You know Gyrene, after 4 plus years in game I now know that it is up to the players and not the developers to make it fun. It's the truth and I am sticking to it Sir.
Unfortunately that is also the problem.
HTC has got to make the game work for the majority of the players, after all the more people enjoying the game the more people paying for a subscription.
In the old days you could pork fuel to 25% but they changed it because to many people complained about not being able to get to the fights with any fuel. I think killing Dar at the HQ did the same thing. Too often you would spend half the night with put any Dar, so things got changed.
People don't like to run supplies, people don't like to cap a base, people don't mind defending, but vulching stops to local upper and the horde is quick enough to get the bases before you can have defenders fly in. So in many case people don't like defending. So what does that leave, attacking. Unfortunately, as attacks become more successful more people join to be part of the winning team and now we have a horde.
Player bring this about but looking to have fun. I think players could be "guided" by game mechanics to do those things they don't want to do. Give them more perks to resupply HQ. Give them more perk/points to defend against the horde. Tie the acks strength to the number of enemy in a Dar circle, the bigger the horde, the more ack to give defenders time to up and defend. The smaller the horde, the less ack so small squads can still hit a base and have a chance.
There is plenty to do in the game, its just that a lot of it isn't fun, or glamorous, and you don't get a lot of recognition for doing it.