ORIGINAL: Alfred
ORIGINAL: Capt Hornblower
ORIGINAL: Alfred
Training is not really improved by having experienced pilots amongst the rookies.
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Alfred
This directly contradicts the manual (p. 260, top), which states that moving experienced pilots to training squadrons (designated as such by the player) helps increase the rate of skills acquisition by green pilots assigned to the unit from training command. (See last sentence of the paragraph.)
On the subject of 180-day rotation, there seems to be a consensus that this function has no benefit whatsoever to the player and is only chosen as a pilot's assignment by mistake.
And if you had paid close attention to the second sentence in that paragraph you would have noticed it only applied to dedicated "Training Groups" which are not the same thing as a group on a training mission. Dedicated "Training Groups" were removed in an early patch and are not present now.
Alfred
Contradicts the volume of unscientific observation I've made playing this game pertaining the 50-60 Exp training band. I typically take my TRACOMs and put them in packs of 5 into training mission squadrons with 50+ Exp pilots. Their EXP goes up much faster.
It's the same thing if you put 50+ pilots into a front line squadron where they fly sorties daily. their Exp goes up when the average squadron EXP is higher than theirs. I've not seen anything indicating this function is limited to "Training Squadrons".
Take 2 squadrons and stuff it full of Replacements. They'll train fast, with little outside influence quite until they hit 50 Exp. Then their exp slows greatly. Take that one of those squadrons and and give it a few higher exp pilots, so that the AVG Exp is 1-2 points above 50. This squadron will see more pilots reason 60 Exp than the other squadron. This is obvsersion from 2 PBEM where I had several 50+ only squadrons training along side 1 or 2 50+ Squadrons with TRACOM inside. Those squadrons trained faster every time.
For this reason, my training scheme is as follows.
Rookie Squadrons: Train Replacements to 50 Exp, then those pilots get dumped into Reserve and the squadron refilled with Replacements
Advanced Training: 5-8 TRACOM pilots (or high 70's Exp) with the remainder filled in with pilots training the 50-60 band. As pilots reach 60 Exp, they are send to Reserve and replaced with a new 50 Exp pilot.
This has resulted in 100's of reserve 60 Exp pilots in my current game in late '43.