Replacement pools dry out, too few pilots come from schools

[seille]

I´m the jap in a Scen. 2 game in 10/43 now using one of the latest betas (june).
Actually i face a problem i cannot explain myself. I get too few pilots out of the schools. My IJN replacement pool are already empty and
for the IJA i got only 30 pilots this month.

What worries me is that for a 3-month-cycle with 600 pilots i get only 30 finished pilots.

I just calculated that at end of september 1943 i had 6446 trainees in my schools, in early october (after the acceleration)
i have only 5227. I should obviously not trust the numbers in tracker here, cause the ingame numbers are different.

Tracker shows another hit at my training classes few turns ago.
How can the trainees of month cycle 4-6 drop from 1950 to 195 here? Where are all these recruits? Some pilots were forwarded because of TRACOM,
but imho the hole here is too big. Or i completely misunderstand how the engine works here. Tracker must be wrong since ingame i get different numbers
I did not do anything strange except having my (IJN) recruit pools empty since 100 turns.

Seem to be two problems. Tracker showing wrong numbers for the classes (IJN in this case) and the numbers of pilots leaving the schools ready to serve in my air units.

I added two screens to show the problem better. Maybe one of the IJN experts can tell me what is wrong here.
For a very long time all was ok, but now the trainees seem to evaporate. Need help cause i cannot fight with replacements of 100 or less IJN pilots.

[seille]

Tracker screen from IJN Replacement pool

[obvert]

Not sure what's up with the tracker page, but I do know that by this point I usually have very few training pilots in the school for the IJN. Some maybe in months 1-3, but in my two games that made it into mid-43, I'd gotten most of the trainees into training groups on map using float plane units and keeping back 1/3 of the IJNAF for training.

It does look like a bunch have been accelerated though. The in game window shows less in months 7-9 than in 10-12.

I'd resize some FP groups for training and maybe take some more off of the front lines to get more out of the schools and on board training.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: obvert

Not sure what's up with the tracker page, but I do know that by this point I usually have very few training pilots in the school for the IJN. Some maybe in months 1-3, but in my two games that made it into mid-43, I'd gotten most of the trainees into training groups on map using float plane units and keeping back 1/3 of the IJNAF for training.

It does look like a bunch have been accelerated though. The in game window shows less in months 7-9 than in 10-12.

I'd resize some FP groups for training and maybe take some more off of the front lines to get more out of the schools and on board training.

Or you can just stuff them into big ol' fighter groups, then transfer them to reserve for training at a later date, while you continue to pull from the school.


Honestly, your XP levels are pretty good for months 10-12 anyway. Mine are upper-20s...

[geofflambert]

You can draw pilots in training. The replacement pool will show empty and in red on your air group. Hit draw from replacements anyway. It often takes awhile, maybe 20-30 seconds, but they show up. They will be insufficiently trained and you will need to put them in training groups, but they will train to the specialty you desire faster than if you leave them in the training pools. Also, you should have a lot more transport groups (IJA) than you need. Use those in general training mode. Once they get up to 50 in experience I like to put them in fighter training units. That way you'll achieve 70 fighter skill level plus 70 defensive skill level whereas the pilots you trained exclusively in escort/sweep may only rate 30 to 40 in defense. Unfortunately you don't have excess transpot units in the IJN so you need to conserve those pilots as best you can and make the army carry the load.

[geofflambert]

Another reason you need to be very careful with your IJN fighter pilots is that you need to be training as many pilots as possible in bombing ships, torpedoing ships, naval search and ASW. I don't think you can afford to train in port and airfield attack and especially shouldn't even attempt that against targets that are heavily defended with fighters and flak. Except Dec. 7, of course. Try and get most of your land based naval search accomplished with army planes, especially the Babs so you can use your Bettys and Nells to train in torpedo attacks. Never use Bettys or Nells against land targets, that's a terrible waste of planes and pilots. Keep building Babs and the KI-46-III when you get those.

[geofflambert]

As the IJN, I have all active carrier planes, both dive bombers and torpedo, do 10 percent search and 10 ASW, unless I'm expecting a battle in which case I drop the ASW.

For people playing the allied side, I suggest having the dive bombers do all the searching and the torpedo bombers all the ASW.

[seille]

ORIGINAL: obvert

Not sure what's up with the tracker page, but I do know that by this point I usually have very few training pilots in the school for the IJN. Some maybe in months 1-3, but in my two games that made it into mid-43, I'd gotten most of the trainees into training groups on map using float plane units and keeping back 1/3 of the IJNAF for training.

It does look like a bunch have been accelerated though. The in game window shows less in months 7-9 than in 10-12.

I'd resize some FP groups for training and maybe take some more off of the front lines to get more out of the schools and on board training.

1. I get 680 Pilots per month for my IJN schools. Thats at least how i read this. The question is why i get so few out of the schools.
Did i bite into my training classes without realizing it and pulled trainees out of the schools into my air units ? With the beta is use now it seems to be impossible, but probably with earlier ones.

