Squadron Leaders, "best qualified to command..."

[Feinder]

Since we're all discovering the impact of leaders on WitP, I've been doing some tinkering of my own. I wanted to see what made a good fighter/bomber/patrol leader for a squadron. I didn't see any leaders that said "best suited for Transport squadron" (* shrug *).

But I assumed that

Fighter = Fighter, Fighter-bomber, Float-fighter, Night-fighter
Bomber = Level-bomber, Dive-bomber, Torpedo-Bomber
Patrol = Patrol, Float-plane, Transport, Recon

From what I've gathered, in order for it to say this leader is best qualified for...

Patrols - Believe it or not, the "Land" skill was was 20 or less. Seemed very odd to me, what is the "Land" skill used for in Air ratings, that makes one qualified for Patrols (or rather -not- qualified for Fighters or Bombers).

If their "Land" skill was greater than 20, I saw the following...

Fighters - Aggression must be 65 or more. I saw nothing else distinctive. As in the might be good in "Air" skill, or not, but as long as agression was 65 or more, they were qualified as Fighters.

Bombers - Aggression must be less than 65. Again, air skill was irrelevant, just the aggression level.

I -did- find a rare instance where land skill was less than 20 (expected qualifed for Patrols), but it still reported them as a Fighter/Bomber leader. But it was maybe on the order 2 or 3 pilots that did not fit the above.

So, it actually raised some questions for me...


I see that aggression can be important for a fighter leader, as it would affect his "roll" to attack enemy planes, esp bombers to avoid being "driven off by defensive fire".

Wouldn't agression also be good for Bomber leaders tho, so as to avoid the roll to NOT abort the mission after being attacked? Or to press on to target, even after sustaining casualties?

Furthermore, why did "Land" have anything to considerations for qualification? Why is it that (appearently), the deliminator for a someone to be "relegated" to Patrol duty, have anything to do with "Land" skill?

Anybody seen/observed/can add something else?
-F-

[Arkan]

I remember another thread about the very same thing by Apollo. Hope this link works.

Link to other thread

[Speedysteve]

Not sure but interesting stuff.

[Feinder]

Interesting.

Having read the other thread, I (again) think it's peculiar that Land and Surface skills, affect one's assignment to patrol squadrons (or rather lack thereof, removes the recommendation for Fighter/Bomber squadrons).

From my understanding, it's the leader skill that affects the launch and engament "set-up". But it's the skill of the individual pilots, that affects a hit.

I guess it's just a matter of finding leaders with high Air, Aggression, Inspiration, and assigning them, regardless of recommendation. Mediocre leaders would get relagated to Patrol/Floats/Transport/Recon squadrons.

-F-

[Dereck]

I actually did see one American pilot who was best suited for Air Transport. Damned if I can find him again though.

[WiTP_Dude]

I have seen the air transport commander as well.

[Gem35]

Here is one that was commanding a squadron of Libbys I had just upgraded from Bostons.

[Feinder]

That's odd. I can't find any of those guys from your pic, in Apollo's DB extract...

[&:]

-F-

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Feinder

That's odd. I can't find any of those guys from your pic, in Apollo's DB extract...

[&:]

-F-

All leaders that are in WitP OOB are in my Excel spreadsheets.

What this might be is, possibly, result of some leader bug where leaders are "generated" via various user actions (like splitting and combining of air units)...


Leo "Apollo11"

[tabpub]

I can't really verify, but I believe that commanders skills transmogrify (I think that is a word) over time. This is just based on observations that I have commanders that I recollect were rated "bombing" initially when assigned, but have changed to either air transport or patrol now since commanding either transport or PBY formations. I looked thru my PBY's briefly recently and they all seemed to be patrol rated now, and I don't remember that to be the case originally.

Or, I am going stir crazy......

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: tabpub

I can't really verify, but I believe that commanders skills transmogrify (I think that is a word) over time. This is just based on observations that I have commanders that I recollect were rated "bombing" initially when assigned, but have changed to either air transport or patrol now since commanding either transport or PBY formations. I looked thru my PBY's briefly recently and they all seemed to be patrol rated now, and I don't remember that to be the case originally.

Or, I am going stir crazy......

Yes!

I forgot about that... true... leaders do change their abilities (i.e. what we see as numerical values for their skill) over time...

BTW, what does not change is the rank (which is only cosmetical and irrelevant as we were told).


Leo "Apollo11"

[michaelm75au]

From observation, if the leader's initial contains only 1 character, then it is most likely to be a random leader built by the AI to command some unit/group/ship.

Most of the leaders in the scenario file seem to have 2 characters as the initials.

Michael