The Allies seem to have run out of good pilots

[JohnDillworth]

I am playing the Allies vs the Japanese AI. I am doing well (hell, it's the AI)but it is October 42 and I seem to have run out of good pilots. All 3 services seem to be in the 20's or 30's. Am I misreading this? Whenever I fill out an airgroup it comes with really low experience How do I recover? Disband all the west coast groups or not is use groups? I have taken losses, but I don't think they were extraordinary. I never had enough planes to take high losses

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

I am playing the Allies vs the Japanese AI. I am doing well (hell, it's the AI)but it is October 42 and I seem to have run out of good pilots. All 3 services seem to be in the 20's or 30's. Am I misreading this? Whenever I fill out an airgroup it comes with really low experience How do I recover? Disband all the west coast groups or not is use groups? I have taken losses, but I don't think they were extraordinary. I never had enough planes to take high losses

Have you transferred any 80+ experienced pilots into the training command? I'm in Dec. 1942 and have, I think, ten there. For example. Richard Bong has never flown a mission. He's been training the whole time. I don't have levels in the pool as bad as you show. If you look to the right of your red circles column, you can see the month-by-month experience in the pipeline. Your USN cadets with 10-12 months of training are only at 31 experience, so it makes sense that the pool would be at 35.

I don't know any way to move these numbers except move your top aces into instructor slots, and then wait. Of course, nuggets get salted into squadrons with vets, and some survive long enough to get average. That's war.

[JohnDillworth]

Got lots of 90+ pilots. How do I make them trainers?

[Anthropoid]

yeah I wanna know too!

[scott64]

They need to be not assigned, check the reserve pilot menu. [8|]

[bruin]

I thought putting 80+ exp pilots into the training queue would only shorten the training time from 12 months down. I didn't think it actually increased pilot EXP above base experience levels, this would be useless for allies and useful for Japan. Am I wrong?

[CaptBeefheart]

I am also of the understanding that all the instructor pilots do is accelerate training, not bring up the average experience of newbies. I've got one in as an experiment and I got an op report line stating something to the effect of "training of 150 U.S. Army pilots is accelerated." If I had a choice, I'd rather see higher quality pilots come off the assembly line, as those 20-40 EXP'ers are just cannon fodder.

[rhohltjr]

ORIGINAL: scott1964

They need to be not assigned, check the reserve pilot menu. [8|]

But they are assigned. How do they, ...the pilots get to the not assigned part.... inside the reserve pilot menu? Do you have to disband or withdraw the unit?

From the reserve pilot menu do they hop a train going back east to camp fledgling or are they already there teaching
pilot skills?

Details man!!!! Or what page in the manual was that????[8|]
[:)]

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Got lots of 90+ pilots. How do I make them trainers?

Go to the replacement pilots screen you showed, then go to the sub-screen called Reserve Pool. Sort by the Experience column. Scroll to the top. Any pilot names that are yellow can be re-assigned to be instructors, and are taken out of their squadrons and reassigned. I think there's a time lag here, and I think they lose a few experience points in transit. Yes, no? Manual is not close by.

I checked after I posted, and I have nine instructor pilots. My USN pool average experience is 39 in 12/42, while my USArmy pool is 28, and my USMC is 30. So I'm not doing as well as I had remembered, except for the USN. Over time, I hope to increase more.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Commander Cody

I am also of the understanding that all the instructor pilots do is accelerate training, not bring up the average experience of newbies. I've got one in as an experiment and I got an op report line stating something to the effect of "training of 150 U.S. Army pilots is accelerated." If I had a choice, I'd rather see higher quality pilots come off the assembly line, as those 20-40 EXP'ers are just cannon fodder.

I don't have a manual cite for my post. Do you have one for this? I'm not near a manual now.

Accelerating the time would be more useless for the Allies than experience IMO. I have over 12,700 spare USN pilots alone in 12/42. I don't need them faster, I need them better.

[wdolson]

The pilots coming out of training are essentially fresh out of advanced training.  They have no training in type or much combat training.  You need to train them up.  Patch 2 will introduce a new training system, but before I had that, I was holding back some units as training units, training them up to decent levels, then disband the unit into the pool.  This built up a reserve pool with good pilots to fill out combat losses in front line units.  For new units, I fill them with low exp pilots and set them to train at 100% for a few months until they are ready.

The freshly trained pool is no longer full of decent experienced pilots ready for combat.

Bill

[CaptBeefheart]

wdolson et al.: Thanks for the explanation. Would sure be cool if Patch 2 could make this simpler for those of us who have a quality, not quantity, issue. Any hints on how that would work?

To Moose: I think I read it in the forum. I did not see it in the manual when I looked once (doesn't mean it's not there). Not at home now, of course.

Cheers,
CC

Edit: Answering a question from Bullwinkle

[wdolson]

We will have a little mini-manual with patch 2 to explain the more complex changes.  I think the biggest section is on pilot management.

Bill

[JohnDillworth]

OK, to save the current situation I am:
filling out all the less active and stateside squadrons and training them at 60%
Everybody over 80 points experience is a trainer
Dial back my aggressive bomber raids until a really need them
Get the 45-55 experience guys to the front for some combat experience
be thankful that the Japaneses front line experience has suffered more than my fron line. I presume his reserves and trainees are about the same

[Djordje]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

The pilots coming out of training are essentially fresh out of advanced training.  They have no training in type or much combat training.  You need to train them up.  Patch 2 will introduce a new training system, but before I had that, I was holding back some units as training units, training them up to decent levels, then disband the unit into the pool.  This built up a reserve pool with good pilots to fill out combat losses in front line units.  For new units, I fill them with low exp pilots and set them to train at 100% for a few months until they are ready.

The freshly trained pool is no longer full of decent experienced pilots ready for combat.

Bill

I have a question Bill, will the 10% experience penalty from transferring pilots into reserve pool be gone in patch 2? It was the thing that made me stop disbanding pilots into reserves completely.

[jackyo123]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

[
Have you transferred any 80+ experienced pilots into the training command?

How do you do this? I am in mid-42 and dont see any 'training' commands?

thanks

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: jackyo123

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

[
Have you transferred any 80+ experienced pilots into the training command?

How do you do this? I am in mid-42 and dont see any 'training' commands?

thanks

See my Post #8 above.

[Oliver Heindorf]

round the pilots assigned to the training command up/down in numbers of 10.

[DeriKuk]

Forget the "numbers of 10" . . .

Get ALL of your top pilots into Training Command, even if only to keep them from becoming casualties.