Originally posted by Guppy35
This is where I'll have to disagree. This is still just a game. It's not war. No one is dying. There is no risk.
If two guys are locked in a good 1 v 1 and you dive in and grab a kill it accomplishes nothing beyond ending what may have been a good fight and learning experience for the two guys involved. If that fight goes to the end and one of them 'dies', he still gets a free plane and is right back up.
Too many folks get caught up in the "so and so lands 97 kills in their Me262" messages and all the WTGs that follow.
I'll agree it's all about fun, but that should be fun for everyone. It seems like there was a time where folks looked for the even fight. Radar and dar bars sent folks heading for the spot where the bad guys were, not where they were not. Now it seems folks look for the one where they might have the best chance to vulch a field and land a zillion kills.
That's a generalization of course but as an example last night, when I'd probably already been on too long, I bounced around to some fields that had few good guys and more bad guys, and from the tower it was always the same. The bad guys were just loitering, waiting for someone to try and up. They'd come screaming in and nail em before they got away from the runway. And these were the LA7, Niki guys.
If that's fun, then folks are setting some fairly low expectations for it 
Dan/Slack
In an ideal world you may be correct, but as we know this is not an ideal world. For better or worse we are people playing a game that is a simulation of war. Each of us has certain things that motivates us to play. Often that particular motivator is related to attaining some form of recognition, recognition by friend and/or foe. While I am not denying the personal satisfaction that can be derived from a quality 1 vs. 1, there is a very low recognition factor associated with it and it ranks very low on the scale of risk vs. reward in terms of the potential of attaining a multi-kill sortie to land. Also, just because a fight is 1 vs. 1 does not mean it is fair. There is an almost infinite variety of 1 vs. 1 type engagements and very rarely do these fall in the same/similiar plane, co-alt, co-E merge type and as such are intrinsically unfair in some respect before the merge.
My point is, right down to the core, this game is almost guarenteed to provide you with 'unfair' encounters, both in your favor and against. When we discuss rules of engagement outside of an actual context we are divorced from reality. In reality ROE are 'situational', that is, as some have announced', our ROE are dependent upon the situation, therefore it is part of situational awareness. While player X may proclaim he never HO's, let's see what he does in a cannon plane when faced with a face shooting perk plane without cannons such as a F4u4. There is no absolute ROE, anyone who proclaims they adhere to one is either completely devoid of situational tactical awareness or lying...
In summary, if your motivation to play in the MA is derived from co-alt, co-E, same/similiar plane engagements, my condolences.
Zazen
