The unfortunate result of months of practice by folks trying to figure out the new field captures and anti stealth settings has been the "mother of all hordes" group effort.

I am afraid that the emphasis in future changes will only address the "difficulty" in base capture (+ / - ). Making base capture more obtainable with lesser numbers will be a good start. It should offer more battles. However, it could also lead to frequent map resets, and milkrunning.
What worries me the most, is that the "stale" portion of stalemate may have already sailed. Players have expressed their fatigue over repetitive rolls in a number of different styles or preferences of options. I know this may sound harsh or (some other large word, that means I don't have a clue about the complexities involved), but I would love to see this game step up,
once again and offer just the sort of tweak in game play, that simply is enjoyable to players at all skill levels.
Bruv, please take this as a compliment. When you have achieved 3 top seats in fighter categories, and I have seen you land greater than 17 kills twice within 15 minutes, I will have to say that your skill level far exceeds that of the typical town porker. What most of us want to do is simply shoot stuff and look good doing it. Getting locked in a 60 minute battle over a single airfield, multiplies the odds for most of us loosing cartoon lives. The appeal of the NOE, and the horde has been the likelihood of survival and success. There you go, maybe that is the key, better chances at survival. How does one achieve that? Reducing 262 availability? Reducing the popularity of the 109K4? Reducing the range of the La7? Reducing the one shot killz from a Tiger opponent? Scary to think, but we have the mid war arena and until LW got shut down yesterday, it has been difficult to find a fight there, but it fits the above scenario.
Proximities of towns and spawns are specific to maps and make them challenging in different ways, and I agree we are not clear on where challenge becomes more fun or less fun, so having a mix could be beneficial.