Observation on Japanese v Allied Pilot Quality

[Nomad]

One thing to keep in mind is the number of pilots that the IJN will be getting. Here is a table from scenario 1 showing the number of pilots entering training per month for 1942. Notice that the IJN only gets 150 entering per month and they will not be ready until 12 months after that. You can draw on the ones in training school but they come out with a very low skill/experience level.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball
So, WITP, in a roundabout way, kind of simulated the futility of the Japanese late-war air position, just in a different way than historical. Is AE going to be a repeat? Not sure.

Kinda depends on how well Corsairs do IMHO. I recall that in WITP a superior aircraft would absolutely annihilate lessers. So in 1941 the uber-Zeroes with their maneuverability bonus were invincible. However later on the Corsair would be just as (even more?) invincible, and eat any Japanese plane alive no matter who was flying it.

I've not seen Corsairs in action in the game yet. However it looks to me like the aircraft aren't quite so important as they once were. I'm expecting Corsairs will not enjoy complete domination like they used to.

In which case I imagine the Allied and Japanese fighter forces will be much more even, in both experience and quality, with the Allies ending up with a qualitative edge but not an overpowering one.

Supposition of course but I'm looking forward to seeing Corsairs in action against a human opponent in some AAR.

[jetjockey]

Being one not blessed with a good memory, I tend to avoid stealing veterens from another squadron's reserve. I use a squadron's reserve to "man-up" with veterens squadrons about to see action, otherwise I place experienced pilots "up for grabs" in the general reserve.

[Q-Ball]

Nomad, you might be right that 150/mo will not keep pace. You would have to lose 5 a day to fall off the pace, but also the IJN air is rapidly expanding throughout the war, so that in itself will soak up alot of pilots.

I think it's tough to draw final conclusions until more of us are in 43/44/45 as japan, but on the surface I made an observation about where I think it's going

[Smeulders]

Looking at the screen in the editor, it does seem that Japanese pilot training expands massively in 43' (615/480), of course that means those pilots won't get out of training until 44' though.

[vonTirpitz]

Don't forget that the Japanese have to pay a hefty x5 for all pilots in the training pool at the first of each month.

If the allies quash resources and industry then IJN and IJA will get nothing in terms of trained pilots. If the allies can't do this by 44-45 then they pretty much should lose the war because they did nothing to stop Japanese industry and production systems.

[bruin]

ORIGINAL: erstad

Even if they run out of pilots that graduate from flight school, there will be endless supply of exp/skill 10-15? pilots

What's the basis for this statement? I haven't seen anything in any of the documentation that suggests it's accurate.

I believe this was accurate in WITP where if you had no pilots in the replacement pool, you could pull pilots with 1/2 the experience. In AE this is different.

Which begs the question, if it takes 12 months for the Japanese to train a pilot from 0 - 30, wouldn't it just be much quicker to keep pulling the pilots all the way down to getting the 0 skill pilots and training them on map? You could probably train a pilot on map from 0-30 in 1.5 months versus the 12 months of off map training. Only thing holding you back are possible number of airframes available, and most likely the number of squadrons.

[Smeulders]

Training exp on map is very very slow, skill can be trained efficiently, but not exp. That means your pilots will be crashing your planes into the ground because they're fatigued after mission two, or simply refuse to fly after one pilot in the squadron is shot down and morale plummets, even if you managed to get them a reasonable skill. (Apparently exp primarily affects morale and fatigue).

Even if it is only two month from 0-30 in exp, you'll have to find about 300 navy training positions and 400 army training positions to get that done and much more if you want to make them actually competent. If you have to start pulling pilots from the guys in training pools, you're likely in big trouble.