Stats! Stats! Stats! Another year of AH2!

[Lusche]

Like last year, I will present a few selected stats and facts about AH2 in 2008.Some will surprise, some will will be as expected. Some you will drool about the presented material, many of you will think "wtf?". To them I say: Yes I know, I have no life
I will offer a some of my own opinions, but of course it's mostly up to you to interpret those charts.

I will concentrate on LW Arenas exclusively. One reason for this:



You can see the popularity of EW & MW arenas is quite limited. But quite interesting is the peak in MW usage in Tour 106, because that's exactly when the threads about the decline of the MW in regards of player quality & behaviour appeared. 

[Lusche]

Plane Usage

As usual, "usage" is being defined by adding kills and deaths. It's the best approximation we have due to lack of any data on number of sorties.



Nothing has changed at the top. The top 4 are still the same (and in same order) as in 2007, but while the P-51D has now a ~10% bigger share than last year, the La-7's popularity has significantly declined:



The decline in popularity has been a trend for some time, but after the update, the numbers reached a new low (well, kinda "low" anyway) and haven't recovered since then.

[Lusche]

Fighter Kills by ENY



This chart may surprise those that haven't seen last years analysis. It's common knowledge that almost all fighters used in LW are ENY 5 monsters, but as we can see, that's not entirely true. Only when ENY goes >25 the numbers drop massively, even more so when you consider that approximately 50% of all kills in that category are made by the 190A8.
BTW, the distribution of kills between those 4 ENY groups has not changed in comparison to 2007


Frame Families


In this chart, I have split up the fighter kills by families - All kills made the various types sharing the same basic airframe (=same icon until D800) are lumped together. "Spitfire" includes Seafires, FW190 includes the Ta 152H-1. All fighters not part of a "family" in AH2 are listed under "Others".
No surprise the Spitfire family is ahead of the competition as includes 7 different but mostly very popular models (16, 9, 8, Seafire), whereas the P-51 has only 2 models, one them (Pony B) is far from being popular in the LW Arena.

[Lusche]

Fighter K/D



Marked in red are the planes currently perked in AH2. Like always, the Tempest, the supreme pick & run plane, is undisputed #1

What can not be seen in that chart above is the castration of the 262, which happend with the update of this model in tour 104:


(picture shows ME 262 K/D over the last 24 months)

I can still only speculate about the reason for that decline. The worsened front view could be part of it, but I (subjectively) suspect the 262 has a glass tail section now - but since the LAN play was disabled too sometime ago, I can't test it. (But if someone is up for some very boring 2h in DA... )

[Lusche]

Moving Mud

The Il2 update and the introduction of the Wirbelwind did change the air-ground war

The first chart is showing the major airborne tank killers of AH2. It's based on kills of the Panzer IV, which is still the most popular tank in AH2:


First impact on that chart was the introsuction of the Wirbelwind, which seemingly had a huge impact specifically on the B-25H's usage as an anti-tank plane. Which isn't very surprising considering the 25 if a large, slow and not very maneuverable target.
The second, and much larger impact, was made by the redesign of the Il-2. The addition of the NS-37 cannons has made killing tanks as easy as using a can-opener. And as this way of killing tanks can't even be stopped by killing ords, it's no wonder that the Il2 is now utterly dominating.



The other side  



No surprise here - the appearance of the Wirbelwind has made the M-16 a hangar queen, and the Ostwind is now a specialists vehicle for special situations - for example protecting vehicle bases from low bombers.

[Lusche]

K/D per country




No comment

[Getback]

The MW is slightly skewed. Falcon23, our CO, couldn't get into LW. So RT joined him there until he could.

BTW, really like the graphs.

[Anaxogoras]

I can still only speculate about the reason for that decline. The worsened front view could be part of it, but I (subjectively) suspect the 262 has a glass tail section now.

It also suffers more magic-bullet pilot-kills and the engines catch on fire more easily.

[TEShaw]

Stop HYPMOTIZING me with your circular graphs!

[Hungry]

Lusche

Great work I'm a Sales Developement Analyst by trade, I can appreciate the time it takes to assemble the table info then do the chart work.

Good Job Bub

[Banshee7]

P-38 series has the highest K/D that is not perked 

The Wirblewind/Ostwind/M16 chart was of no surprise.  I still prefer my Ostwind over the WW

[fudgums]

Surpises me how much the F6f was used

[uptown]

Outstanding job Lusche..as usual The top K/D going to the 38J came as quite a surprise to me. I've also noticed more mustangs in LW  but their K/D is way down the line. So maybe they're not as "uber" as some would have us to believe?

I enjoy the stats very much and thank-you for all the hard work you put into this 


P.S. did anyone notice the Rooks K/D compared to the other countries? 

[Greebo]

The CV planes seem to feature higher in the usage charts than I would expect. Possibly it is due to the short nature of CV flights upping the numbers of kills and deaths per hour. Take off adjacent to an enemy field, straight into a fight, get shot down, up again and so on. Land planes have on average longer flight times on offensive sorties.

[Anaxogoras]

P.S. did anyone notice the Rooks K/D compared to the other countries? 

So much for the argument that there's really no difference between the chess pieces.  When I flew as a knight, I was always dismayed to see the Rooks approaching 5k ft higher than what I considered a high perch against the Bishops.