I have a question or maybe two.
When we introduced the new system with AKDesert (I think), it changed the resupply time to about 120 minutes for objects in a foreign zone and about 45 minutes for a friendly zone. When the factories were reduced to about 30% or below, then the longer period for resupply applied for both sides. Would this remain? Would you be keeping the resupply benefit at about 15 minutes for each load?
As a strat player it is only those particular effects that bring any interest in zones and their factories to me.
On a larger map the presence of zones tends to localise the fight to a particular zone. Control of its resources can become vital to maintaining an attack or shoring up a defence. The removal of zones on a large map perhaps means that all the advantage in future would lie with a defender. The best that an attacker could achieve by hitting factories would be to slow down the resupply of the defender, which is only an advantage if he wants to temporarily freeze the front line.
If the factories are much further back and much easier to supply, then there accrues no great advantage to hitting them. There would then be little incentive to hit factories at all. Better to use the bombs at the front line. The score guys would still be heading there at the start of each month (probably in another arena anyway), but I can't see an increase in activity high over the factories from this, just a decrease.
Most mass formation assaults used to be to HQ as there was a tangible benefit gained by blinding the opponent for 45 minutes (and then up to 2 hours). It fell out of favour when distances got longer and resupply times got shorter. A mass assault on say a training factory means little now because there are so many barracks at a average base that it would almost be impossible to take them out before the factory was back up anyway.
There's no value in it for the strat player, but there are always a few people wandering over them for their own interest. They'll still have a go if it's not too far to fly. If you make a change that just removes zones and leaves the rest intact, then there will be less attacks on the factories not more. There will however be an increased advantage to sitting back and defending by porking front-line bases to halt attackers.
The effect generally will probably be to slow the game down to even more torpid levels than now. No magic bullet for more attacking and increased game play here that I can see.
