Group reserve - does anyone actually use this?

[rader]

I'm curious if anyone actually ever uses the "group reserve" feature? And if you do, what do you use it for?

It seems way too micromanagy to me to go through your air groups and purposely stand down pilots, etc. And they seem to activate spontaneously anyway, so I'm not sure there would be any point..?

It seems to me to be just an extra unecessary pool for pilots. Wouldn't it be easier if pilots were just either in a group (possibly with delay, that seems to work ok), or not in a group? Why do they need to ever be deactivate/activated? I ask because I spend an average of a couple of minutes each turn activating pilots in various group reserves when after almost 2 full games of WITP:AE, I have never once felt the urge to deactivate them or put them into group reserve. I'm curious if there are different opinions on this, and if not, what is the feature for?

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: rader

I'm curious if anyone actually ever uses the "group reserve" feature? And if you do, what do you use it for?

It seems way too micromanagy to me to go through your air groups and purposely stand down pilots, etc. And they seem to activate spontaneously anyway, so I'm not sure there would be any point..?

It seems to me to be just an extra unecessary pool for pilots. Wouldn't it be easier if pilots were just either in a group (possibly with delay, that seems to work ok), or not in a group? Why do they need to ever be deactivate/activated? I ask because I spend an average of a couple of minutes each turn activating pilots in various group reserves when after almost 2 full games of WITP:AE, I have never once felt the urge to deactivate them or put them into group reserve. I'm curious if there are different opinions on this, and if not, what is the feature for?

never used it. It actually annoys me because I have to manually get probably tens of thousands of pilots out of the group reserve in a PBEM that goes over the years. [8|]

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: rader

I'm curious if anyone actually ever uses the "group reserve" feature?

Nope. Not intentionally. Like Castor Troy: their either in the unit, general reserve, TRACOM or a replacement / teaching pool.

Do you ever intentionally rotate fliers home for 180 days? Another waste 'feature', IMO.

[Dan Nichols]

You mean this one?

104.Removed ability to send pilot 'home for 180 days' as not desired or useful.

[witpqs]

Group reserve is not a problem as I see it. The fliers with 1 day delay are automatically activated by the game, so you don't have to select them and activate them. If you put some extra pilots in a squadron that is in heavy combat, pilots with too much fatigue are automatically put on 1 day delay until they recover. Works fine.

The issue is with the scenario files. They have named pilots arriving directly to their groups. That was fine before pilot training in the various skills. Now it's a problem because the scenario files do not have skills in them, only experience (in other words whatever was in the pilot files before the skills were added to the game). When a named pilot shows up he is given randomly assigned skills (I guess) based on his experience and maybe the squadrons type (another guess). That's what takes all the clicking - finding them as they arrive and sending them to the reserve so you can pick them up later in a training squadron.

I wrote a Python program to take a pilot file and modify it so any pilots arriving after their units will instead be sent directly to the reserve. Treespider and I used it for our game (but we only got to summer '42 before real life knocked him out of the game).

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Dan Nichols

You mean this one?

104.Removed ability to send pilot 'home for 180 days' as not desired or useful.

I assume that this was a beta patch change? I don't play with the betas, as there are any number of 'undocumented' changes that have been cited as interfering with gameplay. Glad to see that this click-a-fest has been removed for those that choose to use the betas.

[GreyJoy]

never used it. Useless. I want all my pilots to be eligible for flying duties cause it helps to keep the avg fatigue levels low...
 
Have you ever noticed that very experienced pilots are really less prone to get fatigued?
 
My ELITE squadron (12 pilots in a 7 planes group) has an avg exp of 94 and even at 100%LRCAP (3 hexes) only accumulates 10 fatigue points every 2 days![X(]...while a squadron with an avg exp of 50 for the same distance of LRCAP accumulates more than 40 fatigue points every 2 days

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Dan Nichols

You mean this one?

104.Removed ability to send pilot 'home for 180 days' as not desired or useful.

I assume that this was a beta patch change? I don't play with the betas, as there are any number of 'undocumented' changes that have been cited as interfering with gameplay. Glad to see that this click-a-fest has been removed for those that choose to use the betas.

CB, noting really wrong with the betas at all. Any glitch and michaelm fixes it pronto. Once you see it you will not ever want to go back. Any glitches are far outweighed by the issues in the last patch that have been corrected.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Dan Nichols

You mean this one?

104.Removed ability to send pilot 'home for 180 days' as not desired or useful.

I assume that this was a beta patch change? I don't play with the betas, as there are any number of 'undocumented' changes that have been cited as interfering with gameplay. Glad to see that this click-a-fest has been removed for those that choose to use the betas.

CB, noting really wrong with the betas at all. Any glitch and michaelm fixes it pronto. Once you see it you will not ever want to go back. Any glitches are far outweighed by the issues in the last patch that have been corrected.

Concur. And all changes are documented (I'm not saying he didn't miss one but that's not the point). Whoever is telling you stories about "any number of 'undocumented' changes that have been cited as interfering with gameplay" is full of it IMO.

[Knyvet]

even the public beta is broke (see public beta thread) - hopefully fixed soon

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: Knyvet

even the public beta is broke (see public beta thread) - hopefully fixed soon

[&:] I checked the public beta thread and everything seems to be fine.

[rader]

Since no one seems to use it, maybe we should lobby Michael to try to get rid of it? Would make pilot management a bit easier.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: rader

Since no one seems to use it, maybe we should lobby Michael to try to get rid of it? Would make pilot management a bit easier.

