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When do you consider pilots sufficiently trained to enter a front line unit (early in the war, if you are Japan, before you get desperate)? I have seen some talk in AARs of getting pilots up to 70 exp before putting them into action. This seems like a pipe dream to me. Right now I am finding that my pilots can train to about 59. I really don't see much to get them beyond that unless they actually get into a battle/drop some bombs on something. So I am going with 59 as my experience goal for training.

What are you seeing?

I go with an appropriate skill level of 70. I can get a green pilot to 70 in about a month or so while his experience level gets to about the mid 50's. A pilot like this has a fair chance of surviving long enough to get his exp level up higher. Once you get enough pilots with exp levels 75+, you can stack the deck further by pooling these pilots in important squadrons (CVs or Schwerpunkt squadrons). Please note, this pilot remains useless in any skill area not stressed, so where as a fighter pilot may only need air to air skills, a torpedo pilot will need to train for a month NavT then another month GrdB.

For fighters, Air and Defensive at 60+, Experience at 50+.

For everything else, two main skills (NavB/NavS for DBs, NavB/NavT for TBs, etc.) at 55+, Experience at 45+.

Putting them on CAP or Search while training helps build up Exp at the cost of skills slightly.

I try to build my training squadrons to be 25% instructors (70-80 in skills - everything Exp 80+ goes into TRACOM) and 75% in trainees. I rotate out the best trained 25% of trainees every 20-30 days or so, and fill with rookies. Seems to work alright.

This thread of pilot testing showed that having experienced pilots in the unit had no effect on training. In other words, you can fill up the unit with green pilots and they should train in the same time. You will have 25% more pilots for your efforts.

I have not seen that thread, but nevertheless I'm not convinced. Certainly for ASW groups I've found it helps very much to have atleast one pilot in the group with 60+ skill.

I may run some tests on this myself, but even if it turns out to be wrong I may keep these pilots in the groups as a secondary reserve.

JuanG, I think he is talking about this thread located in the war room. http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2367726

Looks like I forgot the link

I've tested the same thing and had very clear results showing that squadrons with at least one pilot over 80 will train significantly (30-50%) faster than squadrons without.
I tested it on 8 squadrons (4 with veteran, 4 without) for three months.
Might still be a rare coincidence, of course, but it's good enough for me.

briny_norman -

Were your training results with veterans achieved with the most recent official patch (i.e. December or later)? I did a lot of pilot training testing with and without veterans and never saw any strong improvement, so I'm curious.

From the release notes it looks like things were tinkered with in both patches, so I could easily believe different results from an earlier version. Or if you have some veteran trainer secret I'd love to know it. [:)]