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noguaranteeofsanity · 08-05-14, 12:37 AM

Just my 2 cents and thoughts about this...

Some nations or units have multiple crews or pilots for each aircraft, but I also know some nations don't and so rest or sleep would certainly be a factor. For example the RAAF has trouble hanging on to pilots because once they are taught to fly they can get a job with an airline for double or triple the salary, without being moved around the country every few years, or serving in remote airfields. Even when they borrowed pilots from other squadrons, the RAAF only had 25 pilots for the 14 aircraft they deployed to the Middle East to support operations in Iraq.

Maintenance would be another factor that isn't really modelled properly in any game, simply because most aircraft have 1000s of components, each of which will need to be individually serviced after X number of flying hours and it would simply be far too complex to model or keep track of it all (plus make any game unplayable). But for example they might have to pull out and check the engines every 100 hours, or the hydraulics every 50 hours and so on. Grounding an aircraft for 12 hours every day is a good way to abstract this without having a player juggle or worry about complicated maintenance schedules.

I am not certain about this, but if you look at the technical specs for a lot of datalinks used by the military, you will see they are far slower than your average internet connection or computer network, so I imagine that lack of bandwidth might limit the speed that data can be transferred or loaded into a aircraft. That might partly explain the 3 hour delay linking an exocet up to a aircraft, but that is just a guess.

Apart from that I don't think you are going to get a detailed answer, because there are too many different aircraft, weapons and militaries, all of which are going to do things differently in different circumstances, or have different requirements and constraints on how quickly they can ready an aircraft.

Finally if you have Command questions, I would suggest asking on the Matrix forums which seem to be far more active and you are likely to get a much better answer.

08-05-14, 12:37 AM	#10
noguaranteeofsanity Swabbie Join Date: Aug 2014 Posts: 7 Downloads: 11 Uploads: 0	Just my 2 cents and thoughts about this... Some nations or units have multiple crews or pilots for each aircraft, but I also know some nations don't and so rest or sleep would certainly be a factor. For example the RAAF has trouble hanging on to pilots because once they are taught to fly they can get a job with an airline for double or triple the salary, without being moved around the country every few years, or serving in remote airfields. Even when they borrowed pilots from other squadrons, the RAAF only had 25 pilots for the 14 aircraft they deployed to the Middle East to support operations in Iraq. Maintenance would be another factor that isn't really modelled properly in any game, simply because most aircraft have 1000s of components, each of which will need to be individually serviced after X number of flying hours and it would simply be far too complex to model or keep track of it all (plus make any game unplayable). But for example they might have to pull out and check the engines every 100 hours, or the hydraulics every 50 hours and so on. Grounding an aircraft for 12 hours every day is a good way to abstract this without having a player juggle or worry about complicated maintenance schedules. I am not certain about this, but if you look at the technical specs for a lot of datalinks used by the military, you will see they are far slower than your average internet connection or computer network, so I imagine that lack of bandwidth might limit the speed that data can be transferred or loaded into a aircraft. That might partly explain the 3 hour delay linking an exocet up to a aircraft, but that is just a guess. Apart from that I don't think you are going to get a detailed answer, because there are too many different aircraft, weapons and militaries, all of which are going to do things differently in different circumstances, or have different requirements and constraints on how quickly they can ready an aircraft. Finally if you have Command questions, I would suggest asking on the Matrix forums which seem to be far more active and you are likely to get a much better answer.