Sigh.

Not again.

The current mechanics for fighters have been in place since the big CV patch of 2009.

before the patch that u mention the survival of planes (like dodging enemy burst) on scouts/fighter/bomber was moustly based on their pilot's bomber stat. The attck value was for succesfull shoting. The promotions on fighter grid had major penalties for bomber stat. After that patch for each type of planes - works only their own abilities.

That is the first reason why in past the fighters was lateclassed. Now it's not actual anymore.

The second reason for lateclassing pilots was their total crew max size (rookies/exp/vets). In our case with each promotion on fighter grid u lose significant amount of rookies surplus per level.
The classed in-time fighter pilot at 120 lvl will have 545 total crew size. 40% of it will be 218 (the maximum number of veterans for this pilot). 
Some guys use delay on last classing to get more veterans due to maximum of 40% from total crew size (and the rest filled with experts).

For example the last classing to "fghtr sq leader" will add +2 on attck per lvl while losing +5 rokies/lvl.
If we remember some nations have national bonuses on fighter ability from start while other nations haven't them. That is same +2 atck per lvl so somebody can use it to have bigger crew.

Before judging what i worte - remeber: on ALL sailor trees their stats are working only with experts/veterans (40 experts works as 10 veterans). Rookies adds nothing but penalty if the crew is not complete. 
(EX:Having 300 officers(and full experts) on +12(base stat) sailor will be much better than 150 officers/full experts at +14 base stat one in case if they was leveled equally. What will be if they both have +14 base stats in the case with the handicap on veterans is easy to assume. That is not for pilots but fo all sailors. It is pure mathematic part of the game while the rest depends of player.

At CV the math is much worthy than on BB because when fighters meet with enemy ones-somebody have to fall, who it will be only NF knows.  

 

Following andykorso's explaination, let's assume that there are two same base fighters +12. One only classed to fighters, the other classed as normal. If you burn them both to the maximum vets number and fullfill the rest of experts. The delay-classed fighter get more true fight abilitiy. 

But there are two points may need to be considered. Some people indicates that the fighter ability do have a cap on 4400k. In this case, normal classed fighters do not need to burn as much as experts than delay-classed fighter to cap the ability. However, some people do believe there are no cap for fighters. They want to put the as much as vets on a fighter possible.

In this case, burn more experts do require more investagation on money or time. Therefore, all the decsions depend on players. 

There are many different theories about whether to class a Fighter pilot up to Sq Ldr or leave them as Fighter pilot only.

This topic has been covered many times on countless threads on this site; but if you intend to max-out the experts and vets you have a much larger crew if you leave them classed as Fighter-only  up to Lvl 120.

 

 

Only NF (might) know whether to class a fighter up to a SQ Ldr, or not, but if they do know, they are not telling anyone... so the final decision must be yours and yours alone m8

Im kind of glad someone brought this topic up to date, because I just came back to NF and didnt know to much about what updates in the game are going on. These are both +12 UK fighters. Now I was going to leave them as just fighters but i didnt know how many vets i would be able to put on them plus dont have the $$ to do anything with them at the moment. I kind of put them off since the last event we had. Was it a good move classing them ace for UK and how many experts and vets could i get on these guys. Thanks

Pls check this:

KM fighter, ace, sqr leader, lvl 120, base +12 Figher, boost
- number of vets in column (the rest experts)
- the 3rd row is for max vetted pilots (40% vets, rest experts)

 sailors vets ability true ab (millions)
---------------------------------------------
FTR 650 100 3481 = 3,31
FTR 650 200 3481 = 4,35
FTR 650 260 3481 = 4,98
---------------------------------------------
ACE 590 100 3700 = 3,29
ACE 590 200 3700 = 4,40
ACE 590 236 3700 = 4,80
---------------------------------------------
SQL 545 100 3810 = 3,22
SQL 545 200 3810 = 4,36
SQL 545 218 3810 = 4,57
---------------------------------------------

Conclusion is up to you.

 

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Sorry for forgetting the name of the author.  I believe this is what you want to know.

Simply, the conclusion is never leveling your fighters to ace /sq until lvl120. As many ppl say, it will maxim your sailors and give you the chance to gain the maxi number of veterans which you even dont need.

 

 

 

 

 

The most important thing to remember is that if you class a rookie pilot to fighter it cannot drop bombs.