Zen and the Art of Aircraft Maintenance

[Q-Ball]

I have noticed something, not sure it's true or not, but seems true.....when damaged planes are shipped to a new base along a railway, they often arrive in much better mechanical shape. Magically! Instead of some planes in a group showing, say, a 10-day repair time, almost all of them will show just 1 to 4 days.

Am I wrong, or does this actually happen?

If it does, is this some kind of exploit?

This doesn't really have to do with Zen, but seemed like a catchy post title....

[geofflambert]

Where does it "show" repair times? I've totally missed that.

[RangerJoe]

Yes, it does tend to decrease repair times which is why it is good to station high SR aircraft on bases with a rail line.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Where does it "show" repair times? I've totally missed that.

Click on the "Planes" hypertext at the bottom of the Air Unit screen - you get fatigue levels and repair times for each plane.

[Leandros]

The technical organisations are so thoroughly computerized...[:)]

Fred

[jdsrae]

The ground crews are in such a hurry to rip the wings off the planes and strap them to the trains that the maintenance logbooks get lost.
Every time.
Then it’s like when you’re the bowler playing backyard cricket and someone asks how many balls are left in the over.
The answer is always two.

[GetAssista]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball
I have noticed something, not sure it's true or not, but seems true.....when damaged planes are shipped to a new base along a railway, they often arrive in much better mechanical shape. Magically! Instead of some planes in a group showing, say, a 10-day repair time, almost all of them will show just 1 to 4 days.

Am I wrong, or does this actually happen?

Are you shipping them to the well-developed rear bases from the smaller frontline ones?

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball
I have noticed something, not sure it's true or not, but seems true.....when damaged planes are shipped to a new base along a railway, they often arrive in much better mechanical shape. Magically! Instead of some planes in a group showing, say, a 10-day repair time, almost all of them will show just 1 to 4 days.

Am I wrong, or does this actually happen?

Are you shipping them to the well-developed rear bases from the smaller frontline ones?

Generally, yes.....and almost every time it will reduce repair times

It may take a few turns, but I'll find an example and post it

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball
I have noticed something, not sure it's true or not, but seems true.....when damaged planes are shipped to a new base along a railway, they often arrive in much better mechanical shape. Magically! Instead of some planes in a group showing, say, a 10-day repair time, almost all of them will show just 1 to 4 days.

Am I wrong, or does this actually happen?

Are you shipping them to the well-developed rear bases from the smaller frontline ones?

Generally, yes.....and almost every time it will reduce repair times

It may take a few turns, but I'll find an example and post it

Players do this with Carrier aircraft which develop high levels of fatigue and unless the plane is taken out of service on the carrier, the fatigue repairs very slowly - even when no Ops are taking place. But if they dock the carrier or disband it in port, and then transfer the aircraft to the base (by crane - it doesn't work to fly them off the carrier), all the aircraft go under repair and the repair time is usually one day.

When they are almost totally repaired (there always seems to be one or two aircraft needing another few days), transfer them back to the ship by crane and they will mostly be at zero fatigue and one day repair time. Meanwhile, the carrier can be repairing system damage itself. This reduces ops losses of planes and pilots considerably.

[PaxMondo]

a known "cheat" in the code that never got addressed ... been used now for several years ... since it mostly favors the IJ, I think it was left in as an ongoing easter egg for the IJ players.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

a known "cheat" in the code that never got addressed ... been used now for several years ... since it mostly favors the IJ, I think it was left in as an ongoing easter egg for the IJ players.

Far from being a cheat, I think it the only way to redress the ridiculously poor repair algorithm for carrier aircraft. Even when stood down for weeks, in port with carrier disbanded, if the aircraft stay on the carrier very little aircraft repair is happening.

But if you drive the aircraft so hard that they are taken out of service for maintenance, it only takes a day or two to repair a heavily damaged/fatigued aircraft on the carrier. The problem with that is that you are more likely to lose the plane and pilot to ops losses than have it come back and be taken off line by the AI. I have aircraft with 53 level fatigue and I am loathe to send them out on missions, but getting them repaired is impossible without putting them ashore.

