Nothing makes you do this. When that happens on nits I take a P51D with maximum fuel and go find a bish/rook fight to join. Taking the rough with the smooth, sir.
So... Instead of being able to switch sides to find a good fight, you propose flying alone 3/4 of an hour out of my way round trip to take on two sides at once? Really? This is good gameplay and a viable solution?
All I'm saying is, I like defending outnumbered. Not solo, outnumbered. That's how I get my fun. Yes, I can up and go jabo a field and have a chance to get a couple responses perhaps. I could also up a GV and drive it to the enemy field and start shooting buildings. I could also drive a jeep across the map to occupy myself. Doesn't mean it's fun.
I'm also in a squad that doesn't like to side switch, which is fine. My point is, there used to be a really simple option if I was on alone and wasn't expecting a squaddie on for at least an hour or so. I could go to one of the opposite sides and have some fun and excitement, fighting in the kind of fight I wanted. The fight I wanted was right there, I was just on the wrong side of it.
That option's gone now for no other reason I can discern than the foot stomping of an extraordinarily paranoid subset of the playerbase.
*shrug* Honestly I didn't do it that often because generally I do try to find some kind of fight without switching, usually by the aforementioned dropping of ord on an out of the way field, but it irks me that the option is gone now.
The long switching time and the ENY/perk penalties if you're on the side that's got high numbers seem to me to be counterproductive, working against one another in a bad way.
Wiley.