Originally posted by Stoney74
Listen, I'm not about to say any plane in the plane set is a skilless ride. My point is that a lot of skillless people fly them. There are bad P-51 pilots, bad LA-7 pilots, bad Spit 16 pilots, lots of bad pilots out there.
I simply contend that the 4X20mm make up for poor piloting skills a lot more than speed, and I think the stats support that argument. The Pony's speed, the LA-7's e-generation and firepower, and the Spit 16's everything also make up for poor piloting skills. I'll be the first to admit that I use the Jugs dive ability to make up for my mistakes. My argument is that the firepower coupled with the turn of the Hurri II is a decisive advantage. Speed is not decisive--it can get you into and out of the fight, but it can't kill planes. Maneuverability on its own is not decisive, otherwise the Zero would be a killer. Firepower can kill planes, i.e. its a decisive advantage. I contend that the decisiveness of the cannon coupled with the turning ability in the Hurri II create more kills than the speed of the higher performance planes save them. And again, I reference the score stats as proof of that.
I honestly hope I'm making myself clear. I don't need you to agree with me, just understand my argument. I believe the ENY of the Hurri II is certainly justified in the LW arenas, and from looking at these numbers, it may have earned itself a perk in the EW, IMHO...
Can anyone else see another argument after seeing those numbers posted above???
I can't disagree with most of what you said, as I mentioned there seem to be more IIC's upping and a lot of recent complaints about HOs so I went to the numbers which are pretty interesting but I'll cover them later. What I would have a minor disagreement with is the general characterization of certain characteristics as "making up for poor piloting skills". That certainly can be true, hence the 190s that do nothing but HO, extend to 4k, reverse and repeat but also smart pilots learn to capitalize on the strengths and minimize the weakness. A 190 pilot fighting a zeke with an nrg fight vice an angles fight is doing just this. A Hurri pilot who turns his six on you is giving you an "advantage" to entice you to drop in thinking he's an easy target when in fact he's compensating for the speed and e differential. He can't chase you down, he can't climb with you so he needs to get you in the phone booth with him. While the guns themselves are superior to most others they're hardly the end all otherwise we'd all be flying 110's and Mossies. Everything you do in a fight in aimed at getting your guns on him before he gets guns on you and it really doesn't matter what kind of guns he has if you maximize your plane's strengths to get behind him so I don't think the guns alone are decisive, what's decisive is the skill of the pilot and the tactics he choses to use. Any airplane can dominate any other in this game one on one if it's piloted correctly.
Regarding the numbers I mentioned earlier. I looked at total IIC kills/deaths for the past 12 months and also looked at a sample from 18, 24, and 32 months ago.
From Jan06 through Aug06 there were an average of 18,075 Death by Hurricane IIC (DBHIIC) but in Sep06 DBHIIC skyrocketed to 32,629. That's just the single month total. After that the totals dropped again but are still higher than pre-Sep (Oct 21419, Nov 20321, Dec 20001). For all of 2006 the K/D ratio consistently averaged 1.45 to 1, although there is a slight improving trend (1st quarter was 1.4, last quarter was 1.5).
Previous to 2006 I sampled tours 66, 60 and 54 and the average DBHIIC was about 9,000 per tour and the K/D ratio was 1.2.
So, what can we say from this? First, as you can see from the early tour samples there has been a general upward movement to the total DBHIIC over time which would be consistant with AH's increasing player numbers but more importantly the huge surge in DBHIIC in Sep coincides with the new arena setup. The first month there were very large numbers playing EW and MW and the sortie rate for Hurri's really took off (no pun intended). Without the "uber" planes in these arenas there are less cannon equipped planes and the average speed differential is lower. This makes the plane much more competative when it doesn't have to contend with the hugh MA B&Z crowd. Since then, the numbers of players in those two arenas dropped off dramatically which has resulted in the DBHIIC again decreasing but the numbers haven't gone back to pre-Sep levels. This is probably due to two factors. First, although the total participants in EW and MW has dropped quite a bit the IIC is still seen much more frequently than it was before because the arenas still exist and second, there are probably many who tried it out for the first time and really like it, especially when you're not being B&Zed by some LA7 every 20 seconds. The generally improving trend in K/D ratio is most likely due to the increased competativenes in the EW and, to some degree in the MW in addition to people sticking with the plane once they gave it a real tryout.
Overall, I don't know that the slight increase in K/D ratio merits a perk. I wasn't around when the F4UC came out but there have been several discussions on the boards about it. The C's K/D ratio was significantly higher than the other F4U models at the time and the planes began to dominate in numbers. Anyone still got those before/after comparisons? In any case, if the IIC's K/D ratio hasn't really changed why all the complaints? Probably because the IIC became so prevalent during September that people reacted to it the same way they do to the large numbers of LA7s in the MA. It's not that the IIC became more effective, it's just that there were much greater numbers and a lot of the pilots, being new to the plane, relied on HOs.
