A modest ENY proposal

[Anaxogoras]

I like ENY.  I think it's fine that the best aircraft are withheld when one side has a big numerical advantage.  It's good for fair play, and you can always switch sides to fly for another chess piece.

On the other hand, how many of you believe that the ENY values for individual aircraft are consistent?  How many believe that the values are based on some kind of data or evidence and achieved with a formula?

I don't believe either.  So my modest proposal is that if the ENY values for aircraft are inconsistent and not empirical, then they need to be made consistent and based on some kind of data.  What that data is should be a separate discussion.  Making these changes would better protect the ENY system from charges of unfairness and arbitrariness.  It would be good for AH and also good for gameplay.

This is not a radical proposal.  This is not a whine.  Please keep your knee jerk reactions in check and think about it for a second.  Thank you.

[Lusche]

While most of us would agree that the one or other ENY value is not quite right, it's almost impossible to assign a purely objective ENY value based on hard data alone. How do you weight the various strengths? Is better turning more important than better speed?

[DrDea]

 Personally I hate the eny thing.It got so bad at one point that the red guys were flying 163's at fire sale prices and the set we had was at 5 for awhile.I mean when your option is to fly a P 40 against 163's....I know a bit overstated.....I would rather see the map just reset and start on the next one. I understand the concept for it but as it is I think it just draws out the inevitable.

[Ghastly]

I've taken a go at this in the past, and you sure can't use stats to try to determine which aircraft should be weighted, and how.  Case in point - F4U-1A and F4U-1D.  You'd be hard pressed to find 2 aircraft in the sim with more similar performance as fighters, and yet the stats for each is dramatically different.  Why?  Because of the way that they are flown, and who flies them.

Likewise, look at the stats for a P51D, and a KI61.  The P51-D shows a K/d of about 1.00, and the KI61 1.52 currently.  Is this because the P51 is only 2/3's as good as the KI61?  No, it just means that everyone flies the P51, and only a handful (of masochists) who are better than average pilots fly the KI.

<S>

Grue

[SkyRock]

I've taken a go at this in the past, and you sure can't use stats to try to determine which aircraft should be weighted, and how.  Case in point - F4U-1A and F4U-1D.  You'd be hard pressed to find 2 aircraft in the sim with more similar performance as fighters, and yet the stats for each is dramatically different.  Why?  Because of the way that they are flown, and who flies them.

Because the D was later model and was able to carry more ordinance and came standard with the 8W water cooling power plant.   

[Delirium]

It got so bad at one point that the red guys were flying 163's at fire sale prices and the set we had was at 5 for awhile.I mean when your option is to fly a P 40 against 163's

Why didn't you just change countries?

Easy fix...

[Masherbrum]

Likewise, look at the stats for a P51D, and a KI61.  The P51-D shows a K/d of about 1.00, and the KI61 1.52 currently.  Is this because the P51 is only 2/3's as good as the KI61?  No, it just means that everyone flies the P51, and only a handful (of masochists) who are better than average pilots fly the KI.

<S>

Grue

The Ki-61 is a POS!!!   Ask anyone!!!   It needs to be updated though.   

[Shuffler]

Personally I hate the eny thing.It got so bad at one point that the red guys were flying 163's at fire sale prices and the set we had was at 5 for awhile.I mean when your option is to fly a P 40 against 163's....I know a bit overstated.....I would rather see the map just reset and start on the next one. I understand the concept for it but as it is I think it just draws out the inevitable.

Flying a P40 against a 163 is your choice, or switch sides.

[Anaxogoras]

Ok, let's stay on topic here.

Is it really so hard to come up with objective criteria?  What I would start with would be:
1. speed at a couple different altitudes, with more weight on lower altitudes because of arena play.
2. firepower/balisitics
3. sustained turn rate
4. ease of control at high speeds or low speeds
5. visibility from cockpit
6. durability

That's a start, at least.

[Lusche]

Ok, let's stay on topic here.

Is it really so hard to come up with objective criteria?  What I would start with would be:
1. speed at a couple different altitudes, with more weight on lower altitudes because of arena play.
2. firepower/balisitics
3. sustained turn rate
4. ease of control at high speeds or low speeds
5. visibility from cockpit
6. durability

That's a start, at least.

