"Cheap" is a meaningless pejorative being used in place of logic.
The entire BBS will tell you that HOs are 1. Easy to avoid and 2. Allow you to easily get a positional advantage over the HOer. Therefore, you should thank someone for HOing you and making things easy on you, and feel a bit silly if you get hit by one, since all dogma teaches us that HOs are easy to avoid.
Furthermore, HOing is absolutely fair. They have a chance to shoot, and so do you, right? Situations where one dives on another plane's six give much less chance to the opponent (especially if the attacker is in a much more maneuverable plane), yet no one bats an eye.
"But BnZs, what if they have an enormous firepower advantage?"
What of it? No one bats an eye when people fly fighters that have an enormous turn-rate advantage over most.
"But BnZs, what if he has a firepower advantage AND the skill to hit me on the HO nearly every time?"
Now one is effectively complaining because the opponent has skill in the gunnery aspect of the game. As well complain because the other guy can do a really neat scissors.
BTW, if we make all shots from in front of the 3/9 line verboten, it will effectively disable energy fighters to kill much-better turning fighters, because such fighters (like a Zero) can nearly always point their nose somewhere near the E fighter if they want, if not directly on it.
The following film is a good example of that. This fellow is pretty lethal in that F4U-4 against planes that cannot match its vertical capacity, but against a K4 he has nothing to offer, even though a Kurt wouldn't normally be considered a match for a 4-Hog. First there are the repeated dive-aways at high speed. When terra firma puts an end to the dive-away and the Kurt continues to maintain pressure without foolishly entering a slow speed contest with the Hog, the Hog attempts the uber-skilled move of pulling back on the stick really hard to try the face shot, which the Kurt, packing a 30mm, gladly accepts.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/qq6cqyah49xthg4/Cuervo_0018.ahf
(Spitfires especially tend to "defend" by pulling back on the stick really hard to point the nose at you. Oh yeah, that's uber-skilled right there. When face with this, I frequently "embrace death" as a samurai would say, and Ho/ram them right back. I consider it a lesson taught.)
First off, HO'ing had an element of randomness, given bullet randomization. Skyyrr could be literally the worst cartoon pilot ever, literally unable to outmaneuver the supply convoys, and still get a kill on me by hitting my pilot. I've had this type of thing happen before, in the same manner as I've killed things with half-aimed fire at D900. It doesn't make me good, it makes me lucky.
It requires no skill as a pilot, only skill as a marksman. Especially 1v1 and without any clearly and dominatingly superior aircraft, I take it only as an admission of inferiority. If you do not maneuver when is not suicide to do so, I thank you for the complement.
Second, a HO can be looked at as a kick in the balls. It's generally considered a really toejamty thing to do, even in a fight. It's cripplingly painful if it connects squarely, pisses you off if it misses, takes no particular skill to do, ab you can do it right back. That doesn't mean that you're not an utter and complete arse-wipe if you do it and have other options.
In that sense, it's definitely a cheap move. Little skill required, chance at knocking your opponent out of the fight before he can maul you with superior skill, dicey. It's almost the text book definition of cheap. You see it right next to abusing exploits on console games.
And really, it's only a HO from maybe the10:30-1:30 position. And that's being generous. It's not like we're saying a full half of the aircraft is off limits, as you are ham-fistedly attempting to imply.
Fact is Skyyrr could have engaged in a maneuvering fight, and wouldn't have been consigning himself to death. Especially if he is as good as he would have us believe. He actively chose to take the easy road. This means either he is lazy, which is a mark against his person, or the other road is too hard for him, in which case I would direct him to our marvelous trainers. They can give him a run-down of BFM and ACM, give him a few practice dogfights, maybe go easy on the kid.
In either case, it is through a fault in himself, not in his opponent.
Feel free to fly as you feel is best. Just don't come to the boards trying to justify something you already know is generally frowned upon in an effort to shield your ego from reality.
