What to do with older aircrafts?

[changkongcc]

I am playing 41-45 Campaign as Soviets, and there are tons of old aircrafts stopped production. Will these old aircrafts gradually converted to better ones or decomposited for Armament points? Or is burning them out in combat the only way to clear the inventory?

[Chris21wen]

I'd use as needed. I.e. not needlessly throwing them away. There's also a posibility that some old frames will be converted to new, the game does say how many and if you run out of newer frame you can alway go back to older one, something is better than nothing.

[CapAndGown]

You can manually upgrade any air unit from one airframe to another within certain class restrictions (i.e. fighter-bombers can be converted to fighters or tactical bombers, but not transports or level bombers). This costs 1 admin points. They will also auto upgrade/downgrade based on the setting for the unit. I believe the factory details screen (click on the factory details info from the production screen) will tell you what the upgrade path is both for the factory and the airframe. For instance, the Mig-3 factories upgrade to IL-2 factories in January 42, while Mig-3 air units upgrade to Yak-1B's in October 42. (v 12.05)

In my current game, I have sent all the I-153, I-153BS and I-15bis units to the national reserve. Some may auto convert there. Others I will pull in from the national reserve as newer airframes become available and manually convert them.

For on map units, I do not want them swapping to older air frames, so I have set their upgrade status to "upgrade only."