1
First off, this is not a complaint about MM fairness or bots being OP. These are observations based on one day's data (I have additional days, but let's keep this somewhat simple).
Second, I consider myself very much still a noob, though I'm 49 battles away from 1,000. I don't have any planes above Tier V yet, and I haven't faced competition from planes above Tier VI yet, and that's only when I'm down tiered in a match. Also, I'm primarily a LF guy, with one heavy (spec'd Blenheim F) and some MRFs thrown in. I've flown attack planes once or twice, and bombers never, so other's experiences may be different.
TL;DR
I've been tracking stats on my battles (the vast majority of them) over the last nearly two months. Sometimes (but infrequently) I'll even record the details of certain battles. In my experience (for what it's worth), I think the MM and the bots are not nearly as imbalanced as it seems at times - even though I at times have felt that way. I provide some of the details from my records to substantiate my observations, though others may disagree with me.
Long story short - human players have an opportunity to significantly influence the outcome of battles, even when dropped into one in a disadvantaged position or with one or more bots being more aggressive than the others. Most battles I wind up in on the losing side, I can identify areas that I failed to execute well in, and while I may not be the sole contributor to a loss, I can rarely claim I did my level best in every loss. Plane awareness, map awareness, aggressiveness, environment awareness, bot commands/use, etc are all keys to controlling the map, the game and the outcome. Though nothing is guaranteed, it seems to go a long way towards ensuring the desired outcome.
As the saying goes, I continue to L2P and to "git gud". Though I'd be happy to just be consistent - right now I'm consistently inconsistent in my play quality 
And now on to the mini-dissertation.
I originally started tracking battles per team when it seemed like a lot of matches took place where one team had a significant number of battles compared to the opposing team. In my tracking, this doesn't appear to hold true, and even when the red team significantly outnumbers the blue in battles, the blue team has still won. And the reverse is true as well - I have lost many battles where the Blue team battle count was considerably higher than the Red team. Of course, just because someone has 5K or 10K battles doesn't mean they're a great player, but I would expect them to have at least learned the game to the point that they understand it's all about capture points.
Let's look at today's data set at a high level. I flew three planes today - Tier IV I-17 (Elite, later spec'd) for 8 battles (last 2 spec'd), Tier IV Blenheim F (spec'd) (5), Tier V Spitfire Ia (premium, spec'd) (7).
I often hear complaints about being consistently down tiered (and have uttered that complaint many times as well). However, I would say that my overall down-tier average is probably around 50/50, give or take a few percentage points. Today was only 30% (6 out of 20), and I was on the winning team for half of them.
| Total Battles | Down Tiered | Down Tiered W/L | Up Tiered | Up Tiered W/L |
| 20 | 6 | 3-3 | 14 | 10-4 |
It's not uncommon, in my experience at least, to find the total number of battles for humans between Blue and Red to be quite unevenly matched. One may think if the other team has 2x or more the number of battles than your team you're immediately disadvantaged and probably going to lose. That has not been my experience. Using today's data again, and only considering battles where one team has twice as many battles (or more) than the other side, I see this:
| Total Disadvantaged Battles | Blue Advantage | W-L | Red Advantage | W-L |
| 11 | 6 | 5-1 | 5 | 3-2 |
While based on this limited data one could argue that I'm more likely to lose if the Red team has twice as many battles as my team, it's not a foregone conclusion.
So what about those bots? I'm going to highlight two battles I had today - I'd share the replays but I don't have the ability at this time to convert them, and they're in the WOWP format anyway.
The first one was a conquest battle that featured CorvusCorax on the (for me) Red team. I knew eventually I'd run into one of the forum vets in a battle, and I fully expected to get my head handed to me on a platter with garnishment. Corvus did not disappoint
The battle count for blue and red was relatively even in this one - 13,534 blue, 13,991 red.
I made a note of the details of the players and bots performance in that game. I believe it shows the great effect the human players can have on the game. The map was Scorching Sands: Invasion, with 2 Airbases and 3 Garrisons. It was 5 V 5 (with 7 bots per side), though it was not the more often than not normal 2 Attack, 2 Bomber, 2 Fighter, 2 HF and 4 MR that I see most of the time.
