A friendly salute or a "good kill" is a good thing to hear after a well-earned kill. What about "nice shooting"? When I say, "nice shooting," it means that the flier who shot me didn't work hard to out-manuever me but rather caught me with a well-placed deflection shot. It's by no means a jab at his flying but rather a recognition of his superior gunnery. For the same reason, I say "good flying" or something similar when the gunnery was not particularly spectacular but my opponent out-manuevered me. And if I find his flying and shooting both noteable, I'll say, "Great flying, good shooting!"
However, I find that most people don't do anything of the sort. What makes me raise an eyebrow is when I work for three minutes to out-maneuver an opponent flying a more maneuverable ship than mine, and I finally get on his tail and hit him enough to send him down, and the guy says "nice shooting." It's as if the fact that I just out-maneuvered him - in a fighter twice as heavy as his - is of little or no consequence. What's even worse is the "nice shot." This implies that he would have won if I hadn't made the shot, but it just wasn't his day. The hint is that not only was my maneuvering unimpressive, but my gunnery isn't really that great either. I just got lucky, or made an unusually decent shot.
Why do people dislike acknowledging when the other pilot flies well? When I see somone fly in a particularly impressive manner, I make known my admiration. It could be that he was fighting in an inferior ship, or was outnumbered, or fought from a lower energy state. Or perhaps his flying wasn't the best I've seen, but he'd only been flying two weeks and his skill is equivalent to a three month player. Whatever it is, I feel it deserves credit. It takes hard work to become good at this, many years for most people. A simple exclaimation can really make one's day better. There's so much negativity going around (much of it deserved, unfortunately); why not praise when it's due?
