For newer pilots and even for some of the more experienced ones, judging "E" states remains one of the hardest things to get right. The simple fact is there is no formula or process for doing this AND being right all the time, it's something you have to evaluate as it happens by analysing the clues available when observing the enemy as he approaches and conducts his aspects of the fight.  It requires you to continually adjust your approach and how you conduct your aspects of the fight to counter your opponent, be it defense or offense.

So what can you do to better judge "E states"?

I think the single most important aspect to build experience is to better understand your opponents options in the plane that HE is flying and fighting you with. If you understand your plane even to a very high level of understanding it remains that if you have zero undertsanding of what it is to fly your opponents aircraft, you are missing vital clues and experience that your opponent will use against you to beat you. If he also has expererience in your aircraft against his own, he'll beat you in half the time.

Whatever your feelings about "changing sides" and "I would never do that" you place yourself at an enormous disadvantage against everyone who has done that for the purpose of understanding and evaluating his rivals options. If you know what it is to fight from the cockpit your opponent is strapped into you will much better be able to judge his "E" state at any given moment and know what his likely options are and which ones he might go for. You will have a higher level of ability to make the right choice based on EXPERIENCE you otherwise would lack.

If you have read this far, and spend the next month just employing the one bare essential that is contained within these paragraphs, at the end of that month you will already have gone a long way towards the process required to gain the experience you lack that is negatively affecting your chances in game.

While you're doing this, pay attention to and learn how to analyse the fight and what happened. Throw out any tendency you might have to believe you don't have a chance or that things are somehow unfair, you will never get anywhere doing that. There are aces in every ride in the game.

Observe and learn to figure out:

1: Altitude and how it translates into control over the fight until someone higher comes along to control you.

2: Acceleration and how it is used to have more "E" than your opponent might have guessed. One trick here to learn is unloading the airframe at the beginning of your acceleration phase. If you are pulling anthing more or less than zero G you won't accelerate as quickly as you will at zero G.

3: Climbing states. You can hold a shallow climb at a relatively higher speed, or a steeper climb at a relatively lower speed. Both have a signifigant impact on your E state in terms of altitiude (future E you can spend in a dive later) or speed (current E you are maintaining at the expense of altitude you could spend later).  Remember that different airframes manage these relative values differently. One could list what these values are but there are a lot of variables that would alter that list dynamically as the fight changes. However if you learn what they are by practice and analytical observation, you will soon have experience that will win you more fights than trying to fly from a vague statistical table that cannot track all the variables you and your opponent would be changing each moment of the fight.

The simple versions to work on, practice and evaluate, to understand through practice and training are:

A: Long shallow climbs allow greater chance of separation depending on your pursuer. You won't get up above him as quickly but you will force him to not get above you if he decides to remain in direct pursuit. This is a "bait" situation a lot of the time. It also allows you to get a feel for his E state because of the relatively slow passage of time in the fight changing.

B: Quick steep climbs. These allow you to get a position on top of the fight but you blow all your speed to do so unless you are carrying massive speed out of a dive, what we call a "zoom climb".  These are the bread and butter of the BnZ crowd. If you have a better raw climb rate than your opponent in the vertical, you can employ a steep climb to force him to stall out below you while you remain unstalled.  This requires good pilot skills, the ability to avoid his gunfire while slow and climbing (usually by turning as you climb steeply) and what started this whole thing in the first place, the ability to judge whether he is slow enough to stall out before you do in his steep climbing pursuit of you.

C: The "stay fast all the time no matter what" technique. This is actually a real winner for any newer pilots but so frustrating at first that those who lack patience give up before it can hand over it's rewards.

Turning kills "E". Hard turning kills E even faster. There is always someone with all the "E" you just killed, who is going to kill you after you burn all that "E". Forget turning as soon as you see a plane bank away from you on your approach. DON'T play chase the dog around the circle. If you're inexperienced, you'll probably be dead to another pilot before you even get your gunsight where it needs to be to score a kill on the guy you're chasing.

Instead, get some altitude before you find the fight. 3km is ok, 3.5 or 4km is better. Remember, if a guy spots you and is above you, you're not going to learn a lot about the fight or "E" states while spiralling down to earth missing a wing.

Keep your speed as high as you can but don't go max/max all the time, save that for when you need it. If you follow whats being explained to you here, you won't need it at all in a lot of cases and then when escape is your only option left, you'll have the max. in reserve to help you escape. Learn to spot the fights happening at your altitude, or below you. Avoid fights happening ABOVE you.

Even though it will take some time to learn, start aquiring the experience of tracking a kill before he knows you're zooming down onto him. Learn to do this from as far away as possible. Think about where he WILL be not where he is, as you get closer. Avoid vertical dives but instead go for the shallower pursuits, this is where picking them up early can help hugely. Vertical dives you lose them when they break and then you overshoot BELOW them forcing you to have to exit and extend all the time to get the advantage back. That gets tiresome. Before long you get impatient and blow all your "E" in a hard turning attempt and then you're trapped, in minutes if not moments you'll be dead to somebody else.

Learn to get them at the moment when they are close (fill your gunsight ring wingtip to wingtip) and clobber them and then pull up and over them. Don't climb any steeper than you need to in order to stay above the fight. When you get better you can steepen your pull up and learn to wing over at the top for another pass.

Learn to give up a tracking shot if it's forcing you to lose "E" staying on them or wasting your ammo. You can get another shot at the target but not if you get trapped with him and you lack experience.

Timing is what you are learning here. That also means anticipation. If your target is chasing another plane it's THAT plane that will often dictate your anticiaption of the guy behind him that you are targeting.

The point is stay fast. Keep your rudder straight and use only roll and elevator to determine your manoeuvres. Keep stick inputs low and slight wherever possible. Buzz the fight. Those in the turning duels will not ctach you after you blow through at high speed and that gives you your next bite at the apple. As time passes all those missed shots will start to not be missed shots.

All this time, if you are practicing (in your opponents kind of aircraft as well as your own) your ability to judge "E" states will improve. You'll be dealing with relative "E" states on closure as you close to attack. You'll be dealing with relative "E" states when that other fast guy picks you up because he is doing what you are doing. Those situations, because you're fast, cause the fight or pursuit to take place at a slower pace which is easier for you to read and analyse because you are fast and the relative closure between you and your pursuer is inversely slower, even if they are fast too. Turning fights can be over in the blink of an eye because relative closure between you and your killer can be very fast indeed.

Practice this in the campaign in your ride. Practice this with a friend on the training server in your OPPONENTS ride. Promise yourself you'll do this for at least a month. Before you know it, the thing all newer pilots hate about the answer "you need to get more experience" won't be bothering you anywhere near as much as it once did.

Because experience is the one thing there is no substitute for, and you're now the owner of at least some of that for which there is no substitute.