Pilots getting deleted

[jubjub]

It appears that pilots are being removed from the game when air groups are transferred from the map to the reserve. These pilots neither go to the pilot pool, nor return with their air groups. This doesn't seem to be WAD, and it seems like they should either stick with their air groups or the pilots should be placed back in the 'free' pilot pool.

Wouldn't it be better and simpler to just keep pilots with their air groups when they go to the reserve? They should train individually anyway imo.

[M60A3TTS]

Not sure I understand what you mean, but will pass on what I understand is how it works. For what that's worth...

We will ignore the Air Groups tab info, because that only deals with aircraft and not pilots.

Let's review basic elements of the pilots tab of the air tab on the commanders report.

Total- All on map pilots which include those from the columns ready, wounded, captured and KIA.

Ready- All on map pilots excluding those wounded, captured, and KIA.

Free- Spare, trained pilots that have a type designation related to the aircraft they fly. This group increases any time that a unit and it's associated pilots is deleted.

Pool- Spare generic, trained pilots that do not have a type designation. They can fly any type aircraft.

+Train- Number of trained pilots you generate each week.

We'll skip the last two as they are not relevant to the discussion.

Basic rules

Every plane in the reserves has a pilot. You do not see any stats associated with this. If you have 2,000 planes in the reserves, you have 2,000 pilots. Again, none of these appear as stats in the pilot tab.

If you send 500 planes to the reserves, total on map pilot totals drop by whatever number of ready, wounded and captured pilots were associated to those aircraft. Free and pool columns do not change because they are not spare pilots. They are associated with those numbers in the reserve that you cannot see.

When the pilots enter the reserves, they no longer carry any association with their previous unit. They are now part of the universal reserve pool. The pilot names are removed from the data but the AI still retains all related data associated with their individual experience and kill numbers. If 40 pilots all named I.M. Pilot go to the reserves, they will later come back onto the map into various units with different pilot names and similar experience stats and I think the same kill numbers.

This last bit does kill the immersion factor, and maybe is all you were thinking about when making the post. But it should be made clear pilots do not get deleted as if to say they are gone, they just come back with different identities.

[jubjub]

When the pilots enter the reserves, they no longer carry any association with their previous unit. They are now part of the universal reserve pool. The pilot names are removed from the data but the AI still retains all related data associated with their individual experience and kill numbers. If 40 pilots all named I.M. Pilot go to the reserves, they will later come back onto the map into various units with different pilot names and similar experience stats and I think the same kill numbers.

This last bit does kill the immersion factor, and maybe is all you were thinking about when making the post. But it should be made clear pilots do not get deleted as if to say they are gone, they just come back with different identities.

This is where it breaks down. The pilots return from the 'reserve pool' with no bearing on the pilots that left the map. Individual names, experience, kills etc. all go away when an air group transfers to the reserves.

The way I know this is that I've experimented sending groups with really high experience pilots to the reserve, and I never see them again. Tried sending every air group to the reserve and back, and the highest XP pilot I got back was in the low 70's (VVS, '42). There were many 80+ xp pilots when I transferred them.

[jubjub]

So that's the technical reason why I think it's not WAD. From a game design, I think it would be so much better if pilots were kept with their air groups in the reserve and trained individually, instead of as a group. If I send 20 pilots with experience ranging from 30-70 to train for 6 months, what would you expect? The worst pilots would become average, while you retain your best pilots.

What happens now is you send a mixed bag to the reserves, and you get a slightly better mixed bag back, with the extremely high pilots gone. You can have pilots training for months in the reserves and still come out with 30 XP. This aspect of the game makes no sense, and could be much more transparent and simpler if the pilots were just kept. You'd also get the immersion factor that M60 mentioned.

[M60A3TTS]

From a game design, I think it would be so much better if pilots were kept with their air groups in the reserve and trained individually, instead of as a group.

You may have a point, but it's pretty clear that future changes to the game design aren't on the table if they require any significant development time and/or testing. This almost certainly falls in that category. But hey, if you don't ask, you don't get.

[Joel Billings]

There were reasons why we ended up without pilots in the TBs, even though we do lose some fidelity as you mention. Mostly we just didn't want to have add so many additional pilots to the database, for all the disadvantages that would bring. There was some discussion internally about removing individual pilots from the game, but in the end we decided to keep them as that was easier than redesigning everything to remove pilots, and there are advantages to having pilots. So we went with a compromise of having them on map but not in the TBs. I don't see that changing in WitE2.

[Shupov]

@M60A3TTS

When the pilots enter the reserves, they no longer carry any association with their previous unit. They are now part of the universal reserve pool. The pilot names are removed from the data but the AI still retains all related data associated with their individual experience and kill numbers. If 40 pilots all named I.M. Pilot go to the reserves, they will later come back onto the map into various units with different pilot names and similar experience stats and I think the same kill numbers.

Per your example in "smokindave34 (Axis) vs M60A3TTS (Soviet) 41 CG" I have been sending obsolete and depleted air units to the North Caucasus Air Command rather than the Reserve TB to keep pilots from being dispersed. In your estimation is this still good practice (and worth the effort)?

[M60A3TTS]

@M60A3TTS

When the pilots enter the reserves, they no longer carry any association with their previous unit. They are now part of the universal reserve pool. The pilot names are removed from the data but the AI still retains all related data associated with their individual experience and kill numbers. If 40 pilots all named I.M. Pilot go to the reserves, they will later come back onto the map into various units with different pilot names and similar experience stats and I think the same kill numbers.

Per your example in "smokindave34 (Axis) vs M60A3TTS (Soviet) 41 CG" I have been sending obsolete and depleted air units to the North Caucasus Air Command rather than the Reserve TB to keep pilots from being dispersed. In your estimation is this still good practice (and worth the effort)?

It is absolutely the way to go. As with so much of the air game, I tend to refrain from long explanations in the event Joel is reading as I know he doesn't like wallpaper posts.

Unlike WiTE1, for the Soviets the SR isn't really very useful. Let's start with the why.

The main benefit of the SR is it trains up the experience level of Soviet pilots. That's great, isn't it? In theory, yes. In practice, no.

Experience levels for pilots in the SR tend to be driven up from anything below 50. Once to that level, not so much.
So if you have a regiment of 20 pilots and 5 of them have sub-50 morale, how much of your regiment will typically benefit from the SR?

25%.

That's not very good. Unfortunately, it only gets worse from there.

If you were to look at the air kills your fighter pilots have, you will see a lot are done by pilots with experience in the 60's. Pilots in the 50's get a small piece, and those under 40 few and far between. Now most of these guys will die in an active combat area within say 6-12 missions, but at least the 60's experience group have a chance to take someone with them. But now back to the reserve. What level are these pilots getting trained to in general? 50.

So in the SR you really taking cannon fodder of 40's exp pilots and replacing them with 50-ish...cannon fodder. You can see the problem. You just aren't getting enough experience to have a better chance to bring down a Fascist aggressor.

For my money, if you have a legit poor quality unit where 75% of a full, or near-full unit are exp 50 and below, you can send them off for a bit of training. Otherwise I'd just add trained pilots in place.

Now having said all this, if you were able to master this air game as Soviets, and shoot down most of the LW in 1943, I don't think the devs would be happy. They seem to like a lot of Soviet casualties which in fairness was the historical outcome. But in doing so, it seems the game is deliberately designed not to allow you to master it and so you are left with Plan B. Throw everything up there and pay little attention to the losses. You'll always have more to come back with later.

[Shupov]

I didn't mean to go off-topic in the Tech Support thread but thanks for the detailed explanation.

I'll continue to follow your recommended practice.