As always, I'll try to come up with a way to combine the best arguments/ideas from both sides of the coin and come up with a solution, so hwere goes!!!
Leph has very good arguments about the need for a "fighter town" and I think SW has good arguments that the "town" would be overused when it shouldn't be used. So why not compromise? Leph is saying that the fighter town would be used when you just couldn't up from anywhere else (at least from what I'm gathering.) Well, why not allow the fighter town, but have it available ONLY when it's truly needed (e.g. all FH's are down at remaining fields.) How could this be accomplished? One way is to add a FH and runway strip at the HQ that's only uppable in certain situations (all FH down, 95% FH down, whatever.) This FH would never be destroyable, but only be active if the appropriate condition would be met. Since usually the last few fields left for your country are near your HQ, the HQ is a good choice for the "Fighter Town."
Of course, location of the "FT" could be somewhere other than the HQ, but I think the premise behind this caters to both arguments. You'll always have a place to up from if things get bad, and on the other side of the coin, it doesn't create an arena inside the arena.
As for the persistant fighter town arena within the arena concept, the only way I see that working is to have each of the 3 countries have one invulnerable base each in the middle of our maps, e.g. move the little islands in the big Uterus lake closer together for this map. Perfect arena inside the arena.
