planes being main-gunned by tanks

[CptTrips]

I couldn't help it, I just had to...

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." 

I always enjoy your stats posts.  It gives framework to discuss things a little more rationally.

My first reaction…

1.  Hmmm.  The plane:GV K:D seems too GV weighted.  Aircraft should be the terror of GV without sufficient air cover to protect them.
2.  This chart doesn’t appear to illustrate a big change with AHIII.



But, there might be more needed data along with this to draw a proper conclusion.  This may not be enough to tell the whole story.

If you could product a companion chart that combines number of GV kills of planes PLUS number of plane kills of GV.  That should be a rough estimate of the frequency of attempts of planes trying to kill GV regardless of outcome.  Not perfect.  It won’t count attacks that resulted in neither plane or GV death, but there is probably no way to measure that.

While the success ratio of plane attacks on GV might not have changed much, the volume of attempts of planes attacking GV may have changed.   e.g.  The K/D ratio may have remained steady ~0.85:1 for attacks attempted, but the number of attacks attempted might have dropped off precipitously after the tree-pocolypse.   

Or maybe not.  But you might need both metrics to draw a useful conclusion.

[Lusche]

Cpt Trips,

Without pulling up the numbers  in detail, I can confirm that the ratio of attacks on GVs by planes has increased a lot indeed, from 22% in 2015 to 31% in 2020.

But here's the problem with these numbers: The gameplay has changed massively with the transition to AH3. There is no Tank Town anymore, and very little 'whack-a-mole' spawn battles are left. This kind of battles had a very high kills/per hour, so that's why the amount of g2g kills has significantly decreased.  Way more tanks are now proportionally  being killed inbound to a town than slugging it out against each others in a tank town. GV also survive their sorties much longer now, while once ago they suffered 7 deaths per hour it's now only about 4.

Planes are not more dangerous now, it's just that a huge part of ground to ground kills just went away.

[CptTrips]

Cpt Trips,

Without pulling up the numbers  in detail, I can confirm that the ratio of attacks on GVs by planes has increased a lot indeed, from 22% in 2015 to 31% in 2020.

But here's the problem with these numbers: The gameplay has changed massively with the transition to AH3. There is no Tank Town anymore, and very little 'whack-a-mole' spawn battles are left. This kind of battles had a very high kills/per hour, so that's why the amount of g2g kills has significantly decreased.  Way more tanks are now proportionally  being killed inbound to a town than slugging it out against each others in a tank town. GV also survive their sorties much longer now, while once ago they suffered 7 deaths per hour it's now only about 4.

Planes are not more dangerous now, it's just that a huge part of ground to ground kills just went away.

I think I see your point.

That's interesting.  Thanks.

[Vinkman]

In 2012 when the icon rules where changed kill ratio for planes vs gv dropped 20% and stayed there. Unless you think 2011 was an anomaly. 

My feeling is not that icon rule stopped planes from killing GVs, but that it can help to make it take longer to kill them.  That’s a good thing.