A thought about the Background Sim & Pilots

[Varibraun]

@PatrickAWlson after playing through the entire "war" a few times, I have seen pretty quick attrition among the highest ranking pilots, leaving many squadrons led by Lts fairly early in the war.  My current Ace of Aces Campaign (attached) is a good example of where the war stands in Summer '42 (in the fighter squadrons there are no Soviet Majors or Kaptains left and only one German Major and a couple Hptms).  I think this attrition also impacts pilot skill since the squadrons have a hard time building up their skill level due to losses.  I don't have any complaint about the attrition itself, my thought is more about the replacements and squadron commanders it leaves in its wake.

 

Tonight, I sadly watched my only AI squadron ace in a mid air, leaving him disabled for the rest of the war.  This got me thinking about whether there might be a way to get some additional ranking & skilled members back into the squadrons along the way through the background sim replacement pool and transfers. 

 

With this in mind, do you think any of the following ideas would be possible or productive in the future?

 

-Allow seriously wounded/disabled pilots to potentially return to the replacement pool after a period of time?  Maybe a 75% RNG that they will return at some point, and then a 1-12 month return window to the replacement pool or old squardron.  (We know this happened IRL, especially with the LW).

 

-Include potential replacements who are "transfers" from other theaters/squadrons/commands with veteran/ace skill/kill levels and with "1stLt/Captain" level ranks.*

 

-Include a few new pilots "Szt" level in the replacement pool with competent/veteran skill levels to represent those rare natural combat pilots destined to become aces.*

 

-If the player pilot advances to Maj level and replaces the AI squadron commander, transfer the AI Squadron commander to take command of another squadron in game that is commanded by a lower ranking AI.

 

-Allow players to transfer AI pilots between squadrons to bring more experienced/higher ranking pilots into decimated squadrons.

 

*These could be subject to RNG%s based on nationality and time period during the war.  I think you have already done a great job with this within the overall squadron skill levels and basic replacement pool.  When playing early war Soviet or late war German it has been noticeable and impactful (as it should).

 

Anyway, just a thought - I know these kind of things are a lot easier for the "Einstein" on the keyboard to type, than for the talented programmer engineer to implement.  Thanks as always! 

 

 

 

 

Ace of Aces202111192111785.zip

Edited November 28, 2021 by Varibraun

[Stonehouse]

I think that would be a good idea if it was not too hard for Pat to do. If you had a table by service weighted by year you could possibly also represent the relative quality changes over the course of the war. Even if you left out the year you could have a table by service with percentage chance for each rank and it's corresponding mission editor skill to randomly provide some better quality pilots for replacements at times. The table could also carry a min, max range of missions and min, max range of kills and if a higher rank pilot was a replacement then you could randomly chose a number of missions and kills between the min and max to populate the squadron chalk board. I guess you would need some logic to prevent more than one Squadron leader etc type thing ending up in the squadron.