Grizz, the main thing I was pointing to was the notion that "I can't get into the arena!" "I can't fly with my squaddies!"
HTC is clear that the system is here to stay. So how do we take what we have in squads and make the best possible outcome. As the crowd wants to gravitate to the crowd, regardless of the impact, it's going to take some of us creating a separate crowd. If Blue developed a different identity based on squads that called it home, it just might even out the balance in numbers.
To Rapier. I think you are forgetting when there were numerous RR1, RR2, RR3 along with FR in Airwarrior. Identical maps but different squads populated the different identical arenas The style of play in those arenas were often determined by the style of the regular squads in them.