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Luckily I only play against the AI so I don't worry about pilot micro-management. I just make sure there's enough pilots in the group and that works out well enough to me.

I'm with Altaris on this. In my game I've also gone to some lengths to clean up my reserve pool so I can use Get Pilot->Reserve to populate my combat air groups instantly as needed. I do still use Request Veteran - except now it's only for my training squadrons to pick stray incompetents out of the reserve pool for further education. Not exactly the intent of the feature, I suspect.

Request Veteran seems to me like a classic example of a good idea sabotaged by poor design. Consider these issues:

• When compared to instant reserve pilots via Get Pilot, a delay of up to two weeks for a particular reserve pilot is problematic.
• The delay is too random - the difference between pilots tomorrow or pilots two weeks from now makes Request Veteran too unreliable. Does the delay need to be random in the first place? Leaders don't have nearly this level of randomness.
• Request Veteran should not produce a transit delay that causes the pilot not to appear in the air group's pilot list. It's very confusing here and in general how the pilot list for the air group doesn't show all the pilots in the group's reserve.
• The air group information screen needs to show the number of pilots in transit to the group (using some delay cutoff perhaps). Having to click on Pilots and manually count the number of lines with a delay greater than 1 is a seems like a silly chore. By far the best part of Get Pilot->Reserve technique is that it avoids this problem.

I'm sure a lot of work went into getting all pilot management features implemented and running, and they all do work so I hope I don't sound overly critical. I just think it's frustrating to see a feature like this missing the last %5 of the effort needed to make the whole thing a lot more usable/fun/rewarding. It seems like the best strategy for pilot management currently is one where you avoid using Request Veteran as much as possible.

ORIGINAL: SeethingErmine

I'm with Altaris on this. In my game I've also gone to some lengths to clean up my reserve pool so I can use Get Pilot->Reserve to populate my combat air groups instantly as needed. I do still use Request Veteran - except now it's only for my training squadrons to pick stray incompetents out of the reserve pool for further education. Not exactly the intent of the feature, I suspect.

Request Veteran seems to me like a classic example of a good idea sabotaged by poor design. Consider these issues:

• When compared to instant reserve pilots via Get Pilot, a delay of up to two weeks for a particular reserve pilot is problematic.
• The delay is too random - the difference between pilots tomorrow or pilots two weeks from now makes Request Veteran too unreliable. Does the delay need to be random in the first place? Leaders don't have nearly this level of randomness.
• Request Veteran should not produce a transit delay that causes the pilot not to appear in the air group's pilot list. It's very confusing here and in general how the pilot list for the air group doesn't show all the pilots in the group's reserve.
• The air group information screen needs to show the number of pilots in transit to the group (using some delay cutoff perhaps). Having to click on Pilots and manually count the number of lines with a delay greater than 1 is a seems like a silly chore. By far the best part of Get Pilot->Reserve technique is that it avoids this problem.

I'm sure a lot of work went into getting all pilot management features implemented and running, and they all do work so I hope I don't sound overly critical. I just think it's frustrating to see a feature like this missing the last %5 of the effort needed to make the whole thing a lot more usable/fun/rewarding. It seems like the best strategy for pilot management currently is one where you avoid using Request Veteran as much as possible.

The purpose of Request Veteran is to allow the player to obtain a specific pilot for a specific group; the player can, for example, build a bomber unit consisting of pilots with high NavB and ASW skills, for use against subs.
The purpose of Get Pilot is to quickly fill out a unit with pilots. The pilots are randomly determined; and while it gets the pilots to the unit faster, the player has to go through and weed out the pilots he doesn't want, sending them back to Reserve. Furthermore, there has to be pilots in the Reserve in the first place. It can take a few months of training to get a pool of decent-exp pilots; until then, a player using Get Pilot will only receive poorly trained replacement pilots.

The pilot delay simply reflects the realities of administratrating a large military force. IMHO, the delay should also apply when using Get Pilot.

The Air Group Information Screen shows only those pilots who are active (and those who can be made active that turn). This is as it should be, to avoid confusion. Pilots who are WIA, and pilots who have a delay of 2 days or more, are not active, and should not be listed as such. Note that not all pilot delays are caused by the transfer delay, some pilots don't have an arrival date for several months after the unit arrives, but are still assigned to the unit. And the Pilot Screen of each unit shows the total number of pilots assigned, both active and those with a delay of up to 7 days.

I agree that managing pilots can be frustrating and time consuming, but I would still recommend that players take the time to use all the available features of AE. The features both give a more 'historical' feel to the game, and will help to achieve better combat results.

I understand *what* the designers were going for, but the implementation just doesn't favor Request Veteran most of the time. I made such a mess out of my front-line squadrons early on because I kept thinking there was some bug when the pilots didn't show up as "In Transit". Once I figured out the issue, I was able to accomodate somewhat, but still had like 20 extra pilots show up a week or so later due to the extra clicks. For my front-lines, I check my pilots pretty much every turn, and even understanding the pilot delay, I forget sometimes when they don't show up and have pilots meaninglessly showing up in the squadron's pools a few turns later.
 
It's just too big a pain in the @ss to keep up with, really. The Get Pilot function is good enough at picking qualified pilots, better than spending even more time trying to micro-manage a very unintuitive and overly complicated Request Veteran function.
 
My main issues would be solved if the pilots always showed up as In Transit regardless of delay, and the pilot numbers didn't continue to show in red while waiting for pilots to arrive. But due to those two issues, it's just too much trouble trying to use Request Veteran to be worth it.