Just to kill the Pilot Pools too low thread

[Mr.Frag]

I thought I would point out that there is no limit on this pool.

You can pull pilots out of it forever. It is bottomless. Some of you might not understand this.

If you *really* think about it, this means the Pilot pools are too LARGE! [:D]

[rogueusmc]

So far, I haven't had any problems with the number of pilots available...treat your pilots like you would want to be treated if you were one of them and you usually stay good to go.

[Mike Scholl]

Absolutely correct. The problem is that there are a group of players that think every Japanese male should
be born an "experiance 60+ pilot" and can't or won't get a grip on the fact that you can have all the pilots you
want, but the more you take, the lower the average experiance level is going to be.

[Caltone]

ORIGINAL: rogueusmc
So far, I haven't had any problems with the number of pilots available...treat your pilots like you would want to be treated if you were one of them and you usually stay good to go.

Isn't that the truth. If nothing else it makes people think twice before launching fatigued or low morale groups into combat. I love the fact that individual pilots are tracked and they come in a finite number (at least well trained ones do) It forces you to train them (the Mogami method) and holds you accountable to their fate.

[Brady]

The best solution would be to adjust this with the editor.


Seeing how this is a very old topic and both sides are simply saying the same things over and over again.

[Mr.Frag]

The best solution would be to adjust this with the editor.

No, the best solution is to stop thinking there is a pilot *shortage* [8|]

Ever see a screen pop up and say "Sorry, no pilots available" ? [:D]

[freeboy]

We could make one up if it would please you master [&o]

[Top Cat]

Yeah, but the unlimited number of pilots with experience of say 15 or 20 should be called crash test dummies. [:D]

They're pilots in name only.

Seems to be 2 camps on the pilot debate, with not too many people in the middle.

I think that the number of "trained quality pilots" is about right.

Not sure about how fast the exp. level drops off once you go outside of this though. Just played my 1st 5 days as the Japanese so I'll soon find out.

But I did manage to get a squadron of Oscars playing as the Allies (nice bug). It was August 1942 and there were about 30 pilots with exp. of between 20 and 30 in the squadron. If this level of drop off is normal in the game it seems a couple of years too early.

If your game resembles history you'll need to supply ~60,000+ pilots as the Japanese.
During that time in the game you'll get ~2,400 trained pilots from the pool and ~4,000 - 6,000 trained pilots through reinforcements (assuming they arrive at about 2/3 or better strength on average)

That means the game engine will have to produce around ~50,000 "untrained" pilots. How accurately these guys are modelled is probably one of the most important factors in the game due to their huge numbers.

Would like to see some real debate in this area rather than simply saying it's all 100% correct or no it sucks. More class sizes and flying hour figures would be good to back up opinions.

There should always be room for tweaking.

Cheers
Top Cat

[2ndACR]

The only thing that chaps my backside about the pilot pool gig, is having air units set to no replacements and then have every plane repaired and those planes suck pilots. I have a couple of units that have a max of 36 a/c ready, 6 in reserve but have 42 pilots.

I have a couple of Nell and Betty units with 34 and 36 pilots sitting in them by turn 5.

Sucks the life out of the start pool. Even using Mogami's method and limiting heavily the use of replacements by Jan 42 (using Lemurs which gives you an extra 25 pilots) I have 26 trained pilots left in the pool, but lots of extra sitting in units.

I do like the suggestion made in the other thread about a trained/untrained switch. I would love to have the ability to pick which units get trained/untrained pilots.
My first and probably only comment on the pilot discussion.

[Brady]

Just for fun I added up all the Janapanese Naval Air Units that arive in the first two years of the war in scenario 15 and the figure comes to 1158 piolets, if we acount for copiolets were looking at aprox. 1700 heck lets say 2000 just for fun.

From a post I made on the other thread:

Interesting if you look at just the dead listed above....

18,900, and you figure that prety much all of those airmen were killed and trained during the war, and note that in 45 very little traing was actualy going on and do some quick math:

To train just the dead you get about:

18,900 / 3(Years of the war in which traing was conducted on a grand scale)=6,300 per year or around 525 a month.

Even if we alow for prewar traing and reduce that figure to say 16,000 you looking at 444 a month to train just the dead.

Something to pounder is the dead for the Okinawa campagine from memory around 2,000 Japanese airmen died their, thats a big chunk of the total.

Now this is Just the dead were talking about, their were thousnads trained that did not die and thousands not included in the base figure of 18,900 as noted above.


So we have 2,000 piolets in the game for the first two years for the Japanese as New arivials. Based on Just the dead listed above we have a deficiet of aprox. 8,000 piolets, just the dead ones mind you.

So Why I wounder do we get only 10 per month?

[von Murrin]

I just want to know if you can get negative experience pilots and if they die on visual contact with an aircraft.[:'(]

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Top Cat

Yeah, but the unlimited number of pilots with experience of say 15 or 20 should be called crash test dummies. [:D]

They're pilots in name only.

