I see Snailman's point, and could possibly agree with some changes that improve gameplay during off hours without removing the full spectrum of options available, including taking out HQ. Maybe removing dot dar, but leaving dar bar?
You still have a full strategic spectrum, so to say. HQ has not been taken out. You still can take it down for a considerable amount of time. All other strat targets are still there, too.
But I think "Maybe removing dot dar, but leaving dar bar?" shows a very valid point: It's very difficult to balance a massive global 'all or nothing' effect the HQ currently has, by downtime and amount of ords.
There had been various proposals in the past to give the HQ a different effect, from the return of staged damage levels up to totally different mechanisms like stopping all auto resupply convoys as long as HQ is down. I would favor the latter one, as it has a huge impact on your enemy, yet doesn't hurt the people's ability to find each other and fight.
My main point is that the play my way because your way makes it harder on me doesn't cut the mustard. Possibly having a ranked dueling arena for those who only want to dogfight, so that the MA could be for those who are more interested in the whole strategic spectrum might be an option.
It's not about furballers or dogfighters. In this context, I'm a "full strategic" player almost like nobody else. But the key point for me are
battles, and even with HQ up their are so difficult to find during off hours these days, no need to make getting any combat that much harder. Especially not by the actions of a single player.
Anything with a massive effect like that should also be the result of a possibly massive battle.
And that's all from me for now. All has been said, now I will wait what kind of 'solution' the next release will bring.
We need a different topic now. Somebody make a new thread about collision model. We didn't have that for a while