Why the poor allied pilots in the beginning of the war?

[JohnDillworth]

Hi,
Just started a new campaign against the AI as the allies. In January 42 the Allies get a bunch of P-40's in Brisbane. The squadrons are not filled out with pilots. When I do fill it out with replacements I get all pilots with an experience of around 30!! Turns out there are no fighter pilots with a high experience!
At the beginning of the war I went around to each squadron in the state and turned them into training squadrons. I filled them with pilots and set them to 100% training. Is it possible that by doing this I drained all the decent pilots out? If so how do I get them back? Do I withdraw or disband the training squadrons or do I have to go to each squadron and right click on each pilot to put them back in the pool? (BTW, I did this with a few on the last turn but the pilots have not shown up in the pool yet, does this take a few turns?)

[LoBaron]

Yes it takes a few turns.
I´d transfer manually. Disbanding a squad robs you of a potential training squad for 120 days.
 
Btw. I am quite sure that by your description you pulled pilots straight from the replacements instead of the reserve
(or if you left the setting to "any" you were empty on reserve pilots and so it pulled from the replacements automatically).

[JohnDillworth]

Yes it takes a few turns.
I´d transfer manually. Disbanding a squad robs you of a potential training squad for 120 days.

Btw. I am quite sure that by your description you pulled pilots straight from the replacements instead of the reserve
(or if you left the setting to "any" you were empty on reserve pilots and so it pulled from the replacements automatically).

OK, when I start to do it manually it says "right click to transfer to the group reserve and make inactive" Does that mena inactive form the group, or inactive and I can't use it from the reserve?)
I am sure I got replacement, but if I try to take from reserves the font is red indicating I don't have anything in the reserve, right down to rookies

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth
OK, when I start to do it manually it says "right click to transfer to the group reserve and make inactive" Does that mena inactive form the group, or inactive and I can't use it from the reserve?)

They are still with the group but are the groups´own reserves.
Another right click and you have them in general reserve. (after a bit)

I am sure I got replacement, but if I try to take from reserves the font is red indicating I don't have anything in the reserve, right down to rookies

That was the reason. Red means no suitable pilots in the reserve pools.

[LoBaron]

damn...make that a left click, not a right click...

[JohnDillworth]

When I left click on the pilot the font terns gray and I am told the pilot is in the group reserve. A second click only offers to make the pilot active. Is the group reserve this particular squadron or all fighter squadrons? If the pilot is greyed out will he eventually disappear from this particular squodron and be avaialbe to any squadron?
thanks

[LoBaron]

 
Make that a right klick. Bugger. I hate this topic. (Being legasthenic doesnt help a bit here...)

[JohnDillworth]

Make that a right klick. Bugger. I hate this topic. (Being legasthenic doesnt help a bit here...)

right click, left click, doesn't matter just offers to make him active in the group. Do I have to wait a turn to click again?
BTW , Is this documented somewhere, manual seems a bit fuzzy

[JohnDillworth]

right click, left click, doesn't matter just offers to make him active in the group. Do I have to wait a turn to click again?
BTW , Is this documented somewhere, manual seems a bit fuzzy

I see, the second click works, but not for groups set to withdraw. Guess it keeps you from pulling pilots out of the group. So what is the point of having groups that can't be moved out of the states and are set to withdraw? Might as well just withdraw them on December 8th so you don't forget

[Canoerebel]

I was trying to follow this thread....but now I'm hopelessly confused again. 

[Yakface]

Hi John

LoBaron is right - it's left click once to put into group reserve and left click again to transfer to general reserve.

However there is a complication (which you have noticed): if the group is set to withdraw you cannot remove pilots using this technique to belwo it's nominal size.

The solution is fairly straight forward though - firstly draw some extra pilots inot the group with the 'get pilot button'. Once you have more pilots than the usual maximum you will be able to choose which to transfer to the reserves. As an example - most groups of US army fighters have a size of 25, but can have extra pilots put into them up to 33. If at 25 (and due for withdrawl at some point) you will not be able to trnsfer pilots to the reserve pool. If you draw 8 pilots (now at 33) you can then remove 8 others to the reserve pool.

Hope that helps.

[Sardaukar]

You need more pilots than a/c in unit to be able to transfer pilots to general reserve. If you have for example 25 planes and 25 pilots, 2 left clicks on pilot just makes him first inactive in group reserve and then active again. For example, for restricted units on West Coast, I set replacement source "Replacement" and fill up to max with 30 exp pilots. Then I send all 50+ pilots to general reserve by 2 left clicks. Often I have to refill with rookies again, to get all experienced guys out.

[JohnDillworth]

I was trying to follow this thread....but now I'm hopelessly confused again.

Trying to figure out pilot training for the allies. I did a bad job of this last game so I have started another game against the AI with the mission to master pilot training.
When the war started I immediately filled out every squadron and set them to 100% training. Mostly a good thing but it had 2 bad effects:
When p-40's showed up in Brisbane in January 1942 they are not up to full pilot strength. When I tried to fill them out it seems all my reserve pilots got pulled into training so all I had left were level 30 reserves.
I filled out squadrons that were scheduled for early withdraw. Those pilots are effectively lost. They can't be put back in the reserve pool. so I just sent lots of good pilots to Europe.

