Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25074480-20140910011804/@comment-184.7.128.178-20140918152033

I tried to do a little bit of math. Unless I'm mistaken, the max score possible at the end of a match would be 175,000 (50,000 * 3.5 for the max.  forced sortie bonus). At tournament end, the top rank spot had a score of 16,658,244. Assuming they scored max points every sortie, that would mean they had to sortie 96 times. That would mean using up 288 units of sortie fuel. At max. there were 9 units of  supplied fuel available each day, counting the 3 units provided by the challenge. That means about 45 units of free fuel across the time of the tournament. But the forced sortie bonus only applied during the last 3 days of the tournmanet, so that means only 27 units that could be used with the bonus attached. That leaves 261 units of stocked fuel. Even if assuming someone somehow managed to save up 100 units of fuel ahead of this tournament or won it during the course of the tournament from mission rewards, pllus a bit extra just for ease of caculation, that would mean 155 units of fuel had to be purchased. The cheapest route to that number would be to buy 2 of the 60 packs at $35 a piece, and one of the 35 packs at $27, for a total of $97.

Looking at the rank 200 threshold, that was about 4.04 million. That breaks down to about 24 sorties, or 72 units of sortie fuel. This would be much more plausible by saving up fuel ahead of time, winning some along the way in the tournament, etc (you'd only need about 45 units of stocked fuel). The problem, of course, is that this all assumes you get max or very near max points in every mission you sortie in, and for ease of calculation do so in the compressed timeframe of the 3-day weekend around which the bonus is in effect. The costs, the number of needed sorties, only jumps if you go the single unit of fuel route, as the 3-fuel unit average, drops from 175,000 to 150,000. For the rank 200 level, that means an extra 9 units of fuel, and pulling off 81 sorties instead of 24. For the top spot tha works out to 334 sorties one unit of fuel at a time. I'll let you figure out how much money that would cost.

I reiterate, this is a "perfect" model. There is little chance that with those scores (i.e, non-round numbers) they managed to ensure max score in every mission they flew, whether by others scoring points, or not getting enough kills before time expired. This is a best-case scenario.

The 750,000 in just the 5 hours noted at the start of this thread - that's running off 15 missions at max points, so someone went for a quick knockout to dissuade others from competing (apparently to minimal effect).

This should be used as a guide for anyone thinking about the Mobius 1, Yellow 13, etc events likely coming up in the future. You'll either need to hoard stocked fuel like it's real-life gold and hope they hold off on those events for a while, or be prepared to rely on a lot of luck and a lot of coin to buy you a chance at those planes.

I would note that the TDM is a much easier mode to scam on since even a not very good player can score some points and effect your potential max score in Co-op mode. Would help analyse this theory if the points system in Co-op mode was as straightforward in teh co-op mode competitions as it was in the TDM this time around. Given that DLC of one of these planes would cost aroun $5 at max, it's probably been a lot more profitable for them to keep things this way while people spend tons of money trying to get the prize. Assuming my calcuations are correct, the top scorer spent enough just to get this top spot to pay for almost 20 player's DLC. Given how close the top 3 scores were, that's at least enough DLC for 50 players by those three alone. Can they get more by selling DLC available to all 1.5 million plus that have apparently downloaded the game? Perhaps. But for them, it's a lot more profitable to keep this model and then just dump the DLC online later when they see interest and activity around these events drop into a deep dark well.