A statistical analysis.
Attack mode is another area that should be adjusted. Meaning that ground attack should only be scored here to eliminate what some practice. Meaning they fly a few fighter sorties and then switch to attack mode only after that.
Such a request would not be made if the author wouldn't think that this practice is a bad thing for the game. In fact, it sometimes seems to be widespread knowledge that this is a widespread practice by pilots looking for a 'good' fighter rank, even being a necessity to get to the top?
Well is it? How widespread is it, and how effective?
To find out, I examined the time spent in fighter vs attack mode for all players flying in either mode in tour 153 as well as the tour winners (fighter) of all tours in this year so far.
First I sorted the pilots of tour 153 by fighter rank and noted the fighter/attack time ratio for the top 10, top 20, 50, 100 and so on until I got to rank 3000 (while there are a few hundred more ID's more, they didn't effectively took part in the game at all, so I dropped them)
Obviously the more "successful" pilots did fly less of their time in fighter mode - but the change is surprisingly low. 60% among the top 10 vs ~ 72% among the top 1000 pilots isn't that much of a difference. Which could easily be explained by the 'lesser' ranked (and supposedly often new pilot) caring less about flying attack runs on towns in fighter mode, while the 'better' ranked just take a tad more care in their mode selection.
But let's go into more detail: The top 20 fighter pilots of tour 153
As we can see, the numbers are all over the place. Obviously there is no direct relation between time in modes and resulting rank. Some seem to "optimize" a lot, but others don't and even with ~100% sorties (and a lot of them) in fighter mode making it to the top 20.
But maybe it's a necessity for 'winning' the tour? Now here the data of the past tour winners:
We have a tendency for low fighter to attack time ratios, but still there are some who don't seem to care a lot and still got the #1 spot.
So if i try to answer my initial question myself: No, it's not a very widely used practice, and it's much less a requirement of getting a 'good' rank at all. The individual player can be able to boost his ranking by a few notches by optimizing his fighter/attack sortie selection, but the gain is relatively low and apparently only interesting if he is definitely going for the number spot and needs every ounce of advantage he can get.
