Zanadu

Fatigue reduction with the POles still doesn't seem to work right. Missions flown by Polish pilots who have graduated into Hurricanes or Spitfires doesn't reduce the fatigue of pilots still flying P11c's, or the fatigue of other Polish pilots flying RAF types. Missions flown by Poles in P11's reduce each other's fatigue, and the fatigue of the Polish Hurri and Spit pilots. I've been continuing by creating throw away pilots in P11's to fly sacrifice, anti-fatigue missions, but it's considerable extra fuss.

Finally got a Pole past 50xp and flying a Hurricane, but now his missions don't seem to reduce the fatigue of the remaining Polish pilots.

I deleted again, and currently it seems to be going okay.

New problem. I've deleted all my Poles and started over, and it's still at it. The fatigue levels on my pilots aren't reduced unless the leader of the mission isn't shot down or damaged. And that's not very often!!!

Wouldn't know. None of my recent Poles have gotten beyond about 40xps before the Oscars kill them. By they way, how come 2/3s or more of my Poles opponants are Japanese??? Bf109Bs are doable for a P11c with no skills. Against an Oscar with an xtra draw, victory is not having BOTH the P11s shot down.

Thanx. Never even occured to me to try, as I'd already had four Poles. Wonder how big the RAF can get??

I have a problem. All of my Polish pilots are now permoted into the RAF except one. When the RAF/Poles fly missions it doesn't reduce the Polish AF Pole's fatigue, so he has no way to rest up and regain readiness. Is there anything that I can do short of eliminated one of my RAF Poles and try to get both permoted out at the same time??

Playing local against the AI, you had BETTER be able to buy an ACE or your chances of living thru the first turn decline radically. When your leader is valued at 190, and his opponant is valued at 50, but has several more skills, and more xtra draws, when he is attacking first, you need a fairly good supporting hand even with the ACE to have your leader survive long enough to see his segement of turn one. This has happened to my best German leader three times in the last four games he was in, and he come in at Hi. He was shot down first turn twice out of the three, and the third time he was damaged and reduced to only two structure points, because he had only one or two other defensive cards to go with the ACE.

I agree. In a recent game, my Polish Spit XIV leader (valued at 53) was up against a J2M leader valued at 39, but with a far more impressive list of skills.

Yes, I know. AS is the J7W and A6M8, neither of which actually went beyond prototype. Sixxkiller commented that the N1K2J would be nice even tho only about 450 were built. I wanted to point out that size of production wasn't a problem.

To Sixxkiller: So what if only 450 N1K2-J's were built?? There were less than a thousand MkXIV Spitfires built. I'd still like to see it.

Okay, and thanx for the attention. As I've said, it's been my experience that an AI pair with a value of 50 have ALL the basic skills, while a player pair with a value of 150 have only some of them. This usually means that in an excort mission, the player pair is up against two pair, both with far more skills. I had assumed that the AI values were figured on the basis of the original, flat cost of skills, while the player values were based on the sliding scale costs currently in effect. Will be eager to see if the new 'fix' balances the situation. Again, thanx.

I think that the problem is that the AI pilots values were figured using the original purchase system of flat values for various skills, rather than the current system in which each purchase increases the cost of furture purchases. The value system seems to be based purely on the pilots total xp's with a factoring for his a/c type. As a result, an AI pilot valued at 50 has ALL of the original skills and a fat line of xtra draws. A player pilot valued at 150 still has only some of the skills, and can't afford as many XD's. The result is, any combat he can't end very quickly, turns against him as his opponant gains greater and greater advantage of cards. Then, when you get one of those, unlucky set ups with two superior opponants, things get much worse. I recall my first attempt to do an escort mission with German pilots. My leader had a value of 30. The opposing leaders were valued at 39 and 49. The LW pilots were totally overmatched, and were stepped on like bugs. I consider it a tribute to skill that the wingman lasted into turn four, and that the He111's got thru undamaged while both enemy pairs hunted my '109s to death. If the difference in skills had been equivalent to the value scores it might have been somewhat less that completely hopeless.

Two points I'd like to discuss: First point. I play 'local' against the AI. As I see it, there's a problem in the difference in 'value' points between the player pilots and the AI pilots. For a while, with the expansion, this was tipped much too far the other way. Survive one mission flying a P-11 and your second mission was with the RAF in a Spitfire with a couple of skills. That changed with the latest download, which returned things to the previous situation. An AI pilot of any serious 'value' (say, above 15 or so) has far more skills than a player pilot with the same value rating. I realize that you can get more points flying escort (assuming you're successful) than interception, but I rarely do escorts. I end up with my leader (valued at 100 or 150 points) against two hostile leaders valued at 40-50 points each, but each with more skills and extra draws than my pilot. I can ussually shoot down one leader, and keep the rest busy so that at least one bomber gets thru, but I also usually have one or both of my pilots shot down. So I stick to interceptions, where they have a reasonable chance of survival. Simply put, the values on the AI pilots are much too low. Second point: I've flow a fair number of missions as Poles and Sov's, and also missions as Japanese and Germans since installing the expansion. I have yet to encounter Soviet opponants when flying the Japanese or Germans. I know there are Soviet AI pilots in there, as they show up when flying interecpt missions as Soviets.

