Originally posted by Vudak
But all I can say for myself is you'll never find me firing at the first merge in a 1 on 1, and I'll never understand why anyone else would want to, either.
I'm with you there, I usually refrain from HO'ing any time. The main reason is I'm so lousy at it, I'll usually lose anyway. I will never fire on the initial merge, but I always look for the other guy to, so I try to stay out of his gun cone.
I think a lot of people mistake some high angle attacks for HO's I'll know if I'm on the losing end of a hard turn and my enemy gets his nose around first and fires, it looks like a HO. It's not a HO I just got outflown.
Eagler is one of those guys who can reverse on you very quickley. He'll flip that 109 around and be right outside your gun cone, but have you well within his. Then he kills you. Your first instinct is to think you got HO'd, when in fact you just got out flown.
To me the pure HO tard is the guy that ups a gun bus and has no intention of doing anything else but shooting you in the snout. Like everybody else I get mad about. Then I get mad at myself for allowing it to happen. If a guy maintains a straight nose on course towards you in something like a 110, HurriIIc, Chog, or any other plane, you can just about bet he has HOing on his mind.
I still fall for it a lot. It always pisses me off, but I always have to ask myself.. "Why did you fall for that?" If I try to retaliate like I said earlier, I just get a quick trip back to the tower. I flew against a guy in the AVA Tuesday afternoon on the merge he Ho'd me and blew me away with a 109 . I wasn't expecting it and was being a bit lazy. It angered me so I upped a P-38 with the intention of Hoing this guy,,,, he blew me away again. Both deaths were my fault I was lazy in the first encounter, and a lousy shot in the second. I upped again and avoided his HO, after three merges I had the advantage and could tell he really had no idea what to do when he couldn't HO. I killed him and thought to myself. I shouldn't have let him kill me the first time, always expect the HO!!
Guppy, Jester, I applaud your attittudes of keeping things in perspective. This is a game and nothing like what the real guys did. Nothing at all. It takes none of the bravery, dedication, or skill of real war, or even real flying. It also carries none of the consequences.
We throw the pilot term around pretty loosely in this game. I know there are a few others in the sim, but the only real fighter pilot I know of in here is 1Duke1.
This is competition however. Competitors are naturally aggressive, and it carries over into other areas of the sim. We lucky as hell to even have a sim like this to participate in. I think we complain too much and enjoy too little. If we can get the fights in the cartoon planes in AVA to the same intensity of the BBS and the text buffer,we'll have something.