Flight Rising Discussion

I love this thread, and I love these yearly stats so much! I always feel like I learn something new from the stats, your analysis, and any further discussion, and that's a great feeling. Thank you so much for all the hard work you've put in!

[quote name="brit" date="2023-12-31 13:27:23" ] However, the third battle we had was Wind vs Lightning where Wind overcame a 1.28 ratio (using last year's estimates as they were closer to the battle date) with only 52% of the raffle support - so it's definitely not a condition that needs to be met to pull something like this off. It really depends on which two flights it is and what their strengths are, but I'd say roughly a 1.0-1.3 ratio is our sweet spot. Very excited for Wind vs Ice! [/quote] @brit - Definitely a very strong showing and impressive performance on Wind's part. Though, I'd like to clarify that I never said that an OOF [b][u]raffle[/u][/b] support skew was needed; an [b][u]overall[/u][/b] OOF skew is needed to break even. Any amount off the skew requires the larger flight to make it up in internals. One thing to note is that PB estimates are the least accurate of all, and for example even though Light had a lot more in their OOF raffle, Arcane received a good amount more dragons in their PB. (Both flights did an exemplary amount of record-keeping to get those estimates so close.) Most of the time, we have no way of tracking that accurately, so for ease of estimation I just tend to assume both PBs receive equal amounts. (Though if they were exactly equal, that would've put even more burden on Wind's internals.) Is it possible that Wind accounted for all 10% of the visible OOF raffle skew they were missing with their extra internals? Sure, I'd believe that! They did hold the OOF boarding record until recently, with an astounding fill rate. What I'm saying is that levels need to come from [u]somewhere[/u] to match a ratio difference, and flights need to be aware of the additional overall level needs caused by OOF support. What are the required resources for making up this difference? Mercs, etc. cost money on top of being hard capped by time constraints; flights need to budget for this. I agree that about 1.0 - 1.3 is where a close flipful battle is within the realm of possibility, I just believe that flights really need to think very carefully about how big they are compared to their opponent and calculate whether they're able to afford the cost of overcoming the ratio. For example, I'm entirely convinced that a Light vs. Water battle will go 100% in favor of Water with no flips from Light with the current ratio. Water's internal exalting power is too high for Light to deal with when OOF level sources are also available at the current size difference. Although Light has a very high internal exalting rate, it is not enough to generate a gap large enough to make up for failing to meet a 64%-36% split OOF. I think Water's internals and Light's internals are proportionally very similar, meaning Light would have no chance to bridge the OOF gap. In cases like this, I don't think a battle is realistic, and flights may want to pursue alternate forms of collaboration instead. [EDIT] to say thanks for filling me in on Lightning vs. Wind numbers. I didn't intentionally exclude it from my previous post; it was excluded out of lack of awareness. I was on hiatus at the time and did not participate, and even with a Dominance recap, battles just don't stay fresh in my mind unless I participated in some way, whether as part of the competing flights or as a significant OOF supporter. I'm sure I read about it in a previous recap, but I just didn't remember.

@Sylvandyr Yeah if you're the larger flight and you aren't bringing those levels in either with a very popular OOF raffle/pb or a lot of bribe money and a good way to spend it (mercs, AH or otherwise) you're in a tough place so it's important to have a plan. A potential Light vs Water, while I'm sure it would be very fun and intense regardless of the outcome, feels like it would be absolutely exhausting and I think that's part of the reason neither side has seriously pursued it. [emoji=coatl winking size=1] edit: also I'm sad you missed that one!! It was really fun to participate in as OOF.

Thank you for all the work and coordination for the stats - it's super interesting to see how things change over time.

If you find you're missing some ice stats next time, come ask! We should have everything safe in our shared drive even if the share link on the thread is no longer active

Massive thank you to Brit for coming in with the numbers, I look forward to this every year!

Love the statistics!

A super interesting read, thank you so much for compiling!

This is always interesting, Boss! well done! thank you for compiling it!

this was such a fun read, thank you for putting it all together! here's to another great dom year [emoji=gold star size=1]