Matrix Games Forums

When picking pilots from, say the reserve pool, to send to an air group, being able to filter by pilot type: Fighter, Bomber, Recon, etc. is really handy.

All is good until (as Japan) I go to pick naval bomber pilots. The problem is the naval bomber pilots may be (a) torpedo bomber pilots, (b) dive bomber pilots, or (c) level bomber pilots. Looking at the list of bomber pilots, there is no easy way to tell which is what. The result is, all too often, I've had a pilot drop 2-3 experience points upon assigning to a mismatched air group.

The only way I've found to insure assigning the correct pilots it to go to Tracker, and filter the reserve pool by DB, LB, TB, etc. Then write down the names (with 1-day delay), then go back to the pilot screen and fetch the names I wrote down. Somewhat cumbersome and time-consuming.

A nice feature would be a refinement on the filter. Instead of the generic Bomber pilot filter, have filters for Dive Bomber, Level Bomber, Torpedo Bomber, etc. And it looks like there might even be room for the additional filter options on the screen.

Why not use the pilot skills to determine who is best to transfer to a group?

ORIGINAL: michaelm

Why not use the pilot skills to determine who is best to transfer to a group?

Wellllllll....... it's still a bit clunky. I just deal with the Experience loss, but I wish I didn't have to.

For example, your Kate and Netty pilots are going to want pretty much the same skills. But there's no way to tell what you're getting unless you use Tracker to do it, which I actually didn't know about so thanks sanch! [&o]

If you have two monitors, like I do, you can just move Tracker over to the other screen. I still don't think I'll get this anal about my pilot training and pilot selection, but if for some reason I'm really going to care about those 1-5 experience points, I'll do that.

It's even more complicated when you introduce bomber pilots/crews trained with emphasis on different skill sets. Even a pilot that is not a TB or DB pilot might be trained in ground, or low-ground, or low-naval, or also have strafe; or be trained in Naval search and ASW.

So would it be beneficial to add groups beyond the ones there now? Yes, but I don't know how much trouble that would be to implement. For one thing the player would have to be able to decide which reserve group a pilot went into.

Not sure if any of this is in the cards to be considered.

I should add that having the ability to sort on multiple columns would eliminate the need/benefit of being able to have more groups.

I like the idea. I haven't worried to much about it, Just trained the new transfer for the skills needed. A pain in the A**, and time consuming but it works....GP

ORIGINAL: michaelm
Why not use the pilot skills to determine who is best to transfer to a group?

If the pilot has no NavT skills, it is (usually) a safe bet the pilot is a dive-bomber pilot.

However, if the pilot does have NavT (with or without NavB) there is no way (I know of) to differentiate or tell if the pilot is a LB pilot or a TB pilot. This is the crux of the issue.

Another way to solve this would be if you could squeeze another column into the pilot listing - the type of pilot. The entries could be simply LB, TB, DB, etc., but then there would be no ambiguity when picking a pilot for your Nettie group.