The typical strategy in MA derives from a very basic military strategy - "gather your forces, and hit where the enemy is the most weakest".
It is logical and effective.
But without any kind of structural system in the game, this effectively mans all three countries can push this principle upto the extreme point where each side mutually cancels all possibilities of strategical, tactical innovation and/or stimulation.
In simpler words, people create hordes. They don't use this horde to bust enemy horde in force. Hitting a horde with a horde may be fun, but speaking in pure tatcical/strategical terms, its a stupid move, wildly high in attrition rates and casualties.
And the MA folk know that. So, they use their horde to hit where there aren't any enemies around. The enemy horde does the same.
Suddenly, the arena becomes a "chicken game" - who can ignore the advance of the enemy horde longer, and who can push deeper into the enemy territory with its horde, before turning back to defend? The classic "vulch or be vulched" scenario that plagues the MA.
Virtually every problem in the MA comes from the formation of hordes which refuse to fight other hordes - everything.
Apparently, the strategical thinking in the MA is correct, except it has no limitations or boundaries. Since fighting to defend a large enemy force is so unprofittable, people will "abandon posts" and give up defense all together, and go join the friendly horde offensive.
Now in real life, the basic strategical principle would persist, but it would never happen that way. Two struggling sides always have a limited amount of force to wield. Limited amount of human resources means the quality, organization, and basic planning becomes the deciding factor in battles.
Not so in the MA - only the numbers determine the outcome of the battle, and since it is always "vulch or be vulched", basically nobody fights the other side - there is no 'fight' at all. There is only the 'push'.
Now, some might come up and say the MA is not real life. That is true. However, all the basic stuff that we crave in the MA that is not present, and all the basic stuff that we complain about the MA which refuses to go away, comes from the fact that our MA is a total war which totally lacks any kind of resemblence to the usage of armed forces.
In a real war, soldiers and pilots were placed at their posts, and each theater of operations had limited resources to use. In the MA, people use up resources any where they want and voluntarily create huge hordes which are largely allergic to another hordes.
Unless something forces people to spread apart, and forces each "fronts" to use only their share of the pilots assigned there, the "horde" problem will never, ever go away. Nothing can change this problem unless some basic organization is forcibly implied on.
And I must ask to the people with allergic reactions to any suggestions that involve "limitation of freedom" in the game, that, would such minimum constraints be so worse as to tolerate the current style of MA play indefinately? Is being assigned to certain place, having to fight equally spread numbers, having to use limited resources to defeat the other side, so worse than meeting the same steamroller again and again and again?