However, just 6 weeks into the war and many of the pilots I put in training are improving. If the squadron is not scheduled for withdraw, one can go back into the list of pilots and left click on them twice (first click turns the font gray, second click puts them back in to the general reserve, I think it may take 15 days until they show up). Some of these pilots are in the mid 50's with high 60's on air to air, so they are getting better. They are not baked yet, but it is only January 42, and I have pilots in the pipeline if you will.

In my last game I did no pilot training until late in the war and payed the price. Particularly in B-29 pilots. They come in in the 40's so you are stuck with them unless you have a good pool of reserves. I did not and although I got hundreds of B-29's, I was not able to do much with them due to low pilot experience (operation requirements for B-29's did not help either, I went the Mariana's route with this and the range and base size hurt me).

Anyway, January 42 is a good time to be learning from my pilot training mistakes. Got nothing better to do while the AI continues to kick my butt all over the map. Fighting hard and losing, but investing in the future.

[wdolson]

Just like the real war.  The Allies had very little success until May 1942.  The pressure on field commanders in the early months for some kind of success was huge.

How did you even manage to get to 1945 without training pilots?  I don't cut anybody loose for the front without being trained and it's tough enough.  Though fighter units with all high exp pilots are tough to beat.

Bill

[JohnDillworth]

How did you even manage to get to 1945 without training pilots? I don't cut anybody loose for the front without being trained and it's tough enough. Though fighter units with all high exp pilots are tough to beat.

SW pacific fell apart early for the AI. This resulted in much air combat in Burma. Created alot of aces there. Bombers never got good. Naval aviators were always good due to lots of action

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Yakface
LoBaron is right - it's left click once to put into group reserve and left click again to transfer to general reserve.

However there is a complication (which you have noticed): if the group is set to withdraw you cannot remove pilots using this technique to belwo it's nominal size.

The solution is fairly straight forward though - firstly draw some extra pilots inot the group with the 'get pilot button'. Once you have more pilots than the usual maximum you will be able to choose which to transfer to the reserves. As an example - most groups of US army fighters have a size of 25, but can have extra pilots put into them up to 33. If at 25 (and due for withdrawl at some point) you will not be able to trnsfer pilots to the reserve pool. If you draw 8 pilots (now at 33) you can then remove 8 others to the reserve pool.

Hope that helps.

Of COURSE I was right. I tried every possible option. [:D]

Thanks for that reminder Yakface. Tend to forget such things easily...

[dwesolick]

Hi guys,

This is a helpful thread. I have an additional question. I've also set all squadrons to train 100% early on (now Apr 42 against Japanese AI) and I've noticed I have lots of pilots with low experience (40s-50s) but high skills (60s-70s).

So which is better for, say, fighter pilots, to have an experience level of 65 but air/defn skills of 45/50

or a pilot with experience of 40 and air/defn skills of 65/70? Does experience trump skills in a dogfight? Are they weighted equally? Do skills trump experience??

help![&:]

thanks

[Yakface]

Three features of a fighter pikot are important: experience, air and defence. I'd say they were all equally important.

To get your pilots experience up, just put them on 100% CAP for a month (choose a big base and set range to 0 to minimise ops loses)

[Central Blue]

ORIGINAL: Yakface

The solution is fairly straight forward though - firstly draw some extra pilots inot the group with the 'get pilot button'. Once you have more pilots than the usual maximum you will be able to choose which to transfer to the reserves. As an example - most groups of US army fighters have a size of 25, but can have extra pilots put into them up to 33. If at 25 (and due for withdrawl at some point) you will not be able to trnsfer pilots to the reserve pool. If you draw 8 pilots (now at 33) you can then remove 8 others to the reserve pool.

Hope that helps.

There is another way to do it that is *way* more time consuming. Set all of the pilots in the disband group to general reserve. You can then use the get veteran button to pull all of the pilots out of the unit, without having to fill the group with rookies. By this method you can reduce the disband units to zero pilots and not waste rookies. You will end up with units that have more pilots than needed.

It helps to pull the pilots out by sorting on the unit name. And I think it helps to pull the pilots into groups with a similar skill range. And then you get to spend the next two weeks of game time activating the pilots you pulled and sending out the pilots that don't match the skill range into some more appropriate group or the pool.

There may come a point where you find it useful to start stocking some of your bomber units with those fighter jocks lingering in the 30's and 40's air-skill wise. You might find it useful to put some of those pilots into units dedicated to learning how to strafe, in order to fill out your attack bomber units training for low ground and low naval.

Like everything else with this game, a lot depends on your level of obsession. [;)]

[minnowguy]

And don't forget that you can hit 'Y' on the keyboard instead of moving the mouse to the dialog box and then back to the tiny line of text!  Click, hit 'Y' (to reserve), Click, hit 'Y' (to general reserve).

Makes "harvesting" pilots out of training squadrons only mildly annoying instead of a major PITA.