Aircraft Upgrade Paths

[Heeward]

Should there be aircraft upgrade paths?


Why should I have to wait to upgrade my plane from fighter Type A to Fighter Type D when I have lots of Fighter Type B or C in my pool, and none of A or D


Note I not saying covert Oscars to Zeros,

But lets say I have 100 F4F-3 in my pools and no F4F-4, and have six F4F-4 Squadrons with 10 aircraft each? The difference between the F4F-3 / F4F-4 FM-1/ FM-2 are not significant.

Or why do I have to upgrade P-400’s to P-39’s the to P-38, when I have a surplus of P-40’s or even P-38's

I should have the choice / option to upgrade squadrons / groups by general type.

[mdiehl]

Yeah. One of the old problems with PW was the experience penalty for a/c upgrades. Moving among the basic F4F types should not come with any cost, nor should moving to the FM2, or from the F4F/FM2 to the F6F. Similarly, Allied players should be able to move without penalty between the P36 and P40. Same basic flying characteristics -- same plane really except that the P36 was a radial engined machine and the P40 an in-line machine.

The only real experience penalties should come in moving from an F4/F6 type to the F4U, from any single-engined USAAF machine to the P38, or from any prior USAAF machine to the P47 or P51.

[Yamamoto]

Originally posted by mdiehl
Similarly, Allied players should be able to move without penalty between the P36 and P40. Same basic flying characteristics -- same plane really except that the P36 was a radial engined machine and the P40 an in-line machine.

That's a big difference just by itself. A radial engine has much more right-torq than an in-line. It changes the handling characteristics of the plane. A 10% exp hit is justified.

If you want to know how much a radial engine can affect a plane, look at the WW I Sopwith Camel. It could kill a newbie but in the hands of an expert it as a match for the legendary Fokker Triplane. When the pilot turned to the right the plane snapped right over (and down). That's good for rolling out of the line of fire quickly. When the pilot turned to the left the plane would climb. Neighter of those characteristics would happen with an in-line engine (not counting the minor forces involved like P-force).

Yamamoto

[pertsajakilu]

Originally posted by mdiehl
Yeah. One of the old problems with PW was the experience penalty for a/c upgrades.

I think that there should be not penalty at all or only small one. Instead squadron should be out of combat . There should be training period or familiarize period and after that unit is promoted to back combat readiness status.

If unit is thrown staight to battle with new planes then there would be experience penalty.

Arto

[LargeSlowTarget]

Originally posted by Heeward
Should there be aircraft upgrade paths?


Why should I have to wait to upgrade my plane from fighter Type A to Fighter Type D when I have lots of Fighter Type B or C in my pool, and none of A or D


Note I not saying covert Oscars to Zeros,

But lets say I have 100 F4F-3 in my pools and no F4F-4, and have six F4F-4 Squadrons with 10 aircraft each? The difference between the F4F-3 / F4F-4 FM-1/ FM-2 are not significant.

Or why do I have to upgrade P-400’s to P-39’s the to P-38, when I have a surplus of P-40’s or even P-38's

I should have the choice / option to upgrade squadrons / groups by general type.

Or downgrade understrength Zero squadrons to over-abundant Claudes for Kamikaze purposes.

[HMSWarspite]

Originally posted by pertsajakilu
I think that there should be not penalty at all or only small one. Instead squadron should be out of combat . There should be training period or familiarize period and after that unit is promoted to back combat readiness status.

If unit is thrown staight to battle with new planes then there would be experience penalty.

Arto

Good point - I like it. The best idea would be to replace upgrade paths with 'families'. Ungrade within the family, and get little or no less in experience. Upgrade across families, and get a big experience loss, or better, no experience loss for their basic experience, but an additional multiplier of x%, which goes away with time. Say 10% (pretty severe I know) rising 10% per day that the pilot flies, so if you take them out of ops and put them training for 10 days, they take no hit. The numbers are arbitrary, someone would need to define them.

[mdiehl]

A radial engine has much more right-torq than an in-line. It changes the handling characteristics of the plane. A 10% exp hit is justified.

