Originally posted by wetrat
People are constantly whining about being shot in the face on merges, and everyone in the know tells these whiners that HO's are easy to avoid. Well, that's great and all, but if someone is unable to avoid a HO (apparently this is difficult for some.... don't ask me why), then it's unlikely that they'll be able to figure out how to avoid it just because we tell them it's easy.
Just a quick comment.........
I've noticed alot of guys come in over the last few months who used to fly AW and instead of jumping right into AH or WB or something else, they took some time off like I did. There have also been some from WB and other sims, but most of those didnt have to deal with being rusty on top of learning a new Flight Model. I know I know, get to the point.
In AW the classic merge was head to head. We didnt really have to worry about HOs because the chance of one of those shots landing was next to nil, and the chance of the few that might land doing serious damage was almost beyond belief. It was drummed into our heads that ammo spent on the merge was wasted, and to ignore it if the other guy started spraying lead.
Old habits die hard. Reflex reactions you train yourself to make are very hard to retrain later (at least for me). Time after time, I find myself setting up for that headon pass, thinking about what this guy is going to do, how I'm going to react, playing scenes over in my head.........and then when its too late to really do anything else remembering I have to worry about HOs and trying to pull my nose far enough out that I wont be an easy target.
Even after you make it past that intial merge, you try to use the vertical and there he is again, nose to nose. Will he try it this time? Try to get some horizontal separation in the Immelman and try it again. Now he has an angles shot, and I'm wasting more and more E..............
AH doenst just mean learning a new Flight Model to a guy like me, its entirely new tactics. Allowing HO's means I have to take all I ever learned about how you can make an opening move, and rewrite my play book. The hardest part is, I cant let myself go on "autopilot" anymore and try to think ahead. I have to concentrate on each move as I'm flying it, or I'll be putting myself right in front of the other guy's guns. I still do it too often, although I think I'm getting much better. Obviously I dont dont adapt as quickly as some others lol. After about a year and a half or so of this, its starting to mesh but I have a long way to go.
Maybe this will help you a bit in understanding why its hard for some of us to avoid the HO.
