I need to give a little history for those that were not around in the AH1 days. The Combat Theater, as the AvA was called back then, had a normal nightly population of 20-30 with big squad nights pushing 50 or more. We had base captures, and JG3 was the best at it (and we hated them for it). They did it by coming in as an organized group and suppressing the base, IE vulching, porking, and that is OK that is what you do to capture a base. There was no structured reason for them to do it as there is now, they did it because one, it was an easy squad mission, and two, they were good at it. Sometimes HUGE fights erupted at bases they tried to capture that lasted hours. Sometimes they tried to sneak quiet bases.
At that time the CT also had other dedicated Axis squads, like DrEvil's Death Squad. The axis in general was out numbered, but not always. I, as a side switcher, spent probably 70% of my time flying Axis back then but even when numbers were low we would have 8-10 on each side. I dont remember exactly when it was, but some time before the introduction of AHII JG3 left the arena. Some core members, Storch, TK, N7, VWE, and a few others I forgot I'm sure, formed JG54. This was the heyday of the CT (now the AvA). Then came AHII.
With AHII, lots of people did not have the computer to run the game. Also, there were only a few maps, none of them our old Combat Theater maps, and they were not good for AvA use. The lack of proper AvA suitable maps at the startup of AHII really killed the AvA, those that were there at the time will remember. Between the higher requirements to run AHII and the bad map situation, the AvA population plummeted. Squads could no longer take bases because there just were not enough people to do it. Even the guys that came from JG3 and formed JG54 who were so good at base capture, stopped doing it and along with the arena morphed into primarily a furball squad. They had to, the low numbers would not really support anything else. I personally liked it, because thats all I wanted to do was furball, but it happened because the numbers were too low to do any organized squad missions, not because that is what the arena was designed for or that is what everyone in there wanted. Some of the best fights ever were over base captures that teetered in the balance.
So, all of you who think of the AvA as an "historic furball arena" that is what it became out of necessity from the low numbers, but that is not what it was in the AHI days. The AvA staff, it seems to me, has designed a way to reintroduce base capture, and organized squad participation, but in a focused and organized way instead of the random way it was back then.
