Hey, just another idea to encourage people to fly together as I believe this improves the experience and would also mean more in depth strategy can be involved in the game (i mean how intricate can the strat be if people don't co-ordinate themselves to achieve objectives)
The idea would be flying slots. What would happen when people hit fly they are put in a ready room and only when the room is full can they take off. Obviously people don't want to be waiting around 10 minutes to fly so the number needed to fill rooms would have to be adjusted to how busy the arena was or maybe just have a 5 minute limit on the rooms.
You could have rooms which require some people to fly bombers, e.g. Must have 5 fighters and 2 bombers to take off. Where and when certain types of rooms are in operation could be dependant on a few factors e.g. Number in arena, number of players in country, number of fields country owns, number of enemy fighters around field (over a certain number and rooms disabled?). Also when in a ready room you should be automatically be tuned to two channels - one for your room and one for all the ready rooms.
Here are what I think are the advantages
1) No obligation to fly with the rest of group you take off with. Many will still just do there own things which is what they pay there money to do.
2) I believe a fairly large proportion of groups will stick together just because they were probably going to the same place anyway and it only takes one person to say follow me and you've got a formation (very historic :-) )
3) If a pilot doesn't mind flying bombers he'll be a lot more inclined to jump in one knowing he is taking off with 8 fighters and it's a fair bet 5 or so will stay with him if he asks.
4) People won't be able to jump back into there plane and rush to the nearest furball they'll have a few mins to think about what they are doing
5) Planning - this is a very important an often overlooked aspect, with a intricate strat model surly you need a bit of planning (like in scenario's). These rooms and the 2 radio channels suggested you get 5 mins to plan and co-ordinate :-
On internal ready rooms channel
A: we going to fly together ?
B,C,D,F,G : yes
E:no
A: C,D take bombers we'll go for the ammo factory in 12, 9
A: ok rest of will take 51's and escort any probs
F:i'd prefer a 109
A: np
Then on all ready rooms channel
Field 4 : off to bomb ammo dump at 12,9 any other rooms want to hook up on the way
Field 8 : ok we've got a bomber here we'll meet over F7 at 5,000 feet
Field 4 : see you there
An ideal situation I know :-)