Sure its a successful tactic, but what are you really trying to do here? PREVENT INTERACTION with other players.
Nonsense. If you don't want to interact with the enemy you fly around at 25k so they can't possibly catch you. Going NOE the enemy can always up and be fighting you in seconds. The point of NOE is to gain the initiative and thereby gain an advantage if the enemy chooses to try to defend the base. He can engage you, but it will be in
your time and on
your terms rather than on his. It's one way to take a base
without overwhelming numbers.
So YES, the new way does promote combat.
No it doesn't, it promotes dar-porking, alt-monkeying, and bigger hordes than ever before. Combat promotes itself, and if someone is determined to avoid it, most of the ways (especially the worst ones) to do so still exist.
I love defending against NOEs. Against mostly buffs it usually means easy kills and against mostly fighters it means quickly jumping into a tough, challenging fight. What I loathe on defense is a raid coming in at 20k+; I can waste 20 minutes trying to climb to and catch them and eventually run out of fuel and RTB without anyone having fired a shot. What fun is that? If hitech had to make a change, I think a hard ceiling at 10k would do ten times more to promote good game play than lower radar coverage. That, and take 262s and Tigers out of the game.