10 years of AHII - a personal statistical resume

[Lusche]

ALERT: LOOK-AT-ME WARNING


First tour and 'two weeks': Tour 70 - Nov 2005
Last AH II tour 181 - Nov 2015

Total playtime in the 'old Main' and the LW Main Arena: 14,318 hours.  That's almost 4 hours a day, every day, including the 4 tours or so where I actually didn't play at all. And it doesn't even include tower time, studying the map trying to figure out the next horde NOE or looking for that town flashing from a GV sneak...
Add to that 4 scenarios, a couple of hundreds of hours in the WW1, EW & MW arenas, my year as an official AH trainer and literally thousands of hours working on the AH stats or fighting ... Yes, AH was a full time job for me. Or actually: My life. 


Here's the breakdown of my LW hours. Keep in mind that from late 2006 to late 2007 EW & MW stats were included:



The boost in 2012 came from the introduction of the central strats





You can see that in the end I really became somewhat of a bomber guy.







So, how about the killing?




('other' are mostly disconnect bombers)

Of course I died too... a lot: I had 15,286 recorded deaths. But only for about 13K of those someone got credit: AFK flying into mountains, getting fragged by auto puffy over CVs or the city, kissing trees in a goon, crashing my mortally wounded 262 on final, all that made up the difference. Can't really think of a way of dying in AHII I have missed 


Speaking of 262s: Here are my recorded perk plane deaths and their net value at today's average perk levels:

B-29 77 deaths 7,700 perks
Ar-234 20 deaths 1,000 perks
Mossie XVI 21 deaths 420 perks

Me 262 195 deaths 39,000 perks
Me 163B 145 deaths 14,500 perks
Tempest 309 deaths 12,360 perks
F4U-4 128 deaths 2,560 perks
F4U-1C 62 deaths 1,240 perks

for a total theoretical perk loss of 9,120 + 69,660 perks. The actual number was lower though, as I was mostly flying perk planes when they had been cheaper than average. Possibly something like 2/3rd on average, but that's just a guess. But still: I was a master of wasting (fighter) perks 


(+ a few hundred perks for a number of (then) perked Spit XIV and Ta 152H (yes, the Ta was perked until late 2006))

[USCH]

I see a growing trend of you getting old, and becoming a bomber pilot....

[caldera]

I'm only 2,000 behind you in deaths but not even half your kills. 
With only 150 or so kills to hit 100,000, why not come back for two or three hours? 

[Rich46yo]

Probably the best bomber hunter Ive ever played against.

[bozon]

Lusche, you forgot the 16,563 hours of compiling statistics and making pie charts

[Max]

Lusche, you forgot the 16,563 hours of compiling statistics and making pie charts

 

[JunkyII]

I see a growing trend of you getting old, and becoming a bomber pilot....

Or he can't fly fighters and take care of the little Snail at the same time

[Lusche]

Lusche, you forgot the 16,563 hours of compiling statistics and making pie charts

But silly me forgot to keep a log about that  So I can just say 'thousands of'. But much of that was actually done while in a sortie, climbing to 30k in a fighter or heading to distant strats in a B-29 

But with all these thousands of hours... Imagine what I have could done in that time: I could have learned 2 foreign languages. Or learned how to code properly. Or learned an instrument to a masterful level, instead on wasting all of that on a computer game   

With only 150 or so kills to hit 100,000, why not come back for two or three hours? 

I won't, because these days it's more like only two or three planes I might encounter in two or three hours:

Why there's [...]  enormous maps when there's 21 people in the arena is beyond me.  If this was my normal flying hour, I wouldn't pay you any money for this game.

And these are my normal flying hours... Or better said: They were.

[icepac]

The lesson for the "can't find a fight" guys is that there is plenty to do at 30k.

[JunkyII]

The lesson for the "can't find a fight" guys is that there is plenty to do at 30k.

Not everyone has 2 hours to go fly bombers or intercept them.

[Lusche]

An attempt to look at the learning curve (fighter mode):



I omitted the absolute values, 'cause it's not about how 'good/bad' I was, but the early evolution of those key stats.
It seems that it took 12-18 months to build up until I somewhat leveled out my skill level. After that, the variations were either rather low (especially k/s) or just varied a lot due to plane choice (which is what makes the k/d line so volatile) and primary prey in a tour.

