One other thing I think deserves mentioning. Flying "realistically" does not necessarily mean you fly for rank or even care about rank at all for that matter. In fact, flying realistically actually makes it harder to rank higher. I performed an experiment last camp with my Zazen account and my wife's account. With my Zazen account I flew as I usually do with that one, to survive. With my wife's account I flew in the classic, "furball until you drop" mode, rarely landing at all in nothing but TnB planes, even experimenting with planes I have rarely or never flown. Guess what....
Wife's account in "Furball until You Drop" mode.... Fighter Rank 89
Zazen's account in "Fly to Survive" mode....Fighter Rank 131
*Not only that, but it took only 16 hours flown on my wife's account to achieve a higher rank than with the Zazen account in 28 hours flown.
So, this proves a few things, first of all, the sub-ranks that go into the aggregate Fighter rank are far more competitive for the "Fly to Survive" types, specifically the K/D ratio sub-rank. Secondly, my wife's account had almost the exact same hit % as the Zazen account with far less K/D, obviously and slightly fewer kills per sortie, the only other real difference was kills/time. Due to the fact I rarely landed and generally didn't get much altitude before engaging and rarely disengaged to re-alt, kills/time with my wife's account was much higher. So kills/time outweighs the much higher K/D and slightly higher kills/sortie of my Zazen account by a large margin.
My conclusion, after that experiment, flying to "DIE" is actually much easier to do and far easier to rank higher with than "flying to survive". If my motive was to impress people with my godlike rank, and chest-thump, I sure as hell wouldn't try to do it flying to survive, I'd just furball until I either killed everything, ran out of ammunition, or died. Saying people like myself "Fly to Survive" as an attention getting device or some such thing are rediculously off-base from a statistical point-of-view. "Flying to survive" takes longer, requires more forethought, is much harder to rank higher with, and one bad day for a "Fly to survive" type would ruin your score for the whole camp. In the final analysis, "Flying to survive" is actually more thought and time consuming with far less potential reward from a rank/score perspective. People who "Fly to survive" then are doing it primarily for their own personal edification and nothing more.
The other thing to note, and this applies to myself as well as many others typecast as "Fly to Survive" types. Don't assume just because we choose to fly to survive we can't yank and bank with the best of them, we just choose not to as it leaves you needlessly vulnerable to any dweeb with some alt that happens by the fight you are currently engaged in. You don't play these games ten years without being at least moderately proficient at every facet of gameplay. To think otherwise is an exercise in deliberate self-dellusion.
I don't know about anyone else but I learned to TnB LONG before I ever even considered "Flying to Survive". It was only after I became bored with that style that I looked to "flying to survive" as a more tactically complex and realistic approach to airiel combat. The first year I played AW I flew spitfires exclusively, then for the next two years I was yanking and banking in the 109-Franz. It wasn't until I deduced I could glean no more insight into the nuances of airiel combat from this limited vantage I began to fly the Fw190 in "Fly to Survive" mode. I am sure most successfull "Fly to Survive" types have a similiar pattern.
Zazen