To rich: I have always assumed that Stalin's quotes are NOT Islamist propaganda, but rather an attempt to point out the extent to which that religion -- as currently practiced by some -- fails to conform to their own text.

Yes, it was the prototype, but it wasn't the Wildcat. The man was applied initially to the production F4F-3. Yes, that's a technicality, I suppose, but the XF4F-2 was very much a quicky conversion effort, developed in much less time than Brewster had with the F2A. One thing about the F2A that the Navy didn't like was the landing gear, which was considered barely strong enough for carrier landings. The rate of deck crashes was considerably higher than for the Wildcat. One the other hand, every account I've seen insisted that the early F2A were extremely pleasant a/c to fly, and the pilots generally liked them.

I was pretty frustrated for a while, when I repeatedly found my leaders (with values of 100-150) up against opponants valued at 40-50 points with far more skills. The expansion pack more than cured that. The AI a/c have been revalued much higher -- maybe too high.

Stalin: I've been doing some checking with other sources. The rate of climb numbers are too high to be anything except full throttle climbes. While both the RAF and USAAF generally used 'time to climb' numbers to compare climbing performance, the USN used 'initial rate of climb', that it, the average climb rate in feet per minute to ten thousand feet, for comparisons. The 'book' value initial climb rates for some USN a/c (from UNITED STATES NAVY AIRCRAFT SINCE 1911 by Swanborough and Bowers) are: Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat: 1950 feet per minute Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat: 2980 Grumman F8F-1 Bearcat: 4570 (generally considered the fastest climbing piston engined production a/c ever built) Vought F4U-1 Corsair: 2890 Vought F4U-4 Corsair: 3780 IJN A6M3 Zero-32: 4500 IJN A6M5 Zero-52: 3140 The value on the chart for the Spitfire IX: 4348 for the P38F 3489 NOte that the Spit IX isn't much short of the Bearcat's climb rate, while the P38F is somewhat higher than the Hellcat and Corsair, which is consistant with the pilot accounts that I've read. Also, below 10K, the early Zero could outclimb even the Lightning, but lost climb rate quickly above that height, and was no match for the P38F at higher levels.

The climbs would have been at full power, with the IAS controlled by the climb angle. Actually, this should have been at least a minor advantage to the Spitfire, as the Lightning was usually clibed at a higher speed, but shallower angle. The Lightning (F) could out climb the Zero (A6M2 or 3) in terms of actual rate of climb, but the Zero could climb more steeply. The Lightning still gained altitude faster due to the higher IAS.

Just a little more on the Buffalo. On Dec. 7, '41, the US Navy and Marine Corps each had one squadron equiped with Buffalos. The Navy squadron was based on the carrier Lexington, and was re-equiped with Wildcats before seeing any serious combat. In fact, this is why Lexinton was carrying VF3 (borrowed from Saratoga) at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The regular squadron, VF2 was the one re-equiping. The Marine BUffalo squadron lost most of them defending Midway Island in June.

The a/c the Brewster Buffalo (F2A) beat out in the Navy competition wasn't actually the Wildcat. The name was awarded later. It was the XF4F-2. Grumman's original entry, the XF4F-1 was a BIPLANE -- a direct developement of the earlier F3F. When it became obvious that a biplane couldn't compete with the Brewster, the project was restarted as a monoplane, which was built around the fuselage and tail of the biplane. The Brewster was determined to be superior, but the Navy felt that the Grumman had more developement potential and encouraged a more complete redesign, resulting the the F4F-3 which had superior performance to the Buffalo. Pilots who flew both, generally reported that they'd much rather fight in an Wildcat, but that the Buffalo was a much nicer a/c to fly. It did, indeed, give very good service to the Finns, and it's unlikely that Hurricanes would have done any better in Malaya given the lack of radar, and the tactics (lack of tactics, really) the pilots had been taught. When the first Spitfires (Mk Vs) arrived in the far east in early 1943, they found themselves on the short end of the kill-to-loss ratios until they learned to stop trying to turn with Zeros and Oscars.

Looked the stats over again. Problem is that, historically, the P38F and G dominated the South Pacific, but by the game stats, the P38F is pretty much of a dog. The Hellcat and Corsaid have superior performance and horsepower vs the Fs cannon bonus and a slight advantage in structure. The early Zero is about equal with the 'agility' capability to match the P38Fs strenght of structure. The A6M5 is much superior to the P38F with better performance and better wingman offense vs only the Lightning's stronger structure. With it's low horsepower rating and without the 'turbo' it's going to do poorly at high altitude, where, historically, it dominated.

Stalin I think that you mis-read the captioning. The climbs were made at FULL power. They were initiated from level flight at cruising throttle (165mph I.A.S.)

thanks, bartbert. May be a couple days delay. Have to go to work and expect to be pretty busy until thursday. Do it as soon as I've got time.

Also, my attempts to register the expansion kit have failed.