While this might seem the most common sense approach, for some reason there is a belief that "if you change X, players will (automatically) do Y, and it's Y we're after." So rather than deal with the M3s and see if the predicted increase in fights ensures, the notion seems to be that reducing/eliminating them will make more players jump in a fighter. I doubt it will.
THISHow many times do we need to flog this horse that's deader than Monty Python's parrot?
JunkyII must have screamed bloody murder about this a hundred times on this forum, and I must have given the same answer a hundred times, and he still has yet to acknowledge it, much less get it.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR PROPOSAL WILL NOT BE WHAT YOU WISH THEM TO BE, AND YOU WILL NOT LIKE THEM.No matter how much you want or what you do, you canNOT dictate the way other players play. Even if your way is better. Even if they'd enjoy your way more if they tried it. Even if everyone else would enjoy the game more if they tried it. You just can't. You cannot force combat-shy players to hop in a fighter and take off to defend a base, no matter how much better the game would be if they did. Most likely they will just hop in an 88 instead and bang away until the base falls, like we already see every night once numbers get low. Or just go somewhere else and do something else, or log. If they wanted to fight they'd be fighting as it is. If they don't, they won't want it any more after this change.
The change you'll actually see is 10 times as many base sneaks with no combat as you have now, because having no effective way to resupply means that once you pork the strats a little a couple of players can take Lancs up and WFand/or deack 6 or 8 bases along the front and then sneak M3s into them for the next two hours, bailing once they've dropped troops so the town stops flashing, while the one or two defenders run around trying to whack more moles than they have mallets. The overall result will be
LESS combat, not more. Instead of forcing people to defend bases from attackers who want a fight, what you will actually accomplish is making it easier for attackers to take fields without risking a fight. And you will not be happy, and you will just lobby for another ill-considered rules change meant to force players to fight in the air with you but which will actually have the opposite effect.
As for the numbers. it's a shame the stats can't tell what those M3s were carrying, because I'd be willing to bet that half of them were carrying troops and half the rest were carrying vehicle supplies. For every time I've seen people mass resupply a town under attack I've seen many more instances of people flooding a town with troop-carrying M3s (or LVTs) while defenders slaughter them en masse like ducks in a shooting gallery.