Anton, the other thing that will help in the new release is the update biasing toward nmes. It means that you may see friendlies warping a bit more, but those cons that you are most concerned with (i.e, the guy you are saddling up on) will be a little less likely to jump round and climb up your ass.
One benefit of the numbers (and remember that a problem arising from too many players is a problem that a certain unnamed sim would love to have right now) is that if you start to get lag where the action is hot and heavy, you can find another corner of the map where there aren't so many cons, but you can still find a good fight.
On the NDisles map on Sunday, my squad ignored some of the furballs and set up shop around v6 and had a lot of great action with nme aircraft and GVs approaching from the north. Combat never involved more than a dozen people all told, but it was constant, exciting, and well fought on all sides. In arenas where you don't have the numbers, you pretty much have to go where everyone else is to find a fight. But I've noticed that the lag tends to disappear (at least for me, and I'm on a 56K--remember those?) if I go looking for those mid-level fights.