But still, HOW exactly you would weight them? Is a massive amount of ords more important than top speed?

[Anaxogoras]

Deciding which is the most important admittedly does add a subjective component into the process of ENY evaluation.  Still, that's no reason to give up, because we can at least come to some agreement as to how to begin.  I think we all agree that speed, firepower and turn deserve first rank.  Second rank might be climbrate, low/high speed handling and durability; cockpit visibility third.  This is just an example of how we could begin to weight the different abilities of fighter aircraft.  I'm not sure how much weight I would place on ordinance.  What do you think?  HTC sometimes places a lot of weight on ordinance, e.g. P47N, and sometimes an aircraft that carries little or no ordinance can also have an ENY of 5.

Regardless, implementing an imperfect system for giving objective ENY values to aircraft is better than mere guessing and arbitrary decision, which is what we seem to have now.

The hard part is actually creating a formula and a system for assigning numerical values to different things like speed, firepower, ordinance capacity, etc.  One thing I can think of would be to simply assign different classes of rank for different maximum speeds.  Anything over 400mph on the deck is 1; between 375 and 400mph is 2; between 350 and 375 is 3, etc.  These ranks can take the place of variables in a formula.

[DoNKeY]

hehe "A Modest Proposal."  Good thing this is a different one 8)

donkey

[bozon]

Ok, let's stay on topic here.

Is it really so hard to come up with objective criteria?  What I would start with would be:
1. speed at a couple different altitudes, with more weight on lower altitudes because of arena play.
2. firepower/balisitics
3. sustained turn rate
4. ease of control at high speeds or low speeds
5. visibility from cockpit
6. durability

That's a start, at least.

Just use number of spawns for a model from last tour - make ENY proportional to its fraction of the total spawns. I'm sure HTC has no problem getting this data. As a bonus it would encourage you to fly the less flown planes and if one type is hardly flown, its ENY will skyrocket making it a perk harvester (not that we can really use them on anything). This is also a self regulating method since if, say, Spit16 gets locked regularly for one country, it will reduce its number of spawns and raise its ENY for next tour.

[Urchin]

I've always thought a truly 'floating' ENY would be best. 

It makes very little sense to me the way it is set up now.  It was changed at some point, it seems as thought they compressed the values from a range of 5-40 to 5-60 or so. 

There really is no good way to objectively say "X is better than Y" unless you have a case where X is better at all things.  Take the 109G-6 and the G-2 - you give up a touch of manueverability and a bit of acceleration / top speed in exchange for 2 13mm MGs instead of 2 7.9mm.  Which one is better?  Well, against a noob the G-6 is, you can kill him faster.

I think the limits are ok, but I guess the mechanics of setting up a true floating system might be a little frustrating.  If nothing else it'd point out how lopsided the arena is for most things.  Think 5 ENY for Panzer IV, and 40 for T-34.  5 ENY for P-51D, La-7, Spit 16, N1K2, maybe 10 ENY for Tiffie, the other Spits... 20-40 for everything else.

I wonder if they tied score to ENY values if that would increase the 'diversity' of the arena?  Kill a plane with 5 ENY in a plane with 20, get 4 times the points as well as 4 perks.  Probably wouldn't change the gameplay much, might even make it worse.

[Lusche]

I wonder if they tied score to ENY values if that would increase the 'diversity' of the arena?  Kill a plane with 5 ENY in a plane with 20, get 4 times the points as well as 4 perks.  Probably wouldn't change the gameplay much, might even make it worse.

The idea is not that bad at all, though im pretty much convinced nowadays that actually much less players pay attention to their score points  as universally assumed.
Maybe a more telling new category.. instead of pure kills/hour make it perks/hour - if you care about your rank you would have to stay away from ENY 5 planes
But of course we would still see 2-3 planes being used by the majority, the ones that the payers do believe is the perfect mix between ENY and performance.
The threads would maybe just change to "All that hoing n00b A5'S or A8's

But again, maybe less people actually play with any rank consderations than it's being thought...