If the MA were an "air fighting only" arena this would work fine. It's foundation is capture the flag and people use their un-perked powerful rides first as fast bomb trucks then as the best way to get out of being a low target after they pitch their ords. Most of the MA game is not dueling, but instead opportunities to partake of that as a result of flag capturing initiatives. My almost 20 years of this game, that has always been how the MA functioned. Your solutions are too narrow for the open world MA becasue you ignore the fact most players are playing capture the flag and not interested in what you play the game for. Most people find out quickly in our world being a fighter pilot is not for them and they turn to all the offerings generated by the capture the flag game in the MA. Shooting down other planes is part of that but not the total focus of the activity. They won't openly admit to that, it's easy to see by interactive observation and why so many loudmouths on 200 whine about people running away. Most customers in the MA are not fighter pilots.
Becasue the only thing you do in the MA is play lone wolf fighter pilot, you have a myopic narrow view of the whole MA game environment. Only a tiny percentage of players ever play in the MA the way you do while the rest take part in everything else offered as game play in the MA.
I've wondered if the mistaken assumption by all the opinionated over the years is that all customers want to become fighter gawds and nothing else. So the only help they have for the new customer is to throw them off a cliff rather than the baby steps of capturing flags. In capture the flag the goals are easier to learn and acheive while the new player has a better chance to learn how to fly a plane in the company and safety of others. Remember all those missions or hoards the fighter gawds called them dismissively. Where all the newbies had a chance to survive and learn the game and how to fly in Hitech's physics environment. And just like today, back then all those newbies took fighter gawd scalps by banding together and swamping them. Those baby steps gave them small victories and built the confidence to keep coming back. And it gave them friendships and networking opportunities which many used to join squads. This game would have died right after the 2008 economic collapse if the MA was 100% lone wolf types. The people who stayed were all old friends who used the game as a social media function like they do today.
Most talented people in real life are clueless to teaching others how they do what they do. So many make the mistake of forcing anyone trying to learn from them to become their clone. They assume the person looks at the vocation exactly the same way they do and wants exactly what gets them off about it. And that being talented at it makes them an unassailable expert to all aspects of it. That drives away everyone but a person already motivated and innately talented enough to teach themselves and succeed at the vocation. Sadly, often the original talented person thinks they are a great teacher while being clueless that all they did was attract to themselves a like minded already talented person.
We drive away the customers we think we are talented enough to know how to keep in our game with our highly talented myopia.
