Aircraft Proficiency

This Page contains new and unconfirmed information, use the information herein with caution.

The Aircraft Proficiency System (tentative name) is a system introduced in the August 10th 2015 update along with the Summer 2015 Event which enables planes to acquire experience in sorties. This system applies to all aircraft in the game with the exception of autogyros and Liaison Aircraft.

By acquiring experience from repeated sorties, pilots eventually gain ranks. As planes reach higher ranks, they acquire hidden stat bonuses that increase their overall effectiveness during battle.

Planes may lose their accumulated experience when they are shot down, which would downgrade their proficiency rank, or worse, strip them of their ranking emblems entirely. It is thus of imperative importance to send out your planes under the most favorable aerial situations whenever possible.

Abyssal Planes do not have aircraft proficiency, however, your opponent's fleet in PvP do have aircraft proficiency

Ranks
As the plane gains experience, the plane may acquire a ranking insignia at the right side of the plane slot.
 * The ranks progress as follows: [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Blue Line 1.png]] -> [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Blue Line 2.png]] -> [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Blue Line 3.png]] -> [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Gold Line 1.png]] -> [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Gold Line 2.png]] -> [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Gold Line 3.png]] -> [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Gold Chevron.png]]
 * The rank after triple yellow stripes are the double chevron insignia, which are the highest known attainable rank.
 * Planes without any symbols have the default stats as stated on the status page.
 * It has been speculated that these ranks are just generalization of the planes' actual proficiency, thus not all double chevrons are created equal.

Acquiring Experience
Planes gain experience in regular sorties and PvP, and up to 24 aircraft (4 slots x 6 ships) may be trained by aircraft carriers or aviation cruiser/battleships at a time.

Viable maps for planes leveling

 * Method 1: Concentrates on training 4/3 bomber planes repetitively in quick succession. Training in 1-1-A cycling Shouhou and Zuihou or Chitose and Chiyoda can be done almost non-stop, low exp but uses less resources and requires less micro-management.
 * It is possible to bring along two more light carriers to level up reconnaissance and fighter planes while retaining the ease of micromanagement, though the latter two would be subjected to fatigue.
 * Method 2: Concentrate on ranking up lots of planes simultaneously. A red fatigue setup in 3-2-A with 3-4 CV/CVL and 1 BBV plus a submarine to tank can be used to yield good ship exp and pilot experience gains.
 * Method 3: Utilizes ASW capabilities of light aircraft carriers. Training in 1-5 allows one to rank up both seaplane bombers and carrier planes simultaneously in a full run through the map but may require buckets.
 * Method 4: 2-3 with 6 CV full planes.

Planes leveling speed

 * Plane leveling speed has been changed after Nov 18, 2015 update. Further investigations are needed to find out their new levelling speed, but overall speaking, a non-proficient plane now take roughly 25-ish battles to reach double chevron with exact levelling speed still dependent on random variable and potentially plane type, and it take at few as two battles to level one rank of a plane in case of good RNG for most planes.
 * Currently, Type 3 Command Liaison Aircraft (ASW)s, and Ka-type Observation Autogyros do not receive ranks.
 * Plane slot sizes do not directly affect the speed in which planes acquire ranks. However, due to planes being shot down during fighter combat stage (which can happen even if there are no Anti-Air capability in abyssal fleet) or experiencing Anti-Air fire from the enemy fleet (basically, all enemy ships except submarine have certain AA capabilities), plane acquire ranks more slowly.
 * Leveling speed is not affected by factors like winning/losing the whole battle, morale/fatigue, slot size, equipment order, sea area, enemy formation, MVP, training cruisers, air control status(as far as won't lose too many plane per sortie).

Effects of Aircraft Ranks
An aircraft may gain any of these benefits as long as they are capable of fulfilling any of the following roles:

Fighter Power

 * Planes (mainly fighters) gain an increase in fighter power stat. Experiments shows that:
 * With double chevron, pure fighters can gain an additional 24.6-25.5 fighter power per slot (regardless of the type of fighter or the number of planes a slot has). However, further experimentation shows that there exists some additional and currently unknown variable affecting the bonus values planes are getting within that narrow range.
 * Bombers give an extra 3-5 air power with double chevron regardless of whether they have anti-air stats or not.
 * Max Proficient Bombers give 3.443-3.519 extra air power.
 * As such, for bombers without any built-in AA stats, the AA value they can get would be 3.00 because AA values are rounded down per slot.
 * Seaplane Bombers with double chevron most likely give an extra of 9 fighter power, but there are too many variables that are unknown to say whether or not this is actually the case.
 * Note that the final computed value is rounded down per slot after adding up the air power given by the plane itself with the conventional method.

