Im sure ill get flack for it but I am kind of torn about the whole thing.
One end yeah its kind of different and it seemed that there were a lot of fights all over the place, Defending seemed a lot more difficult and it actually appeared to leave factories quite exposed. I looked around at one point and ever country had 2 factories each that were either 0 or 1%. It is hard enough to get defenders for bases yet now you REALLY have to defend the strats cause they are out there in the open. I never really played when they were like this before so I have no experience other than the short time I was on last night.
I can see spreading them out a little but it seemed a little to much last night. I am a big buff guy and got quite a few bomber guys in my squad, with the new layout it kind of takes away from those large missions hitting strats and getting attacked by numerous defenders as they see the large dar move toward their strats, always made the runs fun whether we survived or not. As it is now your kind of limited on how many targets you get to hit.
I know part of the complaints were because they were all together it made it easy to drop them in a single run. Only argument I have to counter that point now that they are spread out is I never saw strat factories down to 0 or 1% unless there was a CV there bombing them, or like about a month ago when the bishy took all those bases by the rook strats. I have played a couple years now and the amount of time that the cluster got absolutely destroyed compared to just a bruising doesn't seem to justify having them all over the place exposed. Poor Snailman must be lost or going crazy tryin to defend all these positions now
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I can understand spreading them out a little, maybe within a 40-50 mile radius though instead of from one end to the other end of the map.
I also did like the idea that someone had posted at one time of maybe breaking each country into 2-3 "zones" that each had their own set of strat factories that would directly impact that particular "zone". Obviously you could change it dependent on map size as to how many zones there are.
I will hopefully figure out some way of getting my own personal enjoyment from the current setup if it stays this way. Its just my initial thoughts about it for now though it does seem to encourage some fights which is good for the game. Im just not 100% sold on how it will impact strategy.