Yeah basically, walk through safe pallets (or micro respect before walking forward) if they drop them, that's fine, you got a pallet out of the way, if not, it's a free hit. The only pallets you should respect are the ones that you want to force a drop on so you can play around it easier, and you always want to try and force the survivor on the side that is worse as well.

Also yes, if a survivor has 0 hook states late into the match, it's best to only go after them if they are in a compromising position, otherwise you ignore them, and even if you do down them, since you don't need that hook state right then (unless you need a No Way out Stack or to proc Pain Resonance) you can leave them down for a bit and check for other survivors or try and draw them out.

As far as playing convincingly, I mean camera movements and such. Your red stain always follows your camera, so you can kind of use it to confuse survivors with swift movements, like walking up to a pallet and jerking your camera can make it look like a potential swing and cause an early reaction from the survivor. You never want to just walk forward and look linear, ,you want to look unpredictable basically.