No, it's not justified. Not if there is a 10% hit for example in transitioning from very different a/c. I'd make the hit about 2% for switching from P36s to P40s. No hit for switching from the F4F to the F6F. I've not found any pilot dicussions that mention particular problems transitioning into the P40. Not on the same scale of going from single to multi-engine, or in flying the P51.

[HMSWarspite]

Originally posted by Yamamoto
That's a big difference just by itself. A radial engine has much more right-torq than an in-line. It changes the handling characteristics of the plane. A 10% exp hit is justified.

If you want to know how much a radial engine can affect a plane, look at the WW I Sopwith Camel. It could kill a newbie but in the hands of an expert it as a match for the legendary Fokker Triplane. When the pilot turned to the right the plane snapped right over (and down). That's good for rolling out of the line of fire quickly. When the pilot turned to the left the plane would climb. Neighter of those characteristics would happen with an in-line engine (not counting the minor forces involved like P-force).

Yamamoto

This is a confusion. Radial engines are not the same as rotary engines. The Camel (and other WW1 a/c) had rotaries, and these have more 'torque' effect. In a rotary, the prop is in effect bolted to the crank case (or engine block), and the crank shaft is bolted to the airframe. The whole engine rotates with the prop, giving much more rotating mass. The newby killing effects are largely due to the higher gyroscopic forces, not just torque. The differences between radials and in line are MUCH smaller, and relate more to engine power, prop size (and hence prop speed). I general the higher the power to weight ratio on a single, the higher the torque effects. However, the other a/c to a/c type differences I suspect are at least as significant as regards change over effects. Changing original design manufacture (if you had to chose a single factor), or certainly specifying authority (USN, USAAC, IJN, IJA, RAF RN etc) is probaby another good one, because they had different basic requirments for radios, nav aids etc.
I have an account of a RAF ferry pilot flying a Hudson around the Middle east for the first time almost crashing because he didn't realise the (US) a/c guages were in USG, not Imp G. He did his fuel calcs on some rules of thumb for ImpG, and was most surprised when the tanks apparently emptied much faster. This specific example isn't a combat effect (although is almost a good operational loss in training!)

[Mike Scholl]

Seems the real basis of this discussion was to get Matrix to
allow players to upgrade squadrons with more freedom---to be
able to make better use of the "Pool" without waiting for one
specific type of A/C to be available. I think that would be great,
if we can get 2by3 to program it.

One way to be sure we CAN'T get them to do it is to hang a
bunch of "bells and whistles" on it from the start. A change like
this will be easiest for them to implement if they can apply a
"fixed" aircraft transition cost to the upgrade and not have to
worry about doing 27 different variants of it for each specific path.
It would be nice---but what are we really after? If we ask for
too much, we're going to end up with nothing.

[HMSWarspite]

Originally posted by Mike Scholl
Seems the real basis of this discussion was to get Matrix to
allow players to upgrade squadrons with more freedom---to be
able to make better use of the "Pool" without waiting for one
specific type of A/C to be available. I think that would be great,
if we can get 2by3 to program it.

One way to be sure we CAN'T get them to do it is to hang a
bunch of "bells and whistles" on it from the start. A change like
this will be easiest for them to implement if they can apply a
"fixed" aircraft transition cost to the upgrade and not have to
worry about doing 27 different variants of it for each specific path.
It would be nice---but what are we really after? If we ask for
too much, we're going to end up with nothing.

I personally am against any more freedome to upgrade without a realistic downside to the change. The game goes WAY too fast, and training air groups is another feature that has to be there, or it will go faster still. I was suggesting a way in which (for little work?) a compromise could be reached (replace hard coded upgrades with manual or AI upgrades, replace upgrade routes with families, e.g. F4F + varients all one family, Merlin Spits one. Griffon spits a second family?), and so on.

[Mr.Frag]

I don't care what they do as long as the practice of stealing planes from the pools for off board squadrons is stopped!

God how I hate CV's that I'm not going to see for 200 days stealing my A6M's which my poor A5M's sit around IN a front line base waiting for months to get aircraft!!!