Map sizes are perfect now in my opinion. Who would up bombers if they're always shot down climbing out? Also, I like upping my pony with drop tanks and cruising around like a shark looking for prey at altitude. Drop down, close to a hundred, and kaboom! I enjoy all the aspects of this game, shrinking maps will make it more predictable and less interesting.
Please goto the DA and ask the muppets along with anyone else dueling to teach you ACM. Everyone in this game can do what you are doing with a poni by the beginning of their second tour. Or goto the TA and see my friend Morfiend for ACM lessons. There are more players in the AH world than yourself and the game always has to evolve out of it's periodic stagnations. And many more players like myself who have played tours non-stop for 11-13 years now who try to help the community hash this out each time bad or good. In the end Hitech seems to heed some of this and makes subtle changes.
We got these giant maps as a past response to 500-600 players in the arena and out of control hoards avoiding each other with no combat across 3 country fronts rolling bases. The size was supposed to eat up their energy. Now we average core playing 250-300 for a few hours on week nights and the size of the maps hide us from each other along with our willingness to avoid risk like flying a poni in the stratosphere using altitude to hide from the consequences of poor ACM. We reach stagnation when risk avoidance is held up as combat, and lack of motivation to accomplish much more than spawn camping then becomes a community malaise.
Bombers have always found a way to get off the ground. But, we have eventually needed Hitech to step in and push our noses into combat by overnight changing our world. And the results have ever been, no one got hurt, we all responded to the new novel stimulus figuring out how to game it, and everyone has fun for awhile fighting each other until we get bored and go back to avoiding risk. And the big risk avoidance this time around is everyone one and his buddy flying 20-30k into furballs.
In a bad economy like we are in, many people lucky to have jobs don't have the time to climb to 20k then go looking for a fight they feel comfortable vulching people in. They have a limited amount of time to invest each time they logon to get their monies worth. Smaller maps tend to have 2-3 fronts for each country with one a furball, the other a base defence, and an active capture attempt. The larger maps tend towards two countries attacking the third while avoiding each other because they need 500-600 to achieve the same scale of three fronts. Boring risk avoidance results.