Critical Hit

 * Bombers (dive, torpedo or seaplane) gain increased damage when they score a critical hit. This modifier applies after the firepower cap. Regular hits are not affected.
 * A double chevron bomber in one slot increases post-cap damage by 10%. Two of them increases the damage by 20%. Three increases the damage by 30%. Four increases it by 40%.
 * If the first slot is filled by a double chevron bomber, it gives an additional 10% increase in post-cap damage. So a carrier carrying bombers in all 4 slots will receive a 50% increase in post-cap damage.
 * This bonus applies to the opening airstrike and shelling phase as well as Shelling Support Expedition for carrier-based bombers. However it only affects the opening airstrike phase for seaplane bombers.
 * The bonus increases linearly according to rank.
 * A currently untested theory suggest that the first slot bomber gains twice the post-cap damage bonus compared to all subsequent slots, and hence the extra 10% with double chevron.
 * Current untested theory is that [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Blue Line 1.png]] gives 2.5% extra firepower when it gives out a critical hit, 3-3.5% for [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Blue Line 2.png]], 4.5-5% for [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Blue Line 3.png]], n/a for [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Gold Line 1.png]], 7.5-8% for [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Gold Line 2.png]], 8% for [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Gold Line 3.png]] and 10% for [[File:Aircraft Proficiency Gold Chevron.png]].
 * Proficient planes loaded onto empty slots does not provide any effects of the aircraft proficiency.
 * Accuracy and critical hit rate for bombers increase for both the opening airstrike and the shelling phase. However, the effect, apparently, does not stack.
 * It has been observed that seaplane bombers do increased damage on critical hits when performing anti-submarine attacks with double chevron planes and this seem to follow the same formula as carrier based bombers.

LoS?

 * According to the official Kancolle Twitter account, planes [with LoS stats ?] gain increases with Line of Sight and contact rate. However, the increase in contact rate remains unconfirmed.
 * People failed to observe any effect from aircraft proficiency on eLoS either.
 * Comptiq Volume H28-01 also claim aircraft proficiency also help increase artillery spotting rate
 * Appears to increase Night Reconnaissance contact rate.

Others

 * No sign of Saiun's Aircraft Proficiency system affecting engagement form, but still not clear enough.
 * No effect is provided from an emptied slot.
 * No info shows resistance from plane lost or ability to shoot down other planes change for proficient planes under the same air control condition.

Fighter Planes' Air Power Bonus Test Result

 * Upper bound refer to the maximun amount of additional foghter power obtained from plane of this rank, while lower bound mean the minimum. It is known that in same rank, under different condition, the additional fighter power varies between upper bound and lower bound
 * See text above for brief description for other types of planes.
 * See for a theory on one of the potentially viable explanations to these numbers, especially the part about why planes with same rank giving different extra airpower value as this table implies.

Factors Affecting Aircraft Rank

 * Lower-tier aircraft takes much longer to gain a rank compared to higher-tier aircraft.
 * Numbered air group planes such as Zuiun (634 Air Group), Suisei (601 Air Group) and Reppuu (601 Air Group) start with single blue stripes.
 * Famed and skilled air group planes such as Type 21 Zero Fighter (Skilled), Type 99 Dive Bomber (Egusa Squadron) and Type 97 Torpedo Bomber (Tomonaga Squadron) start with double blue stripes.
 * The model conversion quest for Suisei (Egusa Squadron) and Tenzan Model 12 (Tomonaga Squadron) will retain their original rank if it's higher than the default rank.
 * The model conversion for Tenzan Model 12 (Murata Squadron) however, appears to either become downgraded by one rank or capped at triple gold stripes.
 * The Skilled Pilot conversion and model conversion for Iwamoto and Iwai flight requires the converting planes to be at Rank 7 and to start over from Rank 2 after the conversion, necessitating repeated training after every conversion.
 * Ranks can decrease slightly (1-2) if a large proportion are shot down.
 * Planes will have their rank reset if the entire squadron occupying a slot is shot down.
 * When a slot of planes is completely shot down, it still receive ranks for their performance prior to the event, and the ranks will be added after the rank resets. So in some cases, a wiped-out squadron can return to base with 1 or 2 stripes left, given that the squadron performed well before being wiped out.
 * Planes that are assigned to equipment slots with 0 planes will neither gain nor lose ranks.
 * Planes in escort fleet do not gain or lose ranks.
 * Planes that are used in aerial support do not lose their ranks even if they are completely shot down.
 * As air superiority greatly reduces the amount of aircraft that are shot down during the air combat phase, it is of paramount importance in order to maintain air superiority whereas possible to minimize the risk have their plane ranks getting downgraded, especially against enemies that have substantial amount of anti-air power. Further tests are needed to see if Air Parity is enough to maintain ranks.
 * Bombers are vulnerable to enemy AACI and are at risk of getting completely shot down in smaller plane slots, whereas fighters are not. It may be recommended to put fighters or reconnaissance planes instead of bombers in the smallest aircraft carrier slots.
 * Proficiency does not increase/decrease during sortie, they are done when the fleet returns to homeport. Proficiency lost happen because adding in gain from the battles.
 * Planes may gain experience in Exercises (PvP) runs and their ranks may be reduced when they are shot down in PvP, though the rank reduction is not updated until subsequent sorties.