Here's the breakdown [H means human with number of battles in parentheses, Me means that was my plane].
| Blue Team | Red Team | ||||||
| Pilot | Aircraft | Points | Grade | Pilot | Aircraft | Points | Grade |
| Bot | IV LBSh (A) | 4,240 | V | Bot | IV Ju 87 G (A) | 7,425 | III |
| Bot | IV Fw 189 C (A) | 3,685 | Bot | IV Fw 189 C (A) | 2,055 | ||
| H (5,371) | IV Do 17 Z (B) | 6,480 | V | Bot | IV Ar-2 (B) [Premium] | 3,625 | |
| Bot | III SB (B) | 3,205 | Bot | IV Ar-2 (B) [Premium] | 3,460 | ||
| H (6,272) |
IV Hurricane Ia (F) [Specd Premium] |
8,455 | IV | H (155) | V P-40 (F) | 6,835 | V |
| Me (935) | IV I-17 (F) | 6,100 | H (62) | IV Bf 109 B (F) | 4,070 | ||
| H (683) | Ki-43-Ic (F) [Premium] | 4,745 | H (119) | IV P-36 (F) | 3,655 | ||
| H (275) | V Boomerang (F) [Premium] | 1,435 | H (5,055) |
V Beaufighter V (HF) [Specd Premium] |
17,245 | III | |
| Bot | V Ki-45 (HF) | 2,875 | H (8,608) | Bf 110 B (HF) [Specd] | 11,560 | II | |
| Bot | IV Ar 197 (MR) [Premium] | 3,740 | Bot | IV Ar 197 (MR) [Premium] | 5,010 | ||
| Bot | V F4F (MR) | 3,460 | Bot | V F4F (MR) | 3,455 | ||
| Bot | V P-40 M-105 [Premium] | 930 | Bot | IV P-43 (MR) | 1,460 |
Personal points scored:
| Blue | Red | ||
| Humans | 27,215 | Humans | 42,915 |
| Bots | 22,135 | Bots | 25,149 |
Performance (captured sectors, kills, destroyed, capture points):
| Blue Humans | Blue Bots | Blue Total | Red Humans | Red Bots | Red Total | ||
| Captured Sectors | 6 | 7 | 13 | 8 | 14 | 22 | |
| Aerial Kills | 17 | 9 | 26 | 36 | 8 | 44 | |
| Times Destroyed | 16 | 22 | 38 | 6 | 12 | 18 | |
| Capture Points | 835 | 565 | 1,400 | 1,150 | 570 | 1,720 | |
| -> Attacking | 555 | 445 | 1,000 | 670 | 450 | 1,120 | |
| -> Defending | 280 | 120 | 400 | 480 | 120 | 600 |
Blue had 5 premiums (1 spec'd), Red had 4 premiums (1 spec'd) plus another spec'd plane.
The difference in total score between the bots was a bit over 3,000 in favor of Red, whereas the difference in score between the human players was a little over 15,000 points in Red's favor. The two highest battle count players on both sides also scored the most number of points, though the difference between Blue and Red is still around 14,000 points.
I look at several areas to see how players/bots did, in the third table. The Red Ju 87 G was clearly the best bot and even earned Grade III - which tells me its probably one of the "smarter" bots, based on an old article/post by the dev team about the 3 levels of Bot AI (I forget what the levels are named).
The real damage was done, IMO, by the two heavy drivers scoring 28,805 points (Corvus was in the Beaufighter V). Even though Blue got off to a good early start (as I recall), we did not maintain effective control over any sector, and Corvus and the other heavy driver captured 6 sectors and shot down 29 blue aircraft (out of the 38 total shot down/respawned). I can't speak for the other players, but for me as soon as the "red tide" started rolling, I lost the bubble and didn't pay attention to the map or sending bots like I should have. They grabbed the initiative and ran (over us) with it - gaining Superiority late in the game, IIRC.
Was the mix of planes on the two teams balanced? Perhaps players with more knowledge/experience can say, but I don't think they were horrendously imbalanced. Blue had one more premium and 1 more fighter. Red had two premium bombers but they scored only slightly more than the Blue human bomber driver, and less total than both Blue bombers together .
The capture points are fairly close between the Blue bots and the Red bots as well. Only captured sectors and number of times destroyed are significantly different, with Red doing better than Blue, but part of that is probably due to how devastatingly effective the two heavy drivers on Red were at shooting down Blue planes, as well as the super effective Ju 87 G bot driver.
