From what I understand, Pyro isn't concerned about when a plane was introduced or how many saw combat, or anything like that.
He posted a graph showing the % of all kills by plane. And the Chawg had 20% and the next best plane was in the teens.
So, I've thought about a singularly fair system for Perking that does require keeping stats, but is a fair system. % of overall kills is probably the best statistic to use to determine a plane's overall dominance in the arena.
What we need to do is perk the top HALF of fighters on a weighted scale that is changed every week. On the graph Pyro posted, we'd be perking all those planes, but the perk point value would be a weighted factor. Matching points to percentage would be easy to illustrate, 20 perk points fo fly the Chawg. But that's not a a good system. The best system is to figure out how many points the first non-perked fighter would get killing the first perked fighter. That's how many points it should cost to fly that perked fighter. And the second from the median against the second above the median, and so on.
This should have an interesting effect. At the end of each week, when ENY is calculated by the % of sorties a plane flew, you will see a decline in the perked planes somewhat correlated to their perking weight.
At that halfway point, there will be a plane that misses the cutoff. Let's say it's a 109F. It will be the best of the "free" planes, and thusly it will be used by alot of people. Over time, the ENY for this plane will give it a modifier such that it is valuable to kill. But it won't be too hard to kill. It will just have a ENY value that is higher because it is the best of the lower half.
This makes introducing planes like the Ta-152 and (let's get wacky and dream here) the F8F Bearcat possible. It ALSO allows planes like Hurricane II to be introduced.
What you do is introduce ALL planes by giving them what Pyro thinks is a proper ENY value, like he has already done. They cost 0 perk points to fly. Obviously, the sky would be filled with Bearcats if this happened. But only for a week. It will quickly factor highly in the % of arena kills and move into perkdom. Whereas planes like the Hurricane II will not and will probably stay free.
I think this perking the top half of fighters should be repeated for attack planes as well. You have to fly a few Ju-88 sorties to get at the new perked buff. And, after while, the best free bomber in that lower half will start to change it's ENY.
The effect here is creating a sortie normalization curve across all planes from best to worst fighter. The mid range fighters like the 109s and early Spits and Yak would see alot of action, and it would be rare to see a Bearcat. And then Spit Vs would rack up tons of kills and the next week it'd be perked beyond reach and might push a Dora into the free category, and then it would bounce way up. Over time, the really superior planes would be able to stay in the high teens % wise with far fewer sorties than average planes if we believe that the plane makes the pilot.
Good pilots would quickly learn how to fly lower perked planes to kill better ones to keep enough points to stay in that ride.
Anyhow, that's what I think is most fair.
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