Soulyss,
in a ho shot, usually both planes get damaged. So even if you win, theres a big chance (like 80%) that you get critical damage: engine out or at least oiled, radiator leak or pw, making you very vulnerable.
Following this logic, in an equal situation ho, you got 50+50*0.8=90% chance to die or take critical damage, what means death (sooner or later). Considering theres only 50% of a chance to get a kill, the odds are real bad...
Go HO-queens, go : D
Been reading about game theory, and I think it can explain this nicely.
If we set-up a basic pay-off matrix for this situation, it would look like this:
Noob-average opponent Expert
Manuver: +1 -2
HO: 0 0
I think the reason most people HO is that they aren't confident in their ability to outmanuver their opponent for whatever reason, be it lack of skill, disadvantaged, inferior aircraft, whatever it may be.
Where if they manuver, if they win, they only benefit in the imediate term, since they still remain airborn in a hostile enviornment. And if they lose, they get -2 because not only are they dead, but they didn't do any harm to their opponent. But if they HO, they're (basicly) guaranteed to break even.
For whatever reason, they decide that the reward isn't worth the risk, and take the guaranteed 0 over the possiblity of a +1.
