But there is a problem of balance between country sets. The problem with perking stuff is that it always meets a 'fairness' issue.
Some people fly some planes for its performance, but some others truly like that plane and it's history. The 479th love their P-38s, the 13th TAS love their Mustangs, the JBs love their 190s and 109s.
In all fairness, to the true fans of that certain aircraft, being limited in their favorite "ultimate aircraft" while others go scot-free to roam and become the scourge of MA is very unfair.
That is exactly what happened to the Spit14 and the F4U-4. Right before the Spit14 was announced in AH, there was a sort of a 'panic attack' amongst the community that it'll become the new dweeb plane of the arena. The typical "outrun everything, outturn everything" plane.
The Spit14, in all sense of fairness, has been treated unfairly. It never even got a chance to be evaluated in the arena.
It started out as a 60+ perk plane right from the beginning, and for the RAF fans, their only 'high-performance' plane they have is the Typhoon, introduced in '41, upgraded to a '44 version. All the rest are Spitfires - granted, powerful planes they are, but the SpitV is a '41 plane('42 now that they got 16+), and the Spit9 we have is a '42 version.
Look at the fans of other countries.
The Bf109G-10 is essentially modelled to K-4 standards. One of the best accelerating/climbing planes in the MA, and THE best pure interceptor plane n the game - free.
The P-51D, perhaps AH's most formiddable multipurpose plane with a large range of ord to choose from, great speed at both alt and deck - free.
The Fw190D-9, also a very fast aircraft, 370mph+ at deck, exceptional performance at high speeds, powerful armament, and a plane that's even better suited for multiple engagements than the G-10 - free.
And there are a lot of other choices in the planeset which destabilize and ruin arena balance in their own way. Despite the fact that they aren't high-performance as fighters, those planes are high-performance as MA aircraft in terms of ground attack. A good example in being the P-38L and the P-47D - which the existence of these planes as perk-free aircraft makes it almost foolhardy to take up the true 'jabo' planes of WW2.
A-20s, IL-2s, Mossies.. heck, even the mid-sized bombers are worthless compared to the P-38L or the P-47D-40.
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Perking the La-7 alone will remedy SOME of the problems we feel, no doubt about that. But in the long run, like HT mentions, it's gonna hurt the game more.
All the La-types will move over to either the next fastest planes or next easiest planes - namely, the La usage will be spread over to the 190D, P-51D, G-10... or the Spitfires. We'll see a heck of less Las, but then we'll see a LOT more of planes which can do what the La can do - namely, run away, play timid, do nothing but HOs, etc etc..
The entire post-'44 section has to be perked. Not as high as to remove them from the game entirely, but just enough to make it so that their numbers in the air are roughly simular with the numbers of pre-'44 aircraft flying around in the MA at the same time.
If we meet 10 enemy planes at a given sortie, and 8 of them are '44 planes and 2 of them being 'vets' who prefer mid-war planes -> it must be made so that 6~7 of them are '43 planes, and 3~4 of them are post-'44.
In other words, perking aircraft should not be aimed at removing a certain plane from the arena.
Rather, it must be done in order to increase the range of 'MA competitiveness' to a longer span of timeline. In an arena dominated by '44/'45 planes, all the rest of the planes are effectively obsolete.
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In other words, I want to see an arena where La-5FNs are as many as the La-7s, P-51Bs are as many as the P-51Ds, P-38G/Js are as many as the P-38Ls, and Fw190A-8s are as common as Fw190D-9s.. etc.
People currently only fly the "best" of the version/variants. This is the real problem in the MA. These "best" of the versions, as long as they are free, are the ones that have the potential to be "next in line" as HT mentions.
