Matrix Games Forums

Ok, I hate you Battlemoose. From my PBEM game:
On Jan 1, 1943 I had 257 wounded pilots.
On Aug 8, 1943:
The database found 254 of the 257 pilots in the exports from tracker.
129 of them did not meet the following conditions:
have flown more missions (indicating they became active at some point), or
have a different fate (such as a blank in the fate column, indicating they can be assigned / reassigned)

So this means I found 125 of the original 257 have returned to active duty (note some have since been killed, missing, or even wounded again)

So that would be just about 50% have returned in a little over 8 months. Some may take longer than 8 months to recover, which would increase this number - but this is at least a starting point.


And in case you are curious, for MIA it is 245 missing on Jan 1, of which 230 are still missing on Aug 8. A little over 6% have been found and reactivated or declared KIA.

And all 467 of my KIAs as of Jan 1 remain dead. No zombie pilots[:(].

Leave this thread for a day and look what happened to it.

Thank you Tiemanj, that is useful information indeed.

I came here with an honest question about the game which has now been addressed. So thank you for those who posted.

I've seen 99 EXP pilots go to 89 when they are wounded, so I'm pretty sure WIA pilots lose 10 EXP, but have no other effect other than being out of action for a while.

Cheers,
CC

ORIGINAL: BattleMoose

Leave this thread for a day and look what happened to it.

Thank you Tiemanj, that is useful information indeed.

I came here with an honest question about the game which has now been addressed. So thank you for those who posted.

Hi Moose, can't help but wondering why the information provided is useful. Will it change the way you play the game? Will you take a different approach to guiding your forces, training your pilots?

I can understand that you are curious about the way it works but just don't see how you could use the information...

When more than half of my casualties from an elite squadron get reported as WIA, I want to know what that means, what happens to that incredibly valuable asset that is an elite pilot. And yes it will change how I use those elite pilots. Do I use them on important offensive missions? Or do I use them defensively where they can be conserved? The attrition rates of those operations is of course relevant.

Wounded pilots lose experience and might not be elite after that..

Pilots flying offensive operations have a high chance to go MIA (when not outright KIA). MIA means a very low base chance to get them back.

-In general after offensive operations you'll see KIA / MIA and only few WIA (most WIA are related to ops losses / landing accidents when returning from a mission).
-In general after defensive missions (over friendly troops) you'll see KIA / WIA and only few to non MIA

Still don't understand why WIA (this was your OP) is so important for you since there is no direct relation between WIA and offensive operations.

Whenever you commit forces in battle force yourself to think about the following:

- (potential) cost and chance of losses being high
- (potential) gain/effect and chance of enemy losses being high

So, you could use elite squadrons to attack an enemy airbase that you have not recced. This might be a good choice if:

- In support of a ground or strategic campaign

You'll take the losses (even elite pilots) because it helps you achieve a certain goal

Or you could choose not to attack if there is no particular goal involved (other then hoping to catch aircraft on the ground, annoy the enemy, fight boredom)

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

Wounded pilots lose experience and might not be elite after that..

That part of the question was also in my OP, which has also been addressed.

Still don't understand why WIA (this was your OP) is so important for you since there is no direct relation between WIA and offensive operations.

I have the option of using them offensively or defensively. I have a very great interest in conserving this resource. I was particularly alarmed at the high number of pilots I had WIA flying defensive operations. Unsurprisingly (?) I wanted to know what their prognosis was. If their survival rate for defensive operations is "low" then I might not choose to use them in that role.

Beware relying on anecdotal evidence and limited iterations for drawing conclusions.

The best evidence to rely upon is your own experience.

Experiment and find the results you are seeking.

Then you can contribute a concise report to the community to enrich the experience of others.

Hey BM, I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but from what I've experienced on this site and about this game is that you're not going to get specific answers to certain things. What I'm trying to say is that there are a lot of things going on under the hood that will not be disclosed. So getting exact answers to questions will not always be possible. I'm pretty sure this is how the devs want it. You can go on empirical examples, but how accurate and precise they will be depends.

+1 as it should be.

YMMV

ORIGINAL: BattleMoose

I don't need to know anything about the algorithm. I will have X amount of pilots WIA and Y will return to duty. Y/X is essentially the number I am after. I would be happy to just have a clue. X is trivial to obtain.

I don't know how to get Y but I am confident there are ways to obtain it. I thought it would be very much quicker to ask the forums where I am also confident people have wondered this very question.

###

And I don't understand why you feel the need to hold out your knowledge on me. Even in your second post you lead with "No" but then later confess its a "small chance". Why don't you lead with "small chance" instead of trying to leave me with no clue? :-/

I didn't read the whole thread as I knew where it would go. Just in case no one else said it, this game is far too complex to obsess on such a thing. Keep training new air crews. If a WIA/MIA comes back it's a bonus. I don't know the name of any of my pilots in any game I've played. If you do you are surely missing details that are far more important.

I hardly feel that asking about the return rate of MIA pilots constitutes, "obsessing".

And I wasn't ever asking for a specific or exact answer, just a better understanding. I said earlier that I understood the return rate to be between 0 and 100%. I thought, perhaps wrongly, that people on this forum would have a better idea than me. I also thought, that asking for help in narrowing that down was a good idea. Now I really am not so sure.

Moose, don't stop asking questions. Roughly 70% of the time, you'll get a fast and reasonable answer without any grief at all, which makes this forum more reliable than most of the rest of the internet. 20% of the time someone will steer you wrong initially, but they will then invariably be corrected, so you'll still get help. Less than 10% of the time, you'll be condescended to as a new player, or your question will be dismissed. Unfortunately, you hit the less than 10% with this one. It's no fun when it happens to you personally (I know - the first real question I ever asked on the forums years ago, I was more or less ridiculed for asking, and was then provided with numerous wrong answers) but those answers aren't really indicative of the forum as a whole. Stick to your guns when you ask a decent question and you'll definitely learn more about how the game works than you would otherwise. (Note that a couple of the people who have told you that on some topics you'll never get a 100% definitive answer are right. Still, take this with a grain of salt and move on - the game itself is worth it, and so for the most part is the forum.)

Lastly, in answer to your original question, I've had as many as three MIAs returned in the same turn, though that's an exception. I don't use Tracker (though it's a great tool, and those who do are in a more advantageous position to answer) but I find that mid-war as the Allies in PBEM, I get back about one pilot every other day from WIA/MIA status.