Kieren, J_A_B,
Not to disagree but the only perk talk is the C-hog and N1K, and that's not even official. There will always be a popular ride, and that often tends to shift as good pilots make records of kills in them. There are a dozen or more pilots in AH that could rack up 8:1 kill ratios in the C202 using strong ACM.
It's just that, we are already faced with the perk system and it actually has two ways to work on a player to not always fly the most powerful or popular ride. It can penalize you by not earning perk points so you can't fly the real uber-rides, or it can make you pay some hard earned points to mount up that ride. Seems fair to me.
Look at the effect in the MA right now, lots of other planes flying around lately, seeing many 109's (*not G10's), P38's, La5, SpitII, SpitV, D-hogs. I have as many kills of D-Hogs as C-Hogs this tour so far. It's working already.
HTC has two ways to limit plane popularity, a subtle one and a drastic one. The subtle one appears to be working, just give fewer perk points for kills in a really popular ride. It doesn't mean that people won't just freely pick up a C-hog and blast around the sky. It just means that same guy better be getting some good kill numbers in order to also be able to take a Tempest out for a spin from time to time. In the drastic case of something really uber coming along then you actually make it cost points to fly one. That's a more drastic step but would probably be deserving in the case of something that could rule the MA with impunity.
I think that allows someone who wants to fly a preferred ride to continue to do so. It also gives someone who wants to fly something seriously outclassed a reward to throwing caution to the wind to get some hard won kills.
I can't wait till 1.06 comes out and the first person yells "Hey, I have as many kills as <insert player name> player, why can he fly a <insert plane> here and I can't!!!!"
-Soda