<snip>

If your game resembles history you'll need to supply ~60,000+ pilots as the Japanese.
During that time in the game you'll get ~2,400 trained pilots from the pool and ~4,000 - 6,000 trained pilots through reinforcements (assuming they arrive at about 2/3 or better strength on average)

That means the game engine will have to produce around ~50,000 "untrained" pilots. How accurately these guys are modelled is probably one of the most important factors in the game due to their huge numbers.

Would like to see some real debate in this area rather than simply saying it's all 100% correct or no it sucks. More class sizes and flying hour figures would be good to back up opinions.

There should always be room for tweaking.

Interesting...

Do we know for a fact that there were 60,000 japanese pilots altogether in WWII?

How many of them were "real" pilots (i.e. properly trained) and how many were just hurried out of pilot school with just few hours in real aircraft before being send to combat unit?

IMHO if we can find out (through various historical sources) the number of "real" pilots (i.e. properly trained) then we can talk about adjusting monthly rate of good EXP pilots that Japanese player mothly gets in WitP...


Leo "Apollo11"

[Mike Scholl]

BRADY If with all these other posts available to copy from, you still can't manage to spell PILOTS correctly,
why do you feel that anyone else should take anything you say seriously? He11 man, just look at the post
you are replying to!

You don't just get 10 pilots a month. You can have all you want. It's just that the next 10 aren't going to be
quite as "good" as the first 10. And the 10 after that will be a little bit worse. You can take 30 Naval pilots a
month and not suffer any major skill loss on average. If YOU want more, use your editor. Make a BRADY
SCENARIO and give yourself 100 per month, extra carriers and planes, 1000 midget subs, V2's, and whatever
else you want. Then play and be happy! Maybe you can find a US opponant who want's to add in a half-dozen
Midway's and F8F's in 1942 and the two of you can bash away to your heart's content.

[Top Cat]

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Top Cat

Yeah, but the unlimited number of pilots with experience of say 15 or 20 should be called crash test dummies. [:D]

They're pilots in name only.

<snip>

If your game resembles history you'll need to supply ~60,000+ pilots as the Japanese.
During that time in the game you'll get ~2,400 trained pilots from the pool and ~4,000 - 6,000 trained pilots through reinforcements (assuming they arrive at about 2/3 or better strength on average)

That means the game engine will have to produce around ~50,000 "untrained" pilots. How accurately these guys are modelled is probably one of the most important factors in the game due to their huge numbers.

Would like to see some real debate in this area rather than simply saying it's all 100% correct or no it sucks. More class sizes and flying hour figures would be good to back up opinions.

There should always be room for tweaking.

Interesting...

Do we know for a fact that there were 60,000 japanese pilots altogether in WWII?

How many of them were "real" pilots (i.e. properly trained) and how many were just hurried out of pilot school with just few hours in real aircraft before being send to combat unit?

IMHO if we can find out (through various historical sources) the number of "real" pilots (i.e. properly trained) then we can talk about adjusting monthly rate of good EXP pilots that Japanese player mothly gets in WitP...


Leo "Apollo11"

I'm definately not arguiing that they had that many "good trained pilots". No way.

But the Japanese did build well over 60,000 planes during the war and most of them got toasted one way or the other. So they must have gone through a like number of "bums on seats" when you take into account all the KIA, WIA, MIA and the survivors etc. The mortality rate in WITP is certainly pretty high, lose 60,000 planes and you'll lose close to 60,000 pilots, unwounded/uncaptured bail outs seem pretty rare.

What I am saying is that the WITP engine needs to model these "untrained" or "lesser trained" pilots
accurately given their large numbers.

WITP might have it near perfect or it might not.

Example Scenario and Question:

In 1942 Japan built ~8,800 aircraft.
Many of them would be upgrades, no new pilots needed, but it would be conservative to assume that I'd need at least 2,000 "untrained pilots" over and above all sources to fill some of these planes and replace casualties. Probably a lot more.

So if I draw 200 pilots from the pool over and above the trained ones every month, how low will their experience drop? Into the forties, thirties, in the teens?

Just starting my Japanese scenario. What do the pilots experiences end up looking like by mid to late 1942?

Cheers
Top Cat

[Mike Scholl]

Top Cat You are forgetting to factor in attrition. Air frames and air planes wear out
and get damaged, especially in a combat environment in an unforgiving climate like
the South Pacific. The US built about 400,000 A/C in WWII, and ended the war with
about 100,000 in service. That does not mean they lost 300,000 in combat. Well over
half the losses were in A/C that had never even seen combat. War is a VERY waste-
full enterprise..., a very large portion of the aircrew losses were in non-combat use.
The game doesn't even show the 1,000's of "trainer" A/C used to ready aircrews for
combat. Or the 1000's of lost planes and aircrew sufferred in training mis-haps. Just
quoting a figure for "total production" doesn't really tell you anything at all except
about industrial productivity. And even there, you really need to compare "airframe
weights" produced to get meaningful numbers..., building 1000 Claudes does not in
any way compare with building 1000 B-29's.