Internal Proficiency Level Hypothesis
'''Note that it is a hypothesis which means things are not entirely proven and people wrote this hypothesis just because they think it might help explain how the system works. But the entire thing can be completely wrong and be disproven anytime, so don't treat anything in the hypothesis as if they are how the system really works. It is ill-advised to code anything here as fact to people that do not understand that it is only a hypothesis; for example, any air superiority calculator available on websites or within different software.'''

If you read on, it is expected that you have already fully understood all content written here are guesses without any real proof to show fact, and thus, users should judge by themselves how to use the words written here and agree that they will not spread information on this page as if they are already proven which may potentially mislead others. Note that this warning does not mean all other content on the rest of this page or rest of the wiki is 100% valid.

In order to explain the different performance given by planes of the same rank as listed in, a hypothesis have been created in an attempt to attribute the difference in performance.

The hypothesis states that those aircraft proficiency markers are simply a generalization of the internal proficiency of those planes, and there are actually some internal proficiency level that also affects performance of those planes. For convenient purposes, when a Type 0 Fighter Model 21 plane fought a battle under AP or above status before Nov 18, 2015 update, the experience gained by that plane is treated as an one unit increase. Supposedly, the leveling speed of a Type 0 Fighter Model 21 is same as Type 97 Torpedo Bomber, Type 99 Dive Bomber, Zuiun, Type 0 Observatory Seaplane, and Type 2 Reconnaissance Aircraft. Base on this unit, a mapping between inner proficiency and displayed proficiency is drafted as follow:

And as seen in, while they do have variations within the same displayed range, those ranges are discontinuous over different displayed proficiency markings. Thus, it have been proposed that the total bonus given by the aircraft superiority system is given by adding up the bonus from the displayed value plus the bonus from inner proficiency value. The bonus from inner proficiency part is obtained by dividing the inner proficiency value by ten and then taking the square root. The bonus from the displayed value part for carrier fighter is assumed to be [0, 0, 2, 5, 9, 14, 14, 22] for displayed proficiency from 0 to 7 in air superiority calculation. For Seaplane bombers, it is currently hypothesized that the value would be [0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 6], and for carrier-based bombers, the displayed value bonus part is hypothesised to be all zero, i.e. only receiving bonus from internal proficiency part.

Note: Please report any case that you seen/tested that does not match this hypothesis.

Note 2: Rounding rule for the formula is still unknown.

Trivia

 * In the official Fubuki 4koma webcomic, the Aircraft Proficiency system is described as a process that fairies gain attachment toward their plane. When they lose their planes, they get resupplied new ones and thus, they would need to rebuild their attachment over again.
 * When the system first implement on Aug 10, 2015, there was a bug causing your fleet Aircraft Proficiency to change even if you did nothing to your fleet. It was due to the program mistakenly counting in battle data when other players challenged player's fleet in PvP. This was fixed a day later.
 * Type 96 Fighter, Type 0 Reconnaissance Seaplane were found to be capable of obtaining plane ranks since the implementation of the system, though it was basically impossible to level them until the Fall 2015 Event (November 18).
 * Levelling speed for probably all planes have been increased too.

External Link

 * The following Air Power calculators already (at least partially) supports the Aircraft Proficiency system. However, there might be differences between values given by these calculator and the actual value in system so use with caution.
 * http://kancolle-calc.net/aircrafts.html (Japanese)
 * http://aircalc.net (Japanese)
 * KanColle English AS Calculator (English)