There are times I watch my six and see the other player is not "nose on" and the bullets are missing me but I hear the hits a second later. This was the hardest thing for me to deal with moving from games like Falcon to the online world.
He was "nose on" to you on his FE. His bullets don't have to hit you on your FE, just on his FE. His FE then tells the server and the server tells your FE. Your FE then appies the damage that his FE calculated and you hear the pings.
Also, and what I see more of in Aces High, is that in an HO I will DODGE the enemy's shot and not see any bullets near me yet a second after the enemy has completely passed my aircraft to my six I will hear the damage and go down. I just experienced this the other day in my F6F vs a diving HO F4U. I never even saw the stinkin' bullets yet as he passes I lose my tail and flutter to earth like a feather.
There are several posibilities.
First there is net lag. Net lag makes HOs more leathal to both parties in a game like AH than it was in reality because even after you kill him he doesn't know about it for up to half a second and can keep firing at you. Due to the ammount of net lag when one of the participants has a poor connection you can be all the way past the enemy before you hear the effects of his firing. Poor connects suck, but there is not much that can be done about it.
Second is the possibility that he had his tracers turned off. When tracers are turned off neither the shooter or target sees any indication of rounds in the air. It makes it harder to hit for most people, but it also prvents the tracers from alerting a bounced target of his peril.
I don't see what the difference is then between a bullet hit and an airplane hit.
Bullets that hit you on his FE and miss you on your FE, hit. Bullets miss you on his FE, but hit you on your FE, miss. An aircraft that hits you on his FE and misses you on yours, misses. An aircraft that misses you on his FE and hits you on your FE, hits.
Also, who is to say who is at fault in the collision? My opponent may dive on my six and see that he misses me to the side or in front of me, yet on my end my FE sees the Bozo run into me...I'll still be the only one to die.
In the scenario that you described you are very clearly at fault. You failed to avoind an oncomming aircraft. He did nothing wrong on his FE, he simply put himself close behind you, something that we all do in dogfights. How would it be fair to him if he were killed in that situation?
If one player sees a bullet or airplane hit, both FEs should make amends with the damage.
That would cause all sorts of weirdness. Imagine firing off a clumsy snap shot that clearly was poorly amined on your part and misses by a wide margin only to see the bandit explode because the bullets hit on his FE. Would you feel good about getting a kill that had nothing to do with your skill? Imagine executing a clean attack and dieing suddenly because there was a collision that there is no way you could have seen on his FE, how would you feel?
I have no idea if it's truth or Aces High Legend, but I've heard of guys with slow connections taking their goons and trying to HO opponents as a means of survival.
You'd have to have an insanely slow connection for that to work. People may have tried it, but I'd be very surprised if it ever worked.
