The Nations’ Aerial Leaderboard and Its Distribution [EN]

Day 4,140, 02:21 • Published in Germany Germany • by MauserIV
22.03.2019 | Day 4,140

A new type of warfare was introduced about two and a half years ago on the 20th of July 2016. Airspace was added as a domain of combat to create opportunities for new players and new challenges for old ones. Since then, nearly 1000 days have passed and countries have had the chance to set priorities for their countries. Do we introduce an incentive program for young players to fly or do we support a full blown military unit? Should we offer subsidies or let the market handle things? These decisions, among others, and how successfully they were implemented have lead to a certain distribution in the aerial damage output of the eWorld countries.




Leaderboard
To analyse this distribution we need to expand the {metrics} available to us. I have calculated per country the Damage {Ground Damage/Kill} and the {Aerial Damage/Kill} as well as the ratio {Kills (Ground : Air)}. Below is the country leaderboard for the week 05.03 - 11.03.19. The top three of each metric are colored green. The ground metrics have not been included due to spacing issues.



For each of these metrics I have calculated the Coefficient of Variation (a measure of how large the variation is compared to the average i.e. the average divided by the standard deviation.).




Why look at the Coefficient of Variation (CoV)?
The CoV for the ground damage per kill and aerial damage per kill can tell us something about how far behind some countries have fallen compared to others. A higher CoV means that the spread is much larger and catching up to the front runners is increasingly difficult.

One could assume that due to the size of the player base the country wide metrics would remain rather stable over time. However, this is not the case. Below you can see that over the last three weeks the metrics have changed in a consistent tren😛 downwards. The average values are declining as well as the CoVs for each metric. I believe this is only a seasonal variation though, as the rate of decline (around -10😵 is much steeper than the player decline and I have read in the shouts that players are anticipating the spring event(s). It would makes sense for players to save up weapons and food, and reduce their activity. It might also be the case that certain conflicts have cooled down and reserves have been used up. I am not up to date enough with global conflicts to draw a conclusion.



In general we can still identify a pattern in the CoVs. {Ground Damage/Kill} tends to have a much higher CoV than {Aerial Damage/Kill}, which is to be expected as ground battles have been around for much longer. The CoVs for damage and kills are different for ground combat but very similar for aerial combat. This makes sense as aerial combat has fewer mechanics differentiating the kill count from the damage amount (No strength or weapons).

Back then, did the CoVs for ground combat look like the CoVs for aerial combat today? Will the variation in aerial damage between countries develop in the same way as it did for ground damage? And if not, what will the future of aerial battles look like?




What are the factors influencing CoV?
Game mechanics
The game mechanics for aerial battles are significantly different to those of ground battles. There is no second compounding factor influencing damage output (i.e. strength) as perception will probably never be implemented, meaning age plays less of a factor. There are practically no weapons (Q1 aircraft weapons are not economical), meaning wealth plays less of a factor. Divisions aren’t implemented in aerial battles, meaning all players compete for the same sky hero medal and age becomes more of a factor again. One could say that it is still too early to implement aerial divisions and looking at when divisions were added for ground battles (Day 1,665) there is still some time (aerial battles only being about 1,000 days old).

Aerial Programs
The development and maintenance of aerial programs will probably increase the CoV. Well organised countries with well developed aerial programs will have a more advanced player base than disorganised ones. Whether this trend will be any different to the ground battles is debatable since they too had development programs (e.g. eNL’s Green Barets).

Player base composition
The player base is different now than it was when the game first started. Today, mainly the dedicated and loyal players remain. Everyone has a lot more experience and established priorities. There is a decision to be made, on whether a player should continue to strive for a high rank in ground battles (Legends) or to switch focus to air battles. Those that do decide to switch are probably going to grind/invest heavily to make this transition worth it especially considering there aren’t any divisions yet. Seeing as most aerial fighters are probably dedicated to their combat domain we could expect to see a slower increase in the CoV (i.e. battles will be decided by closer margins).


An analysis of how these metrics relate to each other will be explored in the next article (Part 2).

Thank you for reading and let me know what you think the future of aerial combat will look like in the comments. Also, please write the names of any aerial development programs or Aerial based MUs that you know of in the comments. It would be a great support to my explorations!