Ok, I may as well throw out an idea. Maybe it's good, maybe not, but at least it's an idea. It's a little long to explain but is really not that complex when you think about it at the end. But read on if you dare....
The premise:
AH currently has the ability to track how many cons are in a sector. We get it on the radar map and HTC servers deal with the ip packets all the time to work out the relative numbers (sector bar). Now, there are 3 fronts (an imaginary intersection between friendly and enemy forces) in this game bish/rook, bish/knit, and knit/rook. Consider the concentration of forces on any front to be the numbers of aircraft, friendly and enemy, in a sector adjacent to the front in question. Now, if you did a quick couple of calculations you could easily determine where the action is at any one time on the map. Sure, fronts move around but in order to be a front they have to have 2 countries bordered.
The idea:
So, the bangers each have a front that is relatively inactive, and the banged has both fronts active. Easy enough. The only situation that isn't a gangbang is when everyone is only attacking 1 other country or if each country is attacking both others (and this does happen at times). So, in doing this, we can tell who is getting banged and who is banging.
Next comes the rating of a front. There is no reason that you shouldn't be able to bang someone for a little while for many reasons. You want to kill some of their planes, you want to grab a field, etc. You name it, there are reasons to bang. the problem is that banging often gets really bad, or lasts too long. So here is the next part of the idea. Rate the fronts on a scale of 1-100 (call it an action scale). Now, knowing that we can detect a country that is being banged (2 overly active fronts vs the other 2 countries that have a common inactive front) we make fronts that are banged slowly get a worse and worse action scale rating. Each country has a rating scale on each front and you only get negative points if you are banging someone (or maybe just a front that is too active). The defender of the bang doesn't get negative, or maybe some positive points. Fronts that are quiet for periods of time get positive points. Thus, when any country logs on you would see the relative ratings of each front and could tell where the bang was happening (though it would probably be pretty obvious if it were ongoing). Negative points are only accumulated if there is a large % of combat occurring against 1 country (again, it's been explained how this could be derrived). If one country is attacking both others, then the combat % for them would be pretty evenly spread out and there wouldn't be a real penalty for them (again based on relative numbers of cons in adjacent sectors).
The penalty phase:
A country that has a low action scale on a front slowly has problems on that front as the attack starts to run out of steam. It could start at smaller fuel loads being available, or less powerful gun option, lack of re-arm/re-fuel at bases on the edge of battle, or maybe no more spawning at the edge of the front. It's something that would be staged though and come on rather slowly as the action scale got worse and worse over time. If the battle slows, the action scale would start to recover naturally as the action shifted elsewhere and the local fields had time to recover/resupply... if you want to think of it that way. A short term attack wouldn't mean much since it would never have time really build up those negative points.
What this all means:
A bang vulch/furball/failed capture couldn't go on forever without it being harder and harder for the attacker to support from his local fields. It would become more and more attractive to move the battle to another front and thus break the bang. It would also give players a way to rate how the action has been flowing to know where the battles have relatively been and where they are running out of steam.
It also brings around some interesting side effects that could be cool. A long term failed attack by a lot of enemy forces would slowly cripple their ability to defend their own territory. Hard to defend when you've spent all your planes and ammo in one sector close to the front. Can you say, counter attack... just like real-life. Bases not on the front, or further away, would be less/not affected by the penalities.
The summary:
It'll piss some people off and maybe it's something to do in a different arena. I don't see it being a bad thing though, you could still do whatever you really want, you just will have to travel further, or do with less if you insist on continuously attacking the same place in a gangbang. I think people would figure out the implications pretty quick and it would just become another game factor. If you sat there and gang vulched for a while, it would slowly become a losing proposition.
Then again, this could all be a big doobie that someone will smoke and throw away... Hopefully it gives HTC some ideas though.
Soda
