ghost, back when the f4u1c was perked there were half as many planes in the game. Meaning any one plane then had 2x as much players flying and killing in it as they do now. Variety is the spice of life, and folks branch out.
They sure as hell weren't doing it with spitfire-turn capabilities like the recent F4Us enjoy, either.
Also, consider that the arenas were NOT split up at that time. That affects the plane choice a lot. Further more there was no ENY limitations.
Now, if you think back to when the spit 16 was first introduced, it and the spit8 together topped out at THE plane with the most kills, and together?
Together the both of them probably came closer to the 20% kill ratio of the chog than any other plane before or since.
Splitting up the arenas has skewed the way the logs record things now, so comparing things to the old chog perking does not compute anymore. It's comparing apples and fig newtons. You want to even remotely compare apples to oranges and you have to go back in the logs before the arenas were split, before major ENY experiments HTC ran, before a lot of things that royally screwed with who chose what plane and when they flew it.
That doesn't negate the effectiveness of the spit16/8. Just shows a more accurate representation of its killing power and how much it was used, in comparison to the Chog.
Tour 70, first time the plane is introduced:
Spitfire Mk XVI has 41468 Kills of All models
Spitfire Mk VIII has 8417 Kills of All models
Let's compare that to the kings of the hill at the time:
La-7 has 30066 Kills of All models
P-51D has 20541 Kills of All models
N1K2 has 27844 Kills of All models
(all other models SIGNIFICANTLY lower numbers)
Note the spits didn't even have the full tour to accumulate these kills in, while the rest of the planes DID. They got more kills in less time than the top-3 undisputed MA kings.
Let's check the next tour.
Tour 71:
Spitfire Mk XVI has 43991 Kills of All models
Spitfire Mk VIII has 7679 Kills of All models
Let's see how that stacks up to the kings of the hill:
La-7 has 36721 Kills of All models
N1K2 has 30031 Kills of All models
P-51D has 25776 Kills of All models
This is back when the La and the N1k flew a lot more like spit5s on steroids, were even more potent than they are NOW.
Going waaaay back to when the Chog roamed free, tour 12 was its highest month. Before this it averaged between 11000 and 15000 kills. Then from Tour 12 to Tour 16 it saw most of its use and was perked shortly after.
Tour 12:
F4U-1C has 39515 Kills of All models (later tours this dropped 10-15 thousand kills until it was perked)
Other kings of the hill at that time (note, LA7 didn't exist):
N1K2 has 18534 Kills of All models
F6F-5 has 12535 Kills of All models
P-51D has 12225 Kills of All models
So, even with MORE CHOICES NOW, where pilots branch out from limited planesets, the spits 16/8 had MORE KILLS than the old Chog. This means that the spits are even MORE lethal than the old Chog was.
I've just counted the number of fighters available when the Chog was roaming free. 23 planes. Only 23 choices of what to fly, and 1 plane in those 23 earned 39,515 kills. In tour 71, when the spits had a full tour to prove themselves, there were 56 fighters to choose from. The more planes you have, the less pilots fly any given plane. Players will spread out to other rides for reasons too many to count. An equillibrium will be reached, of sorts. To come close to the overpowering effect the chog has on the arenas (when only 1/2 as many planes were available), you'd probably only need HALF as many kills as it ever did (with 2x as many plane choices that means less players are still making just as much trouble as before), yet the spits have MORE than the chog ever did.
They were twice as disruptive as the Chog **EVER** was. You'd go into a fight and see 5 spits and a n1k2 most times back then. Nowadays it's still seeing 3 spits and a f4u1a. Please note again the effectiveness/lethality of these rides has not diminished since day 1, only the way the scores are recorded and the ENY limitations since then have changed.
If either plane was around at the time the Chog was available, they would most likely have been perked more than it was. Can you imagine a spit16 in tour 12?No high-boosted spit5 (that came later), the spit9 was hardly used (pulling in 10,000 kills compared to the others listed above), the chog's main advantages were speed and guns because they didn't turn anywhere nearly as well as they do today. The spit16 has the same top speed as the chog, better turning, better roll, equally effective weapons, comparable internal fuel range, better handling in almost every extreme of the flight envelope, oh and it's unperked! Take a look at what it would come up against:
And yet today, they remain unperked. If you ask me they more than beg to be perked with a 5-point pricetag.
I make no difference between the 16 and 8 spit variants because they are only a few mph off from each other, still climb faster than every other plane in the game up to absurd heights, and still carry the 2 most lethal 20mm cannons in the game that can kill enemies out to 800-1000 yards with a single ping. On top of that the turning radius is very similar for the both of them. They are, in the case of perking spits, the same ride. You can't perk the spit16 without perking the 8, nor can you perk the 8 without the 16. They both get perked, is the only satisfactory result.
Nor is unperking the spit14 a valid argument, just because the newer rides (which perform so much better) are unperked. Rather that argument should be made to reinforce the idea of a small perk price on both spit16/8 models.