I would have preferred that putting them ashore did not erase all the heavy damage/fatigue and thus require some time to repair ashore, but since the carrier maintenance crew cannot seem to repair the damage aboard, erasing it on moving the aircraft ashore is a reasonable compensation.

[rustysi]

+1

[Alpha77]

Guess there is no way to force movement by train for planes? The flyable planes will transfer by air and only the offline aircraft will be shipped by train. Perhaps I missed a trick to move complete unit per train?

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Alpha77

Guess there is no way to force movement by train for planes? The flyable planes will transfer by air and only the offline aircraft will be shipped by train. Perhaps I missed a trick to move complete unit per train?

Transferring them somewhere out of range works, or to a base without an AF, but other than that - they will fly there if they can. And if the weather is really bad at departure or especially arrival AF, ops losses are likely. Experience of the pilots helps a lot to mitigate that.

[GetAssista]

ORIGINAL: Alpha77

Guess there is no way to force movement by train for planes? The flyable planes will transfer by air and only the offline aircraft will be shipped by train. Perhaps I missed a trick to move complete unit per train?

You can transfer planes to a port base, immediately load the flyable part on a ship and set the ship to unload. On the next day you would have all the group disassembled and in one place.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

ORIGINAL: Alpha77

Guess there is no way to force movement by train for planes? The flyable planes will transfer by air and only the offline aircraft will be shipped by train. Perhaps I missed a trick to move complete unit per train?

You can transfer planes to a port base, immediately load the flyable part on a ship and set the ship to unload. On the next day you would have all the group disassembled and in one place.

[&:]
If you dock or disband the carrier, the aircraft can be landed by crane and they are all under maintenance together - most of them for 1 day. Even the worst damaged/fatigued ones normally repair in three days. Flying the repaired aircraft back onto the carrier creates more damage on them, so I just crane them back on to the docked/disbanded carrier and within a day or two they are all repaired and pristine. Meanwhile, the carrier is repairing wear and tear anyway, so there is no real delay problem.
The extra carrier aircraft at a large base seem to have little effect on the maintenance of LBA - which is something I would prefer happened to make it realistic.

[GetAssista]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
If you dock or disband the carrier, the aircraft can be landed by crane and they are all under maintenance together - most of them for 1 day. Even the worst damaged/fatigued ones normally repair in three days. Flying the repaired aircraft back onto the carrier creates more damage on them, so I just crane them back on to the docked/disbanded carrier and within a day or two they are all repaired and pristine. Meanwhile, the carrier is repairing wear and tear anyway, so there is no real delay problem.
The extra carrier aircraft at a large base seem to have little effect on the maintenance of LBA - which is something I would prefer happened to make it realistic.

Surely we are not talking about CV aircraft here, there is no problem to disassemble the latter, e.g. transferring it from a docked CV. There is a problem though with LBA, which will fly to a new base and hence keep airframes assembled (and fatigued)

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
If you dock or disband the carrier, the aircraft can be landed by crane and they are all under maintenance together - most of them for 1 day. Even the worst damaged/fatigued ones normally repair in three days. Flying the repaired aircraft back onto the carrier creates more damage on them, so I just crane them back on to the docked/disbanded carrier and within a day or two they are all repaired and pristine. Meanwhile, the carrier is repairing wear and tear anyway, so there is no real delay problem.
The extra carrier aircraft at a large base seem to have little effect on the maintenance of LBA - which is something I would prefer happened to make it realistic.

Surely we are not talking about CV aircraft here, there is no problem to disassemble the latter, e.g. transferring it from a docked CV. There is a problem though with LBA, which will fly to a new base and hence keep airframes assembled (and fatigued)

Right - I didn't re-read the previous post to catch the inference about LBA as opposed to carrier aircraft. Thanks for pointing that out.

[NiclasCage]

In the game, how do you transfer the planes by crane?

[RangerJoe]

Unload them when the ship is docked or disbanded in port.