[esteban]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

BRADY If with all these other posts available to copy from, you still can't manage to spell PILOTS correctly,
why do you feel that anyone else should take anything you say seriously? He11 man, just look at the post
you are replying to!

You don't just get 10 pilots a month. You can have all you want. It's just that the next 10 aren't going to be
quite as "good" as the first 10. And the 10 after that will be a little bit worse. You can take 30 Naval pilots a
month and not suffer any major skill loss on average.

Wrong. Pilot skill drops off a cliff once you run out of "trained" pilots. My first 7 untrained IJN pilots taken out of the pool had experiences of 40, 29, 32, 41, 36, 27 and 33. That is a level that is completely unusable for combat, and is even too low for them to fly training missions. You have to leave them on training missions (0 percent) until they work up to 40 exp or so, and then they can actually fly training missions to get the rest of the way up towards 55-60 exp.

[esteban]

ORIGINAL: 2ndACR

The only thing that chaps my backside about the pilot pool gig, is having air units set to no replacements and then have every plane repaired and those planes suck pilots. I have a couple of units that have a max of 36 a/c ready, 6 in reserve but have 42 pilots.

I have a couple of Nell and Betty units with 34 and 36 pilots sitting in them by turn 5.

Sucks the life out of the start pool. Even using Mogami's method and limiting heavily the use of replacements by Jan 42 (using Lemurs which gives you an extra 25 pilots) I have 26 trained pilots left in the pool, but lots of extra sitting in units.

I do like the suggestion made in the other thread about a trained/untrained switch. I would love to have the ability to pick which units get trained/untrained pilots.
My first and probably only comment on the pilot discussion.

I am working on a fix for this. Lemurs told me how to manipulate the editor to remove the starting surplus A/C from the Nell and Betty squadrons, but so far I have not had the time to do it and then test the results.

My thinking is that I would remove the surplus aircraft these squadrons start with, put them back in the replacement pools, and maybe add pilots to the IJN pool for those extra aircraft.

[pompack]

I guess I am a little slow, but I still don't see what the controversy is all about.

The level of micromanagement for pilot training is consistent with the rest of the game.

People (including me) talk about the "Mogami Training Method", but it is nothing more (or less) than the process that the British used through the entire war.

1. Pilots graduate from flight training
2. Pilots go to an OTU (Operational Training Unit) for 3-6 months (depending on specialty)
3. When the OTU "class" is completed,the OTU "class" is disbanded and the pilots (crews for Bomber Command) are sent to operational units

In case of emergency (or a political stunt like Harris's Operation Millennium), OTU "classes" can be sent on operations (at great cost to the crews).

The thing misleading people is a "non-historical" twitch that the devs put in to allow a limited number of pilots to skip the OTU phase and magically appear as operationally trained pilots.

IMHO, the only thing that could be improved would be to allow disbanded units to return in 5 days (instead of 90 days) to allow the next OTU "draft" to start immediately

[Brady]

"You don't just get 10 pilots a month. You can have all you want. It's just that the next 10 aren't going to be
quite as "good" as the first 10. And the 10 after that will be a little bit worse."


All I have been hearing for months on this subject for the Allied corner is hey we get all our new units fully trained so why are we complaining, well when you do the math it turns out to be BS, Mighty Allied of you to let the Japanese have our units come fully trained, and mind you they do so at a depreachating leval over the course of the war. Now if we nead more than 10 replacements as noted above they come at a horailably low leveal of training. Good greif the Difereance in those that were trained vs how many we actualy get is stagering and I even fudged the numbers the ohter way to make shure I got my point across, they trained more than the figure given for just the dead by a long shot, and the average per month is low by over a 100 at least, and I increased the number of piolets given in the game as well, yet you still say nothing is wrong?

While Mogami is a very sharp fellow and has created an ingenious way to train you men, this is done at tremendious expence, namely 1/3 of your actual combat strength is saped away to adress this isue. The nead to do this in light of the Numbers above is total BS imo.

Ya I could change this in the editor but why should I have to is what I want to know, if thier is some reasion I am missing hear I would be interesting in hearing it.

[Mr.Frag]

While Mogami is a very sharp fellow and has created an ingenious way to train you men, this is done at tremendious expence, namely 1/3 of your actual combat strength is saped away to adress this isue. The nead to do this in light of the Numbers above is total BS imo.

No Brady, this is where YOU are completely out to lunch.

No air force in the world has 100% of their air force completely available and ready for combat at any point in time.

Perhaps the *real* fix here to to bring you folks into reality and simply disable 50% of all the aircraft in the game as part of routine maintenance that must be done to keep them flying. Then suddenly you would not have pilot problems as groups with 70 aircraft would only really need 40 pilots.