgroups and hence pilots ... but a self imposed cull seems better than the code doing it.
--Damian--
of MIA and KIA pilots would be a good thing.
