Scenario attendance records, thoughts about Kuban design and other ideas

[Nefarious]

The Boston was fast. As evident by this Luftwaffe pilot's cartoon drawn during the war.

[Nefarious]

It also occurred to me that the 12 hour scenario attendance may appear inflated.  With a frame-based design the attendance accurately shows players who were there and played probably most of the frame.  But with 12-hour designs, which have unlimited lives and openings to fly every hour - the logs show every player who flew. But it can't be true, for example, that we had over 300 players flying around in "Target for Today" for the entire event.  So comparing attendance between these types of designs may be an apples-to-oranges comparison.

I think we discussed this some time ago, I don't know if I ever got you the break downs. I couldn't find them, so I did them again real quick.

- I removed all Gunners/Observers and Field Gunners.
- I counted all sorties launched and only kept 1 sortie per phase.
- The event was designed for three 4 hour phases.
- Tunisia was also a 12 hour scenario, however Brooke separated the logs every phase/frame. Tunisia had 4 phases/frames.

So Target for Today in May 2015 broke down like this:

Phase 1: 181 Total Pilots
Phase 2: 165 Total Pilots
Phase 3: 152 Total Pilots

Average: 166 Avg Pilots

[Guppy35]

I'm with Rocco on this stuff.  I know I've probably said it far too many times.  What scenarios can do is feed the little kid in me that found this book in my elementary school library 50 years ago now.



It sparked my life long obsession with WW2 aviation.  My imagination had me flying to Berlin in a 51 with the 4th FG from age 8 on.  First Airwarrior and now AH has offered me a chance to feed that imagination.  And after all these years I was able to finally take a 51 to Berlin.  I can still recall just about every time where I got sucked into an event and it became as real as my imagination mixed with all the reading and talking to vets could make it.  It's a drug to me and I keep looking for it in scenarios.  Hasn't happened in a while but I still believe it's possible.  So yes, we need to do what we can to get folks interested, keep them interested and build the base of players again so that we can maybe fill the skies with bombers like we used to and clouds of fighters to attack and defend them.  I sometimes find it hard to believe that in DGS I had 3 Squadrons of 38s flying escort, 36 pilots in just my group.  DGS II I had 16 Mustangs when I finally got to go to Berlin.  I have to believe somehow we can get back to that.

Could be wishful thinking on my part, but then again I've been doing that for 50 years imagining myself a WW2 fighter pilot

[Brooke]

The best thing a player can do to boost scenario participation is to personally recruit people out of the melee arena to join scenarios.

The reason is that most players in the melee arena do not read the message board and do not know about special events.

They need to be informed and encouraged to try it out.

[APDrone]

Good Stuff

Thanks for the post, Rocco.

I agree.. and the drama needs to tone down a bit.

Glad you had a good time and I hope you continue to participate.

[Dace]

One must consider also that during those scenarios where we had 200+ participants, the AH general population was much higher. I believe Brooke has stated before that, per percentage

of the current population, we're actually right on par if not a little higher than in the past.

[Zimme83]

The Boston is a very underrated bomber in AH. Its a poor man's mosquito. Good when you want to pork fields. Back in the days i also used the A-20 in that role, with a bit of practice you can level bomb without bomb sight with reasonably accuracy, and when the unwary fighters come up after you,  thinking that they are chasing a Boston, they get a nasty surprise (or they kill you anyway...)

[oboe]

I think we discussed this some time ago, I don't know if I ever got you the break downs. I couldn't find them, so I did them again real quick.

- I removed all Gunners/Observers and Field Gunners.
- I counted all sorties launched and only kept 1 sortie per phase.
- The event was designed for three 4 hour phases.
- Tunisia was also a 12 hour scenario, however Brooke separated the logs every phase/frame. Tunisia had 4 phases/frames.

So Target for Today in May 2015 broke down like this:

Phase 1: 181 Total Pilots
Phase 2: 165 Total Pilots
Phase 3: 152 Total Pilots

Average: 166 Avg Pilots

I don't recall that, but my memory ain't what it used to be.   Thanks for doing those numbers again - I'll update my chart numbers and also relook at the logs for Tunisia, and get numbers by phase.

EDIT:  Tunisia logs already provided numbers by phase; I just changed description to reflect that it was a 12 hr event.  Also updated numbers for Target for Today, thanks!
 

[Nefarious]

I'll get the hardest day numbers sorted here soon.

[Nefarious]

The Hardest Day Numbers by Phase:

Phase 1: 121 Pilots
Phase 2: 143 Pilots
Phase 3: 117 Pilots

Average # of Pilots: 127 Pilots

As I mentioned above, I removed all gunners, and removed any duplicate pilots from each phase.

[oboe]

Thanks Nefarious - here's the updated chart.   Less dramatic, but it still shows 12 hour format has something going for it, even as Melee Arena numbers had been declining.