Out of Plane Slots?

[HansBolter]

My current game is at March 9, 1946 and I am finding that I cannot draw replacement planes from the pools.

Every time I try to manually pull replacements the attempt fails and a flash message appears stating 'Out of Plane Slots'.

What does this mean and why can't I pull replacements?

[geofflambert]

I have no idea, but have you tried, experimentally, withdrawing a Amerikansky squadron back in California to make room?

Alternatively, can you move one of the Russky squadrons to a different base?

Obviously, there is such a thing as a "plane slot" and there is a finite number of them available and you've used them all up. Have you checked the editor to see if that's a thing listed there and can it be changed?

The model in this picture has 3 plane slots and they are used up. Do you have an extra wing or flap or something left over?

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert


Obviously, there is such a thing as a "plane slot" and there is a finite number of them available and you've used them all up.

Apparently I had used up every available plane slot in the game.

Seems strange that this is possible.
Why wouldn't there be enough plane slots to accommodate the potential number of planes in a scenario?

I disbanded and withdrew a bunch of back water squadrons and can now pull replacements again.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: geofflambert


Obviously, there is such a thing as a "plane slot" and there is a finite number of them available and you've used them all up.

Apparently I had used up every available plane slot in the game.

Seems strange that this is possible.
Why wouldn't there be enough plane slots to accommodate the potential number of planes in a scenario?

I disbanded and withdrew a bunch of back water squadrons and can now pull replacements again.

There was a similar problem with the number of air combat encounters that the game could have in a combat and this caused massive Allied CAP to stop intercepting massive IJ airstrikes. It was not an editor database issue, it had to be fixed by a programmer in the game engine. One of the last fixes before Matrix stopped supporting the game.

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: geofflambert


Obviously, there is such a thing as a "plane slot" and there is a finite number of them available and you've used them all up.

Apparently I had used up every available plane slot in the game.

Seems strange that this is possible.
Why wouldn't there be enough plane slots to accommodate the potential number of planes in a scenario?

I disbanded and withdrew a bunch of back water squadrons and can now pull replacements again.

There is a pilot array limit so it would be logical to also have a plane slot limit too. These sorts of limits are necessary to keep processing times within acceptable timeframes.

Possible explanations why this issue has not surfaced until this late in the war are:

1. Few available exemplars of games lasting into March 1946 for testing before release.

2. Computer v computer play, which would be the basis of getting test bed exemplars covering such an extended time period, would not exploit game mechanics as players do.

3. Unlike the computer player, human players do two things in particular which exploit game mechanics:

(a) maintain air groups at 133% of TOE
(b) resize air groups (groups which the devs did not intend to be resized at all) to huge sizes (to sizes not intended by the devs)



Similar problems are very unlikely to be encountered with land devices and ships as the land and ship OOBs are fairly fixed. They are not susceptible to the human player actions referred to in (3) above. Human players cannot maintain artificially overlarge LCU TOEs.

For the record, just in case a future programmer were to look at this part of the code, could you advise:

• how many Japanese and Allied air groups were on the map when the problem arose
• how many total Japanese and Allied airframes were on map

Posting a saved file would also assist. Ideally a saved file of the turn before the problem arose and a saved file with the problem.

Alfred

[Trugrit]

I think this has come up before back in 2011.

michaelm says you can only have 50K total planes in the game.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2883303

[Alfred]

IIRC, that was the timeframe when michaelm increased the pilot array limit from 50k to 70k.  That limit is for "named" pilots.
 
Alfred

[HansBolter]

Well, I have to confess this is the first ever game I have played with 'withdrawals off' so that has likely contributed to the issue.

I will continue disbanding and withdrawing back water squadrons to get me to the end of the scenario which is 2-1/2 months away.

Tried attaching a saved game, but the file is too large.

[Alfred]

Zip the file first.  It will slightly reduce the size, but not by much as saved files are already "reduced" but more importantly the forum has an increased size limit for files with the zip extension.
 
Alfred

[Ian R]

I had that message in 1947 quite a bit.

I did the same as Hans - disbanded multiple squadrons that I couldn't base in useful range of the remaining action. Mostly Soviet, but also all the surplus squadrons in Oz, NZ, etc. Part of the problem was that it had to be done incrementally, as required - otherwise the tier3 ironman IJ grabbed all the slots.

I also worked out in that game, that if you take surviving (bought out) NEI ground units and ship them to San Francisco, you can disband them into the pool and get some squads to make some NEI regiments useful.