2. How the acceleration works i´m not sure. How far goes the acceleration ? From month 6 just to 7 or more ?

3. My IJN Replacement pool might be empty because i use intensive training especially float planes. And i use several resized units. But the number of training units has no impact
for what comes from the schools, or ? I expect a fixed number -the guys that not make it and accidents. Or is there a random thing involved i don´t know ? Hard to believe because in the first
year of the war i got about that out of the schools what entered the school.

[seille]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

You can draw pilots in training. The replacement pool will show empty and in red on your air group. Hit draw from replacements anyway.

That works indeed, but i´m sure i respected the red color for the pool and did not draw pilots.
Was the red color for empty pools always there or was it added in one of the last betas ?
I might have drawn pilots out of the schools using a earlier beta not noticing it, but there are still 604 pilots in cycle 9-12 and i got only 102.
Do i get the other 502 during the next 2 months ? I doubt it.

[geofflambert]

The red warning goes back some time but I only started playing the Japanese a year ago. Some of your questions are going to have to be answered by others, but if you are going to have a sufficient pool of trained crews in at least one specialty, and in the case of IJN bomber crews, two, you will be forced to draw from the training pools. The pilots in those pools will not be released until they have completed 9 months of training or its equivalent.

Another issue in play here is whether it makes sense to send pilots with an experience level of >80 into TRACOM. In my view the answer (for the IJN anyways) is no. Others say yes. I think that "yes" is certainly the case with the Americans, but the Brits and the IJN simply can't afford that luxury. I haven't done it but perhaps the IJA would benefit from that. Doing it means you are maintaining a pool, however small, of highly trained pilots.

Again, I don't know how the acceleration works, but someone presently will address that.

[seille]

@Geoff

Sorry, but we do not talk here about trained crews/IJN Pools.
We talk about the pools for rookies coming from schools which the jap player then uses for more training in his training air units.
Watch my first screen and you see what the problem is.

[Alfred]

seille,
 
You won't get a good answer because a lot more info is required.  Minimum to be provided is:
 

• pilot pool screenshots as of 1 Oct, 30 Sept and 31 Aug
• confirmation that not a single air unit has auto pilot replacements turned on
• details of the pilot HI "tax" paid on 1 Oct, 1 Sept and 1 Aug
• actual in game messages advising of pilots accelerated for Oct, Sept and Aug

All that can be said with certainty now is:
 
(a) at the start of each month, 680 IJN and 815 IJA new pilots enter training school at cycle 1
(b) there are twelve cycles in pilot training school and each cycle is kept separate from each other but for presentation ease are aggregated into groups of 3 in the pilot pool screen
(c) when informed that 275 were accelerated from cycle 8, 50 from cycle 7 and 475 from cycle 6 this means that
 

• 275 from cycle 8 jumped to cycle 10 (and joined the unaccelerated cycle 9 cohort), the remainder of cycle 8 progressed as normally to cycle 9
• 50 from cycle 7 jumped to cycle 9 (and joined the unaccelerated cycle 8 cohort), the remainder of cycle 7 progressed as normally to cycle 8
• 475 from cycle 6 jumped to cycle 8 (and joined the unaccelerated cycle 7 cohort), the remainder of cycle 6 progressed as normally to cycle 7

It is not uncommon to find pilot accelerations cease for a few months either completely or occur at a much reduced rate.  When this happens one sees a bulge in the pipeline followed by an anemic pipeline.  It is not always a benefit to have received pilot accelerations.
 
Alfred

[seille]

Alfred,

Thats a answer i hoped for. Many thanks that you took the time to look at.

Here some more Infos. I attached the screen for the pilot pools for the dates you wanted.

My HI costs i paid for the last months are 70k+ with about 15.000 pilots in training.

I have auto pilot selection off. Never used it. Pilot management is a fully manual job in my game.

Sadly i have not he time to search for all the acceleration reports. Tracker doesn´t show them and i have no other tools here to filter them out of the reports.
But i had definitely accelerations during the last months.

The actual high replacement rates i get since 01/43, so actually none of these guys (without accelleration) has finished his training.
The former low replacement rates combined with acceleration might have led to the actual low pilot flow from the schools.
Would be easier to analyze when you would have pilot values for every month in training school.

Thank you for looking into that problem and explaining the accelleration thing.

[geofflambert]

Can we see your top pilots screen, the first two or three pages (scrolls)?

Also roughly what percentage of your IJN squadrons are focused on training?

Did you expand all available float plane and carrier aircraft squadrons? By available of course I mean all the ones that are allowed to expand.

Also can we see your information screen with your air losses? It doesn't break down by IJA/IJN but might be helpful

[geofflambert]

I just reposted your first two posts in the tracker sticky thread, just an error, I think

[seille]

@Geoff

My top pilot ? 13 kills and dead. I have many pilots in the range of 5-10 kills, many of them already dead or MIA. A good amount was transferred into TRACOM. But more for keep them safe there
than for accellerating training.

I resized many air units. Most of them, but not all. And not all of them to their max size, cause i think it is a bit gamey. We do not have a HR for this.
For example i use the air groups of sunk subs. Bought them back, resized them and use them now for training. Same for former cruiser airgroups.
The problem is i have much more free training seats than pilots ! That´s why i opened this threat.

Might be a tracker bug i found. Tracker displays the 1950 pilots i have in month 4-6 as 195.