Yup.
For the most part, survival is overrated when it comes to score & rank in AH. Better your K/H and K/S up!
I know quite a few guys that fly to survive. To a certain degree, I am one. For most that I know and myself, it's not about score and rank but rather getting kills and getting away with it.
I've been thinking on how people characterize others as 'timid' and 'dweebish' and soforth. It seems to me that it's a spectrum, with the logical extension of one end being a guy that just flies at the enemy and tries to shoot them in the face until he dies, with absolutely no thought to survival or defense. The logical extension of the other end is a guy that flies in the stratosphere and never engages.
Most people fall somewhere between those two extremes, and I think it colors everybody's perception of the others. Only people who fly similarly to you are flying 'right' or 'honorably' or 'should expect to survive'.
For example to me, guys that get picked out of their 1v1s or dive into the middle of a swarm of red, get slow and get killed, IMO, stayed in the fight too long if they expect to survive. They should've seen the second coming and either stopped playing with their food or egressed in the first case, and never gone into the middle of a red swarm and got slow in the second.
At the other end, guys that run when they are co-E or have advantage are weenies. Only attacking when you outnumber the enemy is at best boring, at worst lame. Vulching is situational to me. If there's an attempt to take the town, I'll vulch all day. If it's just for free kills, it's boring to me most of the time. Except when I'm in a bad mood. <g>
I'm sure I'm timid to some people because I generally get out of the situation if I'm alone and 2 or more of the right plane or people are headed my way. My $15, yadda.
In terms of chances of survival though, there's really little difference to me between getting slow and turning under a mass of red and HOing everything in sight, as both are going to get you killed pretty quickly 90% of the time.
Wiley.