The guy coming in nose to nose not shooting is hoping to get the edge in a fight. The guy coming in guns blazing nose to nose has his own agenda or is just too lazy to do anything else. My opinion of it tends to lean towards the latter as since there is no real risk to not shooting head on, it becomes a way of avoiding the bending the airplane part of the game.
The guy coming in with guns blazing has his own agenda?? LOL!
You're right, he does... It's the same agenda as you point out for the non-shooting pilot... He's trying to get the edge in a fight. The guy with the guns blazing is simply being more aggressive, and trying to get that edge sooner (i.e. right away).
He's trained to do that, in essence, by trial and error when he fights "better" pilots. He learns very quickly that if he doesn't get the "edge" within the first second or two, he's screwed. He'll never see another opportunity to shoot. His opportunity to shoot/win is at the merge, so he takes that opportunity.
If he makes it through the merge, and dies horribly within a few seconds afterwards as the "experienced" pilot whups him hard, that cements the idea that he has no chance against a skilled pilot if he doesn't do damage during his first, brief, opportunity.
Worse yet... If he actually manages to
hit his opponent on the merge we've got real trouble. He's now learned that he can kill on the merge, and that he's unlikely to succeed if the fight goes beyond the merge. Double-whammy.
Uh oh, it gets even worse... If he fails to kill on the merge, and knows he has almost no chance of success beyond the merge, he may run. Or if he turns, he realizes that as the seconds tick by (remember, he only has about ten to play with) to have any chance of a win he needs to do it ASAP! That means "haul that nose around and get guns on his opponent ASAP!" If he sees your nose anywhere close to getting a solution, he'll pull even harder ina race to get guns on quicker than you. He really has no other good option in his eyes, there's a very low likelihood he'll survive long enough to get guns on you (or near you) a third time.
About the only way it could be worse than that would be if he got chastised for winning the fight due to getting his nose on you quicker. Not only does he "beat" you, you tell him how he did it ("you dirty HO'er") and expose what he sees as a chink in the experienced pilots armor (the inability to handle/defend against a FG shot). Ooops, that happens too, doesn't it?
Realistically, the best way to "un-train" the HO might be to dodge it/disallow it (reduce its effectiveness), and then let your weaker opponent win when it comes to the more complex maneuvering aspect of the fight. Even if he's sloppy and skill less, at least he's doing what you want right? Let him beat you then. It's not a war, it's not combat, nobody is dying. Why would you want to win the fight if it might contribute to your opponent's frustration, and possibly even result in him getting more aggressive than you at a stage of the fight where it bothers you if he's aggressive?
