Aircraft in reserve state

[M60A3TTS]

There seems to be something going on with the AI calculating or re-calculating the number of aircraft that are on the map in a reserve state. I found this out in an old save, and then replicated it starting the StB scenario using version .52.

What we are looking at is the number of Soviet fighter bombers on the map at the start of a turn, and in particular how many are in a ready status and how many are in a reserve status.

Here is what the filtered Commanders Report looks like at the start of turn 2, having played through turn 1.



Now, if the game is closed and then reopened with exactly the same save, the numbers change and now look like this.



Same 170 air groups but instead of the original number of 142 aircraft in a reserve state, the re-opened save has increased that number to 501, almost tripling the number of unavailable aircraft.

Thoughts?

[Joel Billings]

I see what you mean. I did a quick test and saw the same thing (ready aircraft goes down and reserve goes up0. I assume there is a routine running upon loading the save that is doing this that isn't intended. I'll get this on the bug list. Thanks for the report.

[56ajax]

Did you close and re open the game 2 or 3 times to see what happens?

[Sly]

Playing h2h
I can confirm that the number of aircraft in reserve varies unintentionally. If I end the soviet turn and start the german turn right away, everything looks fine as always. But if I interrupt turn, exit the game and reload the game, then a large part of the planes go into reserve status. This has to do with loading the game and affects both sides.

[Joel Billings]

Can someone post a save for me with the number of ready and reserve a/c on the map at the time you saved it, and the numbers after you load. I'd like a save where the numbers change a decent amount. My quick test only had 8 go to reserve. Also, for one of these tests with a lot of a/c going to the reserve, can you then save it again and load it again and see if any more are sent to reserve and let us know. I tried it and didn't get any more to reserve, but then, I only had 8 the first time. Pavel will look into this, but we need a save. Thanks.

[M60A3TTS]

I just posted 2 saves to the bug folder on the dev server.

The first is T3 Axis end if you want to just run the Soviet log phase. After that the Commanders Report should look something like this for all fighters and fighter bombers on the map.



Here it shows 212 in a reserve state.


The second save is the autosave for the Soviet turn3 of the StoB scenario.

After the game has been closed and reopened with the same filters, the reserve count is now 600.

[Joel Billings]

Thanks for the saves.

[Joel Billings]

Pavel found the answer to this. When loading a save, the system will go through and move any planes that don't have pilots to reserve. During play, these pilotless planes will not fly. Pavel's not sure why this was done but it's probably been like this for years (back to WitW). It better reflects the true state of the units in terms of how many aircraft are ready to fly. So this is really a clean up routine. We'd prefer to leave this as it is, unless someone can show it actually has an impact on the game. Ideally, whenever there are more ready planes than pilots, some would automatically be put in reserve, but figuring out all the places that this might be needed is more trouble than it's worth at this point.

[FortTell]

So basically, Trained Pilots setting is a trap. What it actually means is it will not allow any pilot with experience below the NM level to fly, so your supposedly best units will only fly 5 of their best aces and nobody else. No other setting seems to put planes in reserve state to such an extent.
(Sorry for the big pictures)

[K62_]

So basically, Trained Pilots setting is a trap. What it actually means is it will not allow any pilot with experience below the NM level to fly, so your supposedly best units will only fly 5 of their best aces and nobody else. No other setting seems to put planes in reserve state to such an extent.
(Sorry for the big pictures)

Great catch FortTell! This is a great explanation for some otherwise very puzzling observations.

Here are some reproduction steps for the developers:

• Start the RtC scenario and delete all air directives.

• Set the JG 52 AOG to trained pilots only.

• Run the air phase. JG52 switches from having 1 plane in reserve to having 30+ planes in reserve.

This corresponds to the number of pilots in JG 52 with XP < 75. The number of planes in reserve will not increase significantly with "priority" instead of "trained pilots".

[M60A3TTS]

I'm not quite sure what's afoot here, but this latest observation clearly shows Pavel is looking at the wrong thing.

Leaving the on-map air unit pilot replacements in TPI mode resulted in hundreds of aircraft set to reserve mode. Setting them to normal reduced that number in my test to 5.

[FortTell]

Here are some reproduction steps for the developers:

• Start the RtC scenario and delete all air directives.

• Set the JG 52 AOG to trained pilots only.

• Run the air phase. JG52 switches from having 1 plane in reserve to having 30+ planes in reserve.

You don't even need to run the air phase. Set a regiment to Trained pilots and rebase it, it will put planes into reserve.

[Veterin]

So am i reading this right that setting air groups to TPI actually just means they don't fly? Why would anyone use TPI if all the aircraft just sit in reserve?

