What I'm trying to describe is an abstraction of balancing along a "front line."
In other words, as long as the "peace time" (i.e. map reset) borders are intact, it is assumed that no side is gaining an advantage. So, the "home fields" ENY modification means everyone gets all their planes as long as they sortie from a home field.
Once you start pushing into enemy territory, you start getting hit with ENY if you have a numerical edge. HT wants to actually calculate this as a function of distance from your own HQ ... which is good too ... but I think a quicker fix is needed.
If you're pushed back and get reinforcements, you can now retake your own fields without the ENY penalty. This makes the counter-offensive one of the better situations to be in - as opposed to one of the most hopeless as it is now.
If you want to go one step further, you could add a "bases held" function on top of the perk discounting. That way, if you're pushed back to 20 fields and everyone else has 100 each, you get a nice perk discount regardless of the numbers.
Of course, once you get back to the "peace time" borders you lose all this advantage - but then the "balance" on the map has been restored. If by weight of numbers you can now push into enemy space, well, you get ENY'd and you long since lost your perk discount when you retook your bases. The closer you get to resetting the enemy (assuming you're using shear weight of numbers), the harder you get hit with ENY, and the more high-perk planes you see coming at you.
So the system as I describe it tries to settle back to the peace time borders.
-DoK
