Transport Aircraft - High Ops Loss Rates

[BBfanboy]

Interesting results. You also need to test for when pilot fatigue makes a significant difference.

I’m not sure how I can truly control that variable without messing with the results, but I’ll think about it.

Yes. I meant a separate series of tests in which pilot fatigue is the only variable. When you get a chance, of course.

[Ambassador]

Interesting results. You also need to test for when pilot fatigue makes a significant difference.

I’m not sure how I can truly control that variable without messing with the results, but I’ll think about it.

Yes. I meant a separate series of tests in which pilot fatigue is the only variable. When you get a chance, of course.

Maybe next week, I should have time during the days between Christmas and New Year. I’ll think about the how, but for the moment the way to isolate pilot fatigue from plane fatigue, without allowing weather to get an undue influence, requires much more micromanagement compared to my previous tests.

[Sardaukar]

I think you can exclude weather by setting Advanced Weather OFF.

2.4.2 ADVANCED WEATHER EFFECTS
When Advanced Weather Effects are not in use, the weather forecasts will always be clear on
turn 1 and partly cloudy thereafter.

[Ambassador]

I tested serviceability, and as far as I can tell, there are no significant differences on the ops losses. But my confidence in that result is not that high, given that I had to stop all squadrons from flying, twice, because I had too few planes in the high-serviceability units.

I think you can exclude weather by setting Advanced Weather OFF.

2.4.2 ADVANCED WEATHER EFFECTS
When Advanced Weather Effects are not in use, the weather forecasts will always be clear on
turn 1 and partly cloudy thereafter.

I already do that, but it only mitigates the weather factor, it doesn’t eliminate it. Advanced Weather OFF doesn’t prevent bad weather, it makes it less frequent (as with AW ON, bad weather one day increases the chance of bad weather the following day). So, you still get (rather frequent) rain and thunderstorms.

For the moment, I neutralize the impact of weather not only with AW OFF, but also by flying all planes from and to the same bases. Control test runs showed that on the whole, every squadron would fare as well or as bad on the 90 days, with low variance. Test runs flying from and to different bases showed greater variance, when the only variable was, presumably, weather. So by the way I can confirm weather has an influence (duh), but I don’t think I could reliably monitor it to determine the severity of it.

[Ambassador]

Yes. I meant a separate series of tests in which pilot fatigue is the only variable. When you get a chance, of course.

I did a few tests, but I’m not sure they’re really conclusive. Maybe I simply did not manage to control the variables enough, though. Most times, high fatigue led to more plane losses, but not that much. In a few runs, the difference was negligible, but I’m not sure it’s because there is no effect (rather than the pilots not flying).

Climb speed, altitude and cargo capacity were also tested, and presented no significant difference.

I can’t conclude anything about serviceability. While losses looked similar, every time I checked the squadrons they did have less ready planes than the others, so the statistics may be skewed due to a fewer number of planes flying. But I’m not certain about that.

I have yet to run tests with different levels of airport sizes and amount of air support at the destination base, to confirm what has been said (and possibly quantify the difference).

[RangerJoe]

If the air units were given a lot of extra planes for their reserves, do you think that this could keep their numbers high enough to help the test?

[Ambassador]

I tried that, but I god a weird feeling. It seemed like « excess » reserve planes were not adequately brought in action, or maybe not immediately. Some times, I saw a reduced number of ready planes, while there were still plenty of reserve planes. I must check it, I wonder if the excess reserve planes are really drawn in action when the number of ready + repairing + maintenance planes is equal to the squadron size +4. Just a hunch, might be wrong. And maybe there are hidden checks involved that we don’t know about (squadron’s XP ? Leader’s Admin skill ? Air support ?). Or maybe it’s the conditions of the test, I really don’t know.

[RangerJoe]

I try to give the air units up to 12 reserve aircraft by breaking the unit down and giving each fragment 4 reserves plus any more to bring up to full strength.

[Ambassador]

Interesting trick, I’ll remember it !

It’s a good day when I learn something new about the game, thank you, I can go back to sleep. Or not, I still have work to go to…

[RangerJoe]

That is especially helpful at a base where the air war is constantly grinding the units down.

Another trick is to take an air unit with lots of damaged/disabled/deadlined aircraft, send them to another base not on a rail line and then disband the disabled aircraft into another unit with the same type of aircraft. That can also get RAF pilots and aircraft into Aussie or Kiwi air units even! It also works well when sending lots of 4Es from ConUS to Australia and onwards since the extra reserve aircraft can be sent to the pools, then pulled into air units at the theatre of operations. It can also give air units many extra pilots as well.

Another thing that can help, rest pilots by sending them into Group Reserve so they are still in the unit but not flying aircraft. Maybe nurses but not aircraft. This is also useful for your expert trainers so they don't accidentally fly and crash but they are still in the units which helps to keep the average skill levels up since the trainee pilots with skills about 5 points higher than the average skill being trained seem to be doing most of the training. I can tell this because of the fatigue and the green/orange skill level numbers for the individual pilots. When I rest some, the ones who weren't flying then fly and learn.

[Wirraway_Ace]

Sounds like you have been checking pilot fatigue but not plane fatigue. Click on the "Planes" hypertext at the bottom of the squadron screen. The game will automatically take heavily fatigued planes off-line for servicing, but long before they get to that point the planes are at great risk of ops losses. I use 15 airplane fatigue as the cut-off for acceptability (exception made for an important paratroop drop). I count the number of aircraft that have 15 or more fatigue and figure out what % of the squadron to set to Rest that turn.

+1 As BB says, the problem is mostly plane fatigue. Fill out the squadrons with the maximum number of reserve aircraft, adjust the rest setting as BB suggests, and stand the unit down at an airfield with plenty of aviation support when average fatigue gets much above 15.

[Yaab]

With adequate aviation support at both airfields, I now fly in Rain weather without op losses.