[FortTell]

So am i reading this right that setting air groups to TPI actually just means they don't fly? Why would anyone use TPI if all the aircraft just sit in reserve?

The groups can fly, IF they have enough high-xp pilots. As to why would somevody do it, I don't know. Maybe if you are hoarding a rare but powerful plane, like the P-39 for the Soviets? In almost all cases, though, an active plane with a low-xp pilot is better than a reserve plane.

[Veterin]

So am i reading this right that setting air groups to TPI actually just means they don't fly? Why would anyone use TPI if all the aircraft just sit in reserve?

The groups can fly, IF they have enough high-xp pilots. As to why would somevody do it, I don't know. Maybe if you are hoarding a rare but powerful plane, like the P-39 for the Soviets? In almost all cases, though, an active plane with a low-xp pilot is better than a reserve plane.

Well that's my point, you wouldn't. So if national air morale is 75 and you have a pilot at 74, it just stays in reserve forever on map? Unlike the TB which can increase pilot exp, as far as i am aware the only way to increase exp on map is to do missions. If so, then that pilot will just remain in reserve until the NM drops below 74...

[Wiedrock]

So am i reading this right that setting air groups to TPI actually just means they don't fly? Why would anyone use TPI if all the aircraft just sit in reserve?

Maybe this "EXP >= AirMOR" is the threshold for Additional OPS losses for flying low altitude/bad weather Missions ...or even OPS in general?
...just a guess to make sense of that setting

[M60A3TTS]

So am i reading this right that setting air groups to TPI actually just means they don't fly? Why would anyone use TPI if all the aircraft just sit in reserve?

The groups can fly, IF they have enough high-xp pilots. As to why would somevody do it, I don't know. Maybe if you are hoarding a rare but powerful plane, like the P-39 for the Soviets? In almost all cases, though, an active plane with a low-xp pilot is better than a reserve plane.

Well that's my point, you wouldn't. So if national air morale is 75 and you have a pilot at 74, it just stays in reserve forever on map? Unlike the TB which can increase pilot exp, as far as i am aware the only way to increase exp on map is to do missions. If so, then that pilot will just remain in reserve until the NM drops below 74...

I am not sure that is true. The AI seems to rotate all available unit pilots through all available aircraft during a turn so the mission allocation is equally distributed to all pilots as long as there are aircraft to fly. The workaround here seems to be to leave the pilot replacements setting on normal, but prior to ending your turn, assign trained pilots to your units manually where you want them.

[Veterin]

The groups can fly, IF they have enough high-xp pilots. As to why would somevody do it, I don't know. Maybe if you are hoarding a rare but powerful plane, like the P-39 for the Soviets? In almost all cases, though, an active plane with a low-xp pilot is better than a reserve plane.

Well that's my point, you wouldn't. So if national air morale is 75 and you have a pilot at 74, it just stays in reserve forever on map? Unlike the TB which can increase pilot exp, as far as i am aware the only way to increase exp on map is to do missions. If so, then that pilot will just remain in reserve until the NM drops below 74...

I am not sure that is true. The AI seems to rotate all available unit pilots through all available aircraft during a turn so the mission allocation is equally distributed to all pilots as long as there are aircraft to fly. The workaround here seems to be to leave the pilot replacements setting on normal, but prior to ending your turn, assign trained pilots to your units manually where you want them.

Makes sense. Another micro task to add to the list then!

[K62_]

I am not sure that is true. The AI seems to rotate all available unit pilots through all available aircraft during a turn so the mission allocation is equally distributed to all pilots as long as there are aircraft to fly.

This is true. Here is JG52 on RtC T1 after rebasing to Rostov, the aircraft immediately go into reserve just as FortTell said:

JG52 Rostov.png (442.97 KiB) Viewed 938 times

Here is one of the air groups after running some missions in the air phase. The less experienced pilots did fly plenty of missions:

III JG52 pilot missions.png (562.34 KiB) Viewed 938 times

The workaround here seems to be to leave the pilot replacements setting on normal, but prior to ending your turn, assign trained pilots to your units manually where you want them.

I'm not sure this is true. If there are enough aircraft in the pool, there may not be any trained pilots left to assigned manually by the time you can do that. The trained pilots will all go to random air groups with the replacement aircraft during the logistics phase. The simplest workaround is to just use priority replacements for the on-map groups that you would have set to trained pilots otherwise. There are more complicated workarounds but hopefully this just gets recognized as a bug based on the latest information.

[Joel Billings]

This TPI impact seems to be when you save off and reload the save, but not during the logistics phase (based on a quick test I did). Given that, I assume it was not intended to be in the clean up routine, and I've added it to the bug list. Thanks for catching that.