Almost sounds like moving back to simpler easy to take down objects might increase activity with our smaller numbers. Then you have a Catch-22 that base grabbing is easier and making one population segment happier. While another is angry at Hitech for the perception he has made them super runway vulch bait and it's not worth upping past a certain point in a field attack. I seem to remember when we had less ack on fields and players were PO'd about being vulch bait back then.
The current field and town objects along with the capture requirements, 10 years ago would have slowed down the hoard steam rollers back then. So from 15 years of observation, the objects we have today aside from simply cosmetic upgrades for the times, are a response to lessons learned by Hitech about game play in the MA over time. That extreme of game play brought on by an average population size of 300-400 is not as prevalent today due to our low population in the MA. A beginning edge of a critical mass and change in MA population activity patterns towards classic hoarding starts at about 200 players. At 200 which is still low numbers, do you want the activity uptick that inspires more activity or, do you want to hold them back becasue of things that happened in the past which the new objects and their function requirements are designed to do?
My last two terrains I've been experimenting with this concept by placing as a majority, small air fields all over the terrains along with reduced transit distances between fields to reduce the amount of effort to capture territory. A few nights it looks like too little too late as the crickets serenade me. Then the rest of the time there are good activity levels for the numbers carrying on past prime time for a few hours. This holds constant with both of my terrains which I biased with a majority small airfields and shortened distances between fields. The few medium and large fields I placed on each of my terrains slows down game play like I intended for those objects to do at the locations I placed them. Hitech likes tangible data of some kind to back up our assertions to him I have noticed over the years.
So a general simplification of the town and field objects for destruction and capture may not be a bad thing towards generating activity given our current average prime time numbers in the MA. A simplification will probably resonate with the newer game playing demographic because it will be easier to accomplish "something". Our training crucible for new players way back when was the mission hoard and how it protected newer players while they learned. It's not like loosing feilds will keep an air combat centrist player from getting his plane into the air and at red guys. Or a GVer from sneaking into a town. It probably means the current terrain would get rotated faster.
