Ok I have to ask....whats the big deal with the HQ going down? bases still flash and there is a country Chanel to find out whats going on.
Yep. And if it's primetime and your gameplay consists of hording undefended bases, spawn camping, or upping into the vulch/spawncamp it doesn't impact you much at all.
If however you want to do something like say, defend strats from further attacks, or go after the guys that are porking the front line at high altitude, they become practically invisible. If it's off peak times where people generally aren't hording, the entire enemy force is invisible until they start flashing a base. If they're at 25000 feet, it's going to take you about half to 3/4 of an hour to intercept them once you find them and upping from the base they're passing over.
When dar is UP, half the time you can't get people to identify what they're chasing asking them specifically when it's a singleton or twosy in an obscure corner of the map. That problem is magnified when dar's down because you don't even know who to ask.
The Readers Digest version, HQ being down negates meaningful strat defense and anything other than the most simplistic gameplay, and pretty much kills the entire capability of the side in offpeak hours.
Wiley.