training and the human factor

[blue_yonder]

While watching today’s stream, it struck me paradox has done a great job of realising their initial vision – of showing the war from the standpoint of technology and machinery and state control. But this emphasis has been at the expense of the human element, the skill and morale of those who actually did the fighting.

Land forces receive training at different levels, dependent on expense. That’s fine, but I hope one day that troop rotation becomes possible, with divisions who have been in the thick of it for months on end offered R&R behind the lines, with real effects if this is ignored or is impossible due to circumstance.

Much more than that though, it seems logically inconsistent to train one branch of the service but not the other two. Oil is used to produce ships and planes at the basic level, factory-fresh and with no crew training. Hopefully nobody wants a rehash of the rights and wrongs of that mechanism, but it seems a missed opportunity not to use what is already in place to provide options for air and sea as well as land.

For the oil-price paid, my hurricane comes out of the factory and is ready to fly. If I could then have the option to pay a further 0.01 oil (let’s say) per day per plane, I could do pilot training and bring him up from green to basic over a period of time. If I’m then prepared to keep on paying my daily oil price to keep him in the sky, he goes from basic to regular exactly like the troops. The same principle applies to the navy; if I just want the ship and a that’ll-do-crew, I pay the base rate and get on with it. If I want sea trials and gunnery practice and all the rest, I pay for it in oil.

 

[Vidkjaer]

While watching today’s stream, it struck me paradox has done a great job of realising their initial vision – of showing the war from the standpoint of technology and machinery and state control. But this emphasis has been at the expense of the human element, the skill and morale of those who actually did the fighting.

Land forces receive training at different levels, dependent on expense. That’s fine, but I hope one day that troop rotation becomes possible, with divisions who have been in the thick of it for months on end offered R&R behind the lines, with real effects if this is ignored or is impossible due to circumstance.

Much more than that though, it seems logically inconsistent to train one branch of the service but not the other two. Oil is used to produce ships and planes at the basic level, factory-fresh and with no crew training. Hopefully nobody wants a rehash of the rights and wrongs of that mechanism, but it seems a missed opportunity not to use what is already in place to provide options for air and sea as well as land.

For the oil-price paid, my hurricane comes out of the factory and is ready to fly. If I could then have the option to pay a further 0.01 oil (let’s say) per day per plane, I could do pilot training and bring him up from green to basic over a period of time. If I’m then prepared to keep on paying my daily oil price to keep him in the sky, he goes from basic to regular exactly like the troops. The same principle applies to the navy; if I just want the ship and a that’ll-do-crew, I pay the base rate and get on with it. If I want sea trials and gunnery practice and all the rest, I pay for it in oil.

From what i have seen on the videos planes operate in airwings. There were several popups showing how much coverage you have in a region with your planes. I guess that the airwing with all its planes operates as one unit giving high detection chances or other features when an air region is fully covered. Therefor PDS has the ACE which can be assigned to an airwing. Experience does not matter per single plane, but for the whole airwing in total. And here is the ACE the solution.

 

[blue_yonder]

Experience does not matter per single plane

As things stand, no, it doesn't, yet I think it matters very much, because it is the nearest we can get to representing pilots without actually having pilots in the game. Japan, for example, could train its pilots to a high standard in the early days, lose many of them in a disaster, and be forced to resort to pumping out basic planes+pilots thereafter. There are other scenarios where post-production investment would at least make pilot skill, or lack thereof, a factor. This whole 'aces' thing strikes me as one of the weaker points of the design.