I guess you didn't read all of the posts... [:)]

[rader]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: rader

Since no one seems to use it, maybe we should lobby Michael to try to get rid of it? Would make pilot management a bit easier.

I guess you didn't read all of the posts... [:)]

Ah whoops, sorry, did miss yours. [:D] So what is the advantage of it? I mean, it does prevent my pilots from training if they are in group reserve. If I want them to train at all, I have to go through and activate each one individually. Not a "problem" per se, but sort of annoying. And if it is just about fatigue management, isn't that already covered by just selecting the least fatigued active pilot to fly? I just don't see any up side, but I do see a down side.

EDIT: It is possible that training is the only place where this even comes up, because maybe they don't get much fatigue doing that and are thus never activated.

[Dan Nichols]

It can be useful if you want to use it. If I want to transfer a bunch of pilots from a training unit to a front line unit I can put them in group reserve and then sort the vets by unit and find the ones I want very easy.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Dan Nichols

You mean this one?

104.Removed ability to send pilot 'home for 180 days' as not desired or useful.

I assume that this was a beta patch change? I don't play with the betas, as there are any number of 'undocumented' changes that have been cited as interfering with gameplay. Glad to see that this click-a-fest has been removed for those that choose to use the betas.

CB, noting really wrong with the betas at all. Any glitch and michaelm fixes it pronto. Once you see it you will not ever want to go back. Any glitches are far outweighed by the issues in the last patch that have been corrected.

Thanks crsutton-I understand the support for the betas is solid. Good on ya, mate. I just bristle at thinking I know how an engine / the game works and having my understanding pulled out from beneath me. My resistance to 'nerfing' some platforms is similar. Examples include monkeying with CAP efficacy or leakers (or at least CAP the way I understand it's worked for the past year), range of some bombers (e.g. D4Y1) and other comparatively 'minor' issues. It's worth keeping the warts of the official patches so as to avoid surprises.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy


I assume that this was a beta patch change? I don't play with the betas, as there are any number of 'undocumented' changes that have been cited as interfering with gameplay. Glad to see that this click-a-fest has been removed for those that choose to use the betas.

CB, noting really wrong with the betas at all. Any glitch and michaelm fixes it pronto. Once you see it you will not ever want to go back. Any glitches are far outweighed by the issues in the last patch that have been corrected.

Concur. And all changes are documented (I'm not saying he didn't miss one but that's not the point). Whoever is telling you stories about "any number of 'undocumented' changes that have been cited as interfering with gameplay" is full of it IMO.

Ah, my Argletonian colleague-it wouldn't make me feel better if the patch 'documented' "CAP is now borked". I wouldn't embrace it more for documenting its gameplay changes. See a short list of questionable changes that I placed in crsutton's response. I appreciate the support the betas has amongst y'all, but I just can't do it. To each their own.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Dan Nichols

It can be useful if you want to use it. If I want to transfer a bunch of pilots from a training unit to a front line unit I can put them in group reserve and then sort the vets by unit and find the ones I want very easy.

Ditto - this is a very useful technique. From a training squadron direct to a squadron that has just arrived and is preparing to deploy.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: crsutton



CB, noting really wrong with the betas at all. Any glitch and michaelm fixes it pronto. Once you see it you will not ever want to go back. Any glitches are far outweighed by the issues in the last patch that have been corrected.

Concur. And all changes are documented (I'm not saying he didn't miss one but that's not the point). Whoever is telling you stories about "any number of 'undocumented' changes that have been cited as interfering with gameplay" is full of it IMO.

Ah, my Argletonian colleague-it wouldn't make me feel better if the patch 'documented' "CAP is now borked". I wouldn't embrace it more for documenting its gameplay changes. See a short list of questionable changes that I placed in crsutton's response. I appreciate the support the betas has amongst y'all, but I just can't do it. To each their own.

You only mentioned one - the CAP issue. The D4YXYZ whatever issue is OOB, not touched in the Betas at all. Wasn't that one done in either the original AE or one of the official patches long ago?

Anywho as far as the CAP issue goes, check out the threads for yourself and you will see that change is not in the Betas. It is in special Betas running in parallel that only a few people are using. I do not happen to be one of them, although I am looking with interest at the reports of those who are. BTW the reports are encouraging vis-a-vis increased realism.

You mention other minor issues, but not what they are so I can't speak to them.

Now, here is another perspective. You have (I presume?) been watching the Beta thread and the various ones surrounding it. You don't have to go right with the latest Beta. You can choose one that you feel has 'aged' appropriately! [:D] If you haven't been downloading them all along, just say which one you want and I or someone else is all but certain to have it for you. That way you see:

- What is in the patch notes up to that patch.
- What is in later patch notes that indicate later fixes possibly relevant to that patch.
- The posts of people who loaded that patch with whatever info they have to offer.

The best part is, you become an honorary Argletonian!!! Your off-line friends will be jealous! Your relatives will be proud! Your wife will dope-slap you, but you'll get over that.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: Dan Nichols

It can be useful if you want to use it. If I want to transfer a bunch of pilots from a training unit to a front line unit I can put them in group reserve and then sort the vets by unit and find the ones I want very easy.

Ditto - this is a very useful technique. From a training squadron direct to a squadron that has just arrived and is preparing to deploy.

Yep, SOP for me. Use it all the time. Also, I use it to park high fatigue pilots to ensure they don't fly a few days and then bring them back when they are rested.

Would NOT support any notion to remove it.