While I was only able to understand once I saw and read the post, I do see what you mean now and I admit I didn't realise it was possible for the ace pilot to sometimes overtake the fighter pilot in terms of TA at certain levels of vets. However, I based most of my calculations on maximum potential and a common potential, I just happened to skip all the areas between 100 vets and 40% vets and, upon seeing them both better the ace and sqd ldr promotions assumed the same remained consistant between the two points. It's interesting to see that the ace fighter actually manages to overtake the fighter pilot thanks to its lower total crew count which I didnt actually think was possible, and again is only limited by its crew count causing it to lose to the fighter at the most extreme levels of vets.

 

However, your above quoted post doesn't really support anything except my original argument that delayed fighter pilots are better :/ and even though the ace fighters are able to overtake the fighters ability, once the ace hits maximum vets it takes only ten more vets on the delayed fighter and it's back in the lead. True that the ace fighter is sometimes better, but that advantage is pretty negligible and in the end it reduces maximum potential. The 'best' pilot is still the basic promotion.

If all you care about is pilot ability then yes.

Yeah, you class pilots as the basic promotion asap, basic pilot promotions gain 5 recruits per level just like all the previous promotions but with more growth, so there's no reason not to.

 

The choice to delay class or not comes when you reach the ace pilot class.

There are of course other abilities to consider but that depends on how far you want to take things.

 

Yeah, but no pilots are going to stand any chance if you delay the promotion to basic fighter/tb/db at the expense of other abilities. You'd have to delay the promotion to special forces which would severely impair their primary function. You could delay the rookie pilot promotion and just keep them as special forces until the level of the basic pilot promotions I guess, for their repair-7 and restore-7 ability.

 

The mechanics for fighter and bomber ability has changed a few times over the years, but yeah, pretty much.

 

As for caps, kudos if you read the whole thread to come to your conclusion tbh.

 

You would be surprised. Theres a couple of CV crews out there with mean fighters/tbs, 900 sd, and rep cap with gunners instead of supports. But like I said it all depends on how far you want to push things.

 

And you shouldnt put too much stock in crew ability. There are ofcourse other factors besides crew when it comes to real battles.

You know...I can agree with this sentiment. I'm coming back after an almost 3 year absence and there's a heck of a lot more mechanical understanding and transparency with how to make the best crew if you look for it. Sadly, though, a lot of it doesn't make sense for a logical person (specifically in not classing up, when to reclass, true ability vs. listed, etc), to the point where I see that my level 105 FPs that I thought were good when I left are now not really competitive against the min-maxers with the same level FPs classed illogically.

The same holds true with premium vs rolled sailors or how different sailors work towards total. It's highly inconvenient to find out after-the-fact that your sailors aren't as good as you thought, but at least it's transparant so you can find it out eventually and recover. I think this was probably a developer oversight that became the standard, and though I honestly believe there's no way to correct the problem without creating another (negating the already invested work of people who were in the know by reversing it) it is a little disheartening when you figure it out.

Rave: Good job on transparency of mechanics and individual player work towards understanding and explanations
Rant: Sucks to be on the side that doesn't know about it ahead of time. There's no way to undo weeks/months/years of misunderstanding based on logical assumptions.

Edit: This is as good a place as any for my question, just to confirm in my mind what's been posted. The calculations and information put down indicates that performing -only- the first up-class (from rookie pilot to either fighter pilot or bomber) is the way to go. I'm running a KM line with classed-on-time fighters and bombers around level 100, since that's what I had almost 3 years ago when I last played. It looks like this is (relatively) the wrong way to go, as I lost quite a bit of potential in doing so. I'm not trying to min-max here, just trying to recognize if I made a bad decision in the past and should correct it now before proceeding. Much appreciated.