The real reason is because the MA is a dog eat dog atmosphere. If you 'fight' at the wrong time, you get jumped by another 4 who are also itching for that kill. If you blink incorrectly, you have 3 enemies on your 6 outa no where. People compensate (naturally) by flying faster planes with bigger guns. This makes the MA incredibly challenging. Literally .001% of the players would give you a 1v1 with their friendlies hanging around. Being fast is the single greatest advantage to stay alive. Now, when you have to fly 7 minutes to a field only to hope a con or 2 will roll, or you get blown away by manned ack in the first 3 minutes you get there, sortie is over and you have to fly another 7-10 minutes. In gaming world, that's a long time. This also means players want to stay alive longer in their sorties which leads to timid flying. Flying with a squad, especially as a new guy, is extremely beneficial. Extremely.
I would always try to avoid HOs at all times. I suck at HOing and die 90% of the time I try... Don't do it. People are desperate for kills and will literally do ANYTHING, instead gain the advantage on the Merge by avoiding the HO and then doing immelman around them. You will always get the jump on them because you get your nose up before them.
I think the smaller maps have been much more beneficial for #s. NDsiels actually had a good amount of players on last week, big and tuff fights.
Really the key to better your game is to learn defensive maneuvers so that you can evade and counter cons jumping your 6. This way, if a pesky BnZer overshoots, you can wack them on the overshoot. Yucca is very good at that.
It does get tiring when you have to climb to 15K every sortie and Chase P51s and 190Ds and La7s and Yak3s, but that's sometimes the name of the game. I think with smaller maps and closer bases, the alt monkeys will be less. If you get the players into a fight more quickly. It gives them less time to gain alt before they get to the fight and makes the action slightly quicker. They could also roll from a back base. But keeping fights close is really the key.