That early 12-18 months translates to about 1,000 to 1,900 hours in fighters and attackers. Note that for the average player that would be in the range of something like 50-100 months.
Would be interesting to me to compare this to other players early stats evolution to see if that's typical in any way.

[toddbobe]

How did you make those graphs?
Todd

[Vudak]

That early 12-18 months translates to about 1,000 to 1,900 hours in fighters and attackers. Note that for the average player that would be in the range of something like 50-100 months.

This is a very interesting statement, especially since you would seem to have another advantage (aside from playing time) over the majority of players: a desire/ability to analyze everything to death   I suspect that would also shorten your learning curve. 

Would you mind adding some more commentary regarding the evolution of your fighter abilities?

1. What planes did you primarily fly those first 12-18 months?
2. How often did you read the help and training forums?
3. How often did you visit sites like Netaces.org or the trainer's website?
4. Did you seek out any trainers? How often did you fly with them?  What did you work on?
5. How often did you duel other players?  Who were your primary dueling partners?
6. Were you part of a squad during that time?  If so, how many members did the squad have, and did they offer training?
7. What do you attribute to your learning how to play this game?

Thanks!

[Lusche]

How did you make those graphs?
Todd

Automated stats grabbing from the AH score pages, data evaluated & graphs drawn in OpenOffice.

[Lusche]

This is a very interesting statement, especially since you would seem to have another advantage (aside from playing time) over the majority of players: a desire/ability to analyze everything to death   I suspect that would also shorten your learning curve. 

LOL.
This excessive analyzing came much much later, and was mostly limited to stats and to gameplay mechanics. Particularly in the beginning, I was just playing a game, just like everybody else...

Would you mind adding some more commentary regarding the evolution of your fighter abilities?

1. What planes did you primarily fly those first 12-18 months?

My first ride was the La-7, then went on to the Ki-84, then Tempest, with a bit of 190D thrown in. But after about a year, it really started to open up a lot. Most tours I was flying in 20-30 different rides, with something like 20-40% of my time in my 'top ride' (estimated)

2. How often did you read the help and training forums?

Constantly, starting even before I started to fly

3. How often did you visit sites like Netaces.org or the trainer's website?

Quite a lot. I tried to read everything available, but I concentrated more on performance and gameplay info and very little about ACM & stuff.

4. Did you seek out any trainers? How often did you fly with them?  What did you work on?

I never had been trained by anyone. I used to hang out in the TA a lot, often listening to other people getting trained (the TA was actually quite a buy place in those days), but that's about it.
All my "ACM training" was done on the job in the MA. But I also never really worked on anything. I dislike work, very much.

5. How often did you duel other players?  Who were your primary dueling partners?

I don't think I went to the DA for dueling more than maybe a dozen times. Possibly even much less. And almost always it had been with much newer players to show them a thing or two.

6. Were you part of a squad during that time?

Never had been a member of any squad at all. I also never really 'winged up' with anyone.

7. What do you attribute to your learning how to play this game?

When it comes to air combat, the most important thing for me had been the films. From early on I made recording my sorties a habit, and checking them afterwards for everything I did not understand... which was quite a lot in the beginning.
I remember all the other n00bs in the arena constantly filling the chat with "No way he could have done that/had a shot on me" or other stuff like that, while I was just  calling up the film viewer to see what really had happened during the sortie. Got quite some epiphanies from that: "Oh, that F4U wasn't flipping around in place - it just looked like that!" or "Hmm, no wonder that Zeke caught me, I was actually going much slower than I thought"

Something I'd like to add: I had a kind of headstart compared to other new players. Reading about aerial warfare had been a long time hobby of mine from childhood on, and while reasonably new to online sims, I was already flying air combat sims for almost 20 years at that point. I knew about the most basic concepts, which allowed me to have enough of success early on to keep at it. No way I would have stayed here and waited months for my first landed kills like some others did

On the other hand, my unwillingness to get trained and to really 'work' on my ACM (especially by dueling), combined with a diminutive ability to think in three dimensions was really limiting me. When it came to air combat in AH, I think I quite early found my own 'shtick', so to speak. Others, fuel by more ambition, went way past me in the field of dogfighting.