Out of pilot slots

[Zeta16]

It would be better to have a lot more pilots spots than to run out in 44 and lose half of your good pilots to this, if it means that a 3rd party app is broken so be it. I would guess that less than 5% of the AE populations uses these things. I havbe already had several games hurt by the slot limit, and many more in WiTP as well.

[CaptDave]

FWIW, I believe WitPStaff is an official product that accompanies the release.  Also, you might be surprised at the number of people using Tracker.

Your points are correct, but I wouldn't so simply discount the other products.  Cooperation with their publishers definitely is in order.

[seii taishôgun]

Hi jwilkerson,

Do you or someone on your team have any feel for when this upgrade might come to be? I ask only because I've literally just sent turn 1 to my opponent for Scenario 2 of AE.

I still have the original first turn prior to sending it to my opponent so I could probably convince him to wait if this is something you expect to happen within a month or so...


Thanks,

ST

[n01487477]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

If we add more slots, this will only apply to newly started games and as Michael says would break some of the third party tool, some of which may no longer be supported (I'm not sure - maybe they all are).

That degree of pilot hoarding is very poor allocation of assets.

Alfred

Tracker is supported and we're going to do a new release sometime down the track ... adding to the array is no biggie for us ... just the *.dll issue for the user is of concern.

Micheal are there any memory issues with the save being the size it is for users with less ram etc?

1m pilots - great no more complaints, but what about getting the job done with the assets you've been given?
Instead of making every group (even in backwaters) and pool brimming with redundancy. There is something to be said for managing your forces, logistics and assets - and is a large part of the game ! ... In the past thread I advocated a small increase - 1M is just ridiculous.

Just my 2c

[hunchback77]

I agree with Damian, 1 million pilots is ridiculous. Hording planes and pilots in the backwaters is not how wars are fought. If the USA fought WW2 like that they would still be on North America with 10 million planes and pilots and an unconquered Germany and Japan. When they started getting heavy bomber loses over Germany, they didn't run back to North America and hoard their B-17's and crews, they kept going.
I think we are pretty close to a good pilot limit and any more increasing beyond say 80,000 or 90,000 and we're turning AE into fantasy game.Players who like to hoard should be punished and a reasonable pilot limit is a good way to do it.

[witpqs]

I think you guys are missing the point. I think that Joe is saying that from a programming standpoint it is just as easy to increase by 4 bits as by 1 bit. The 1 bit would double it, the 4 bits would bring it to a about a million possible pilots. No matter the mod, the length of game, the bad habits of any player, that should always be enough slots. He's not advocating poor resource management, he's advocating doing a fix once and never having to do it again. As it affects 3rd party stuff like Tracker, "doing it once" is even more attractive.

[PaxMondo]

For a GC if I'm doing my sums correctly, the game will make available in excess of 200,000 pilots. That's just from memory here that IJ gets ~ 1000 pilots/month and Allies get ~3000/month for 53 months. Doesn't include pilots already in air groups or those scheduled to arrive later.

Just from that math, I would go with 524,288 pilot limit as a minimum (even bit number). Given some mods might start earlier/ run longer and/or have higher pilot addition rates (like Scen 2), I beleive jwilkerson and Michael are correct that 1,048,576 limit might be most appropriate if we make any change.

As agonizing as that number is, the game arrays do need to support the features that are built in.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

I think you guys are missing the point. I think that Joe is saying that from a programming standpoint it is just as easy to increase by 4 bits as by 1 bit. The 1 bit would double it, the 4 bits would bring it to a about a million possible pilots. No matter the mod, the length of game, the bad habits of any player, that should always be enough slots. He's not advocating poor resource management, he's advocating doing a fix once and never having to do it again. As it affects 3rd party stuff like Tracker, "doing it once" is even more attractive.

+1

[House Stark]

For the people saying that 1,000,000+ pilot slots will lead to pilot and plane "hoarding" in backwaters: I got the impression that the problem was that people couldn't maintain frontline squadrons and training squadrons for the planes they had. Which is ridiculous-you're not going to send undertrained pilots into battle if you have too, nor should you suddenly be unable to have replacements for front line units training for some weird mystical reason. For better or worse, on map training is almost always required in this game, so there will always be some squadrons remaining in backwater regions.

The only possible problems with a massive increase in the pilot array seem to be that it could cause a jump in RAM requirements, and that some 3rd party programs might not be regularly updated and would become unusable for a time or potentially forever.

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: House Stark

For the people saying that 1,000,000+ pilot slots will lead to pilot and plane "hoarding" in backwaters: I got the impression that the problem was that people couldn't maintain frontline squadrons and training squadrons for the planes they had. Which is ridiculous-you're not going to send undertrained pilots into battle if you have too, nor should you suddenly be unable to have replacements for front line units training for some weird mystical reason. For better or worse, on map training is almost always required in this game, so there will always be some squadrons remaining in backwater regions.

The only possible problems with a massive increase in the pilot array seem to be that it could cause a jump in RAM requirements, and that some 3rd party programs might not be regularly updated and would become unusable for a time or potentially forever.

