My suggestion, which is cummulitive of several suggestions, most important being, CAPTURE IS POSSIBLE:
In real war, the reward for going to war was real estate. Guys didn't fly to find a furball for ONLY the purpose of being rewarded for the kill, they didn't bomb the crap out of a city in order to 'feel good about landing and surviving'...they did it for the big picture of CAPTURE!
Set CT up with rotating maps once a month.(Or, auto-change theatres with with "War is over")
ETO, then PTO, pick a map for either.(Channel map once, then Norway, or Philippines, then ??)
Enable field capture.
Limted icons, 3k or less for friendly,none for enemy.
Disable bar dar below 500 feet OR disable dot dar.(Its my opinion that some sort of dar should be avail, so folks CAN find a fight)
Make it 1945, enable all planes for that Theatre, or, make it 1941 first week, 1942 second week, etc.
Its a no -brainer...allow field capture and they will come.
Most of all, forget what other sims did, this is AH, it has had almost a 33% customer base increase lately, the sooner they do something with it the better, there are alot here that are ready for something new (Some have moved onto IL-2 until some kind of new arena or version draws their interest once again) and the new guys are willing to give something different a try...lets DO it! Throw something together..if it doesn't work, the population within that arena on a given week-end night will tell ya.