Could Blue have taken this battle from Red? Possiblye, but not the way we (Blue) played. We definitely could have had a better showing of all 5 players on the Blue team. To further illustrate the impact human players can have, consider this later battle that I fought.
The second battle I'll discuss in detail was a victory for blue, though a narrow one. This was 3 v 3, with the traditional 2 Attack, 2 Bomber, 2 Fighter, 2 Heavy, 4 Multirole. Red had a significant advantage in number of battles (10,906) to Blue (1,440), though most of that was due to one of the three players on Red having 10,000+ battles.
This battle started out well for Blue, then Red came roaring back and Blue managed to hang till the end for a 400-381 win.
| Blue Team | Red Team | ||||||
| Pilot | Aircraft | Points | Grade | Pilot | Aircraft | Points | Grade |
| Bot | III TSh-3 (A) | 4,990 | V | Bot | III TSh-3 (A) | 5,675 | V |
| H (427) |
III BSh-1 (A) [Specd Premium] |
4,590 | Bot | III TSh-3 (A) | 4,235 | ||
| Bot |
III Blenheim IV (e.) [Premium] |
5,670 | V | H (783) | He 112 H-2 [Premium] | 5,015 | |
| Bot |
III Blenheim IV (e.) [Premium] |
4,200 | V | Bot |
III Blenheim IV (e.) [Premium] |
3,130 | |
| Me (937) | IV I-17 (F) | 14,295 | II | H (10,060) |
III Type 224 (F) [Premium] |
6,625 | V |
| Bot | III Fw 159 (F) | 1,860 | H (68) | IV P-36 | 4,100 | ||
| Bot | IV Bf 110 B (HF) | 2,140 | Bot | III Fw 57 | 3,765 | ||
| Bot | III Fw 57 (HF) | 1,835 | Bot | IV Bf 110 B (HF) | 3,530 | ||
| Bot | IV Ar 197 (MR) [Premium] | 3,860 | Bot | IV Hurricane I (MR) | 3,320 | ||
| Bot | IV Hurricane I (MR) | 3,750 | Bot | III Di-6i (MR) [Premium] | 2,870 | ||
| Bot | III Di-6i (MR) [Premium] | 2,300 | Bot | III P-35 (MR) | 1,325 | ||
| H (79) | III P-35 (MR) | 2,210 | Bot | III Di-6i (MR) [Premium] | 1,055 |
Personal points scored:
| Blue | Red | ||
| Humans | 21,095 | Humans | 15,740 |
| Bots | 30,605 | Bots | 28,905 |
Performance (captured sectors, kills, destroyed, capture points):
| Blue Humans | Blue Bots | Blue Total | Red Humans | Red Bots | Red Total | ||
| Captured Sectors | 4 | 6 | 10 | 2 | 7 | 9 | |
| Aerial Kills | 15 | 5 | 20 | 10 | 6 | 16 | |
| Times Destroyed | 3 | 12 | 15 | 5 | 16 | 21 | |
| Capture Points | 700 | 615 | 1,315 | 440 | 585 | 1,025 | |
| -> Attacking | 580 | 495 | 1,075 | 360 | 505 | 865 | |
| -> Defending | 120 | 120 | 240 | 80 | 80 | 160 |
The map was Scorching Sands: Desert Wind, with 2 Military Bases and 1 Garrison (IIRC). Both teams had an equal number of Premium planes, with Blue having one premium that was spec'd.
Bots were fairly consistent across both teams in terms of performance, so the bots did not overtly influence this battle anymore than they did the previous one. Red Attack Aircraft and Heavy Fighters performed better than Blue counterparts (including the Blue human attack pilot), while Blue Bombers and Multirole Fighters performed better than the Red counterparts. In the end both side's bots turned in relatively equivalent performances.
Obviously I had a very good game (for me), but after getting run off the map two battles prior, I was making it a point to stay engaged with the map, environment and bots. I was lucky that Blue was never in the disadvantaged position we allowed ourselves to get in with the previously described battle, but Red almost succeeded in taking this from us and we had to recapture a couple of sectors to secure the win. Even then it was a close run thing and I thought we had a good chance to lose in the final minutes.