Actually it is stronger than that. I have not counted lately, but the Japanese get over fifty training units (with 30-90 pilots each) that can ONLY train pilots.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: pompack

ORIGINAL: House Stark

For the people saying that 1,000,000+ pilot slots will lead to pilot and plane "hoarding" in backwaters: I got the impression that the problem was that people couldn't maintain frontline squadrons and training squadrons for the planes they had. Which is ridiculous-you're not going to send undertrained pilots into battle if you have too, nor should you suddenly be unable to have replacements for front line units training for some weird mystical reason. For better or worse, on map training is almost always required in this game, so there will always be some squadrons remaining in backwater regions.

The only possible problems with a massive increase in the pilot array seem to be that it could cause a jump in RAM requirements, and that some 3rd party programs might not be regularly updated and would become unusable for a time or potentially forever.

Actually it is stronger than that. I have not counted lately, but the Japanese get over fifty training units (with 30-90 pilots each) that can ONLY train pilots.

Actually those units can have well over 100 pilots each. Most can have 120 to get your kami's in process as you burn through pilots at an incredible rate with kami's.

[michaelm75au]

If I increase it, I would only go to 70K for a few reasons. One big one is the increase in the size of the save file.

[jwilkerson]

Note that we already doubled the number of pilot slots (32K to 64K) from WITP to AE. Encountering pilot array overflow, it not just purely a function of poor planning on the part of designers. Somehow, some players seem to wind up consuming many more pilots than others.
When we've looked at saves, we've seen groups with hundreds and even over a 1000 pilots. So continuing to add more and more pilots to the groups is a key component of the issue. More controls here might be in order as well.
I fear even a million slots will not end the problem - but it should marginalize it more than it is now.

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson


When we've looked at saves, we've seen groups with hundreds and even over a 1000 pilots. So continuing to add more and more pilots to the groups is a key component of the issue. More controls here might be in order as well.

How can you do that? I am limited to about 10% more that the max planes in the group which is only 54 pilots in a 49 pilot group. There are a couple of training units that take 100 pilots but most seem to be about 30-50.

[PaxMondo]

Some of the end game IJ training units are large. A couple of hundred pilots easily. I haven't done a thousand in an air group, in fact, I thought there was a hard limit of 512 ... but I haven't tested that.

[hunchback77]

ORIGINAL: pompack

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson


When we've looked at saves, we've seen groups with hundreds and even over a 1000 pilots. So continuing to add more and more pilots to the groups is a key component of the issue. More controls here might be in order as well.

How can you do that? I am limited to about 10% more that the max planes in the group which is only 54 pilots in a 49 pilot group. There are a couple of training units that take 100 pilots but most seem to be about 30-50.

Pompack you can in fact have more than 33% extra pilots for the official patch. Just keep hitting the request veteran button and activate them when they arrive. I have some small IJA units with double and triple the number of Pilots for training.

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

Note that we already doubled the number of pilot slots (32K to 64K) from WITP to AE. Encountering pilot array overflow, it not just purely a function of poor planning on the part of designers. Somehow, some players seem to wind up consuming many more pilots than others.
When we've looked at saves, we've seen groups with hundreds and even over a 1000 pilots. So continuing to add more and more pilots to the groups is a key component of the issue. More controls here might be in order as well.
I fear even a million slots will not end the problem - but it should marginalize it more than it is now.

I thought the increase had only been from 32k to 50k.

I have no doubt that whatever you do, you will receive complaints. Far too many people are very poor players but their egos will never allow them to admit it; not when it is always far easier to blame the game and the developers.

Alfred

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: hunchback77

ORIGINAL: pompack

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson


When we've looked at saves, we've seen groups with hundreds and even over a 1000 pilots. So continuing to add more and more pilots to the groups is a key component of the issue. More controls here might be in order as well.

How can you do that? I am limited to about 10% more that the max planes in the group which is only 54 pilots in a 49 pilot group. There are a couple of training units that take 100 pilots but most seem to be about 30-50.

Pompack you can in fact have more than 33% extra pilots for the official patch. Just keep hitting the request veteran button and activate them when they arrive. I have some small IJA units with double and triple the number of Pilots for training.

Nope, my add veteran button vanishes at about 10%. Must be the effect of one of the betas.

[michaelm75au]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

Some of the end game IJ training units are large. A couple of hundred pilots easily. I haven't done a thousand in an air group, in fact, I thought there was a hard limit of 512 ... but I haven't tested that.

I think that 512 is the limit for pilots in ONE group. If it went above that I doubt that they would be shown.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: michaelm

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

Some of the end game IJ training units are large. A couple of hundred pilots easily. I haven't done a thousand in an air group, in fact, I thought there was a hard limit of 512 ... but I haven't tested that.

I think that 512 is the limit for pilots in ONE group. If it went above that I doubt that they would be shown.

My testing now confirms that 512 is the max in any one group. Now when you try to force more in, and they will show as moving to the air group from reserves, where they go is another question. [:D] I have not been able to determine if they:
1. go back into reserve
2. are hidden in the air group
3. or are released from the game.

Any